The Circular Museum, a collaboration between MoMA’s Ambasz Institute and ART 2030, is a panel discussion series inviting artists, museum directors, curators, exhibition designers, and other museum practitioners from around the world to talk about their efforts to address the climate crisis through their work. The series explores how incorporating sustainability and circularity into various levels of museum practice is not only urgent but desirable.
In 2025, Circular Museum returns for a second season with a renewed focus: collaboration as a climate strategy. Featuring speakers from six museums in the US, Europe, and the Middle East, Season 2 highlights how shared efforts—across departments, disciplines, and geographies—can produce scalable, imaginative responses to the climate crisis. Each of the three new episodes spotlights real-world projects that reveal the power of inter-institutional and cross-sectoral partnerships to drive meaningful change.
The first episode of Circular Museum Season 2 asks what happens when museums act in climate solidarity across institutions and disciplines. The episode brings colleagues from Southern California’s major art institutes—the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) LA—together with artist Debra Scacco to discuss their collaboration through PST ART. Together, they reflect on the power of inter-institutional partnerships, shared frameworks, and collective responsibility in shaping more sustainable futures for culture.
Jean-Pascal Coutelen is the associate VP of facilities and sustainability at LACMA. He is actively involved in the ongoing expansion of the campus, including the construction of a magnificent new building for the permanent collection. Coutelen and his LACMA colleagues have launched several initiatives and are collaborating with domestic and international institutions to advance sustainable museum practices. He was previously the program manager of maintenance and operations at JPL/NASA and the director of facilities at Disneyland Paris. He holds a master’s in industrial engineering from Polytech Nancy, France, and brings 30 years of international experience in facilities management, operations, and sustainability.
Camille Kirk was appointed the Getty’s inaugural head of sustainability in August 2023. She works with other Getty leaders to define and advance overall sustainability goals, and partners with programs and departments across the institution to develop, implement, and coordinate Getty’s strategic sustainability initiatives. Previously, Camille was director of sustainability and campus sustainability planner for the University of California, Davis, where she led the development of sustainability plans, and implemented sustainability performance assessments. Her efforts helped UC Davis achieve national and international recognition as one of the greenest universities in the world. She also served on various external boards and steering committees to increase climate and regional water supply resiliency, and improve sustainability metrics. Camille joined UC Davis in 2005 as an associate environmental planner and held positions of increasing responsibility as the campus expanded its sustainability efforts. Prior to UC Davis, she ran an environmental impact mitigation consultancy. She holds a BA in geography from the University of Texas, Austin, and an MA in geography from UCLA.
Debra Scacco is an interdisciplinary artist who studies the ecological and cultural impacts of anthropogenic change. By blending academic research with first-person narratives, her work navigates histories of land and water and the beings most affected by their transformation, creating platforms for public engagement and action. Scacco is the inaugural artist-in-residence within the City of Santa Monica’s Water and Waste divisions (2023–25), and was the inaugural artist-in-residence at Ellis Island Museum (2012). She is founding co-director of the Getty PST ART Climate Impact Program (2022–), a groundbreaking integration of climate action, community building, and data reporting. Her work has been exhibited internationally.
Kelsey Shell is the environmental and sustainability strategist at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, where she weaves sustainability into the exhibitions and operations of the museum. Shell’s work centers on institutional culture shift and decarbonizing MOCA’s campus, supporting all-ages environmental education, and responsibly built exhibitions that foreground climate stories. Prior to MOCA, Shell was the director of public art at Zlot Buell + Associates, where she worked on large-scale projects with Stanford University, the Dallas Cowboys, and the State of California, among others. She was a founding member of Art + Climate Action and the Los Angeles chapter of the Gallery Climate Coalition.
Moderators
Carson Chan, former Director, Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Study of the Built and Natural Environment, MoMA
Luise Faurschou, Founder and CEO, ART 2030
Accessibility
Automated captioning is available for all online programs. American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and live captioning are available for public programs upon request with two weeks’ advance notice. MoMA will make every effort to provide accommodation for requests made with less than two weeks’ notice. For accessibility questions or accommodation requests, please email [email protected] or call (212) 708-9781.
This event was made possible through a generous gift from Emilio Ambasz. The Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment is a platform for fostering dialogue, promoting conversation, and facilitating research about the relationship between the built and natural environment, with the aim of making the interaction between architecture and ecology visible and accessible to the wider public while highlighting the urgent need for an ecological recalibration.