Dark Green Curation
How the World’s Museums are Promoting Environmental Knowledge, Values, and Nature Spiritualities
Bron Taylor [+–]
University of Florida
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When penning On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin knew it would profoundly disrupt the prevailing religious worldviews of his day. Not wanting to leave readers adrift in a sea of meaninglessness, therefore, he offered readers an alternative worldview, writing evocatively that “there is grandeur” in an evolutionary understanding of the beauty and diversity of life on Earth. Generations later, the world’s great aquariums and museums fuse the arts and sciences promoting the environmental sciences, feelings of belonging and connection to nature, kinship with non-human organisms, and proenvironmental values. Taking readers on a sensory, global tour, this book illustrates the way curators, and the scientists, artists, and other cultural creatives with whom they collaborate, are constructing meaning and urging their visitors to pitch in and protect the biosphere that, sometimes explicitly, other times implicitly, they present as sacred and worthy of reverent care.