Exhibition Ecologies
Book launch and discussion with the editors, Regine Ehleiter and Friederike Schäfer, joined by several contributing authors, including Linn Burchert, Matéo Chacón Pino, Lena Fließbach, Elisabeth Heyne, Michael Klipphahn-Karge, and Anna-Sophie Springer
Exhibition Ecologies* approaches exhibitions as ecological media, shaped by infrastructures, economies, and relations of power. Bringing together art-historical essays and curatorial reflections, this volume explores how exhibitions respond to the climate crisis while showing how ecological narratives intersect with colonial legacies, extractivism, and the rhetorics of legitimation.
Case studies – from museum collection displays to contemporary biennials – probe the ecological framing of exhibitions, opening debates on sustainability, decolonial justice, and institutional responsibility. Linking exhibition studies with environmental humanities, this book highlights both the risks of co-option and the transformative potential of exhibitions.
Regine Ehleiter and Friederike Schäfer (eds.)
Exhibition Ecologies: Entanglements of Art, Institutions, and Politics in the Environmental Crisis
De Gruyter, 2026
* This publication is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy in the context of the Cluster of Excellence Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective — EXC 2020 — Project ID 390608380.
