Pursuing sustainability education through museums: reflections of a renegade curator

With climate change and other Anthropocene trends affecting millions every day, there is a clear need to help people find ways to live more sustainably at local, regional, and global scales. Humanity has known this for decades, and museums have a prominent role to play as trusted and accessible sources of information and inspiration, yet few have made addressing sustainability their main focus. Based on 25 years of gallery and research projects at a medium-sized museum of natural history and Indigenous cultures, this paper looks at museum-driven sustainability education (SE) from a curatorial perspective. Using an autoethnographic lens and cultural evolution as a frame of reference, I highlight the value of SE by reflecting on how it has informed past and current gallery and research projects. I also draw insights about SE from these projects and outline a general SE framework aimed at all members of the museum community.