I was struck Tuesday, in the "Virtual Concert," by some of Pinto's comments and Vision for museums in our age of global environmental crisises. He has curated the show opening May 5, "Bios4" for the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, in Seville, Spain. As a Portunguese artist-curator, who has been mainly working thru Spanish museums, he perceives museums globally, as places where communities can go in our coming age of "long-emergency," to get collaborative help to survive our times. He sees artists as having a "duty" to provide that help.
This is the most positive & provocative conceptualization & articulation of the new role for institutions I've heard. But he also cautioned that institutions are under-going a period of fear, in the face of the implications for change, much as ordinary people are facing in the face of global warming. At a time when experts are talking about the potential impacts of immigrations of possibly billions of peoples in response to desertifications, his ideas fascinated me in terms of envisioning & modeling a "bloodless" global immigration. Apparently he has hit a nerve, as since yesterday, there have already been 30 downloads, the most I've noticed in less than 24 hours.
Next week, Lucy McCarthy of the Vinalhaven Land Trust, will speak of the role of conserving relatively small areas in significant environmental change. Yesterday, there was a major NY Times article about Pulao, a small fishing village in the Philippines whose marine reserves have become an international model of hope for the fisheries.
Does this all mean there is hope that the great global tsunami of competitive greed, mindless consumption and isolationist lassitude has turned? Today, I am optimistic.
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