Every month, Alice Audouin, art & sustainability curator and expert, founder of Art of Change 21 and Impact Art News, explores a new theme and selects the cream of the crop within the art, fashion, and design worlds.
A Broader Look at 2025’s Sustainability Milestones – the sixth installment of our new series by the wonderful Alice.
2024 was the warmest year on record at about 1.55°C above pre-industrial level. Climate change is real, as Los Angeles stands as a stark example, rising from the ashes of devastating fires that claimed lives, displaced living beings, and consumed irreplaceable works of art. There is one benefit from this disaster: more people understand our climate emergency, including some people from the art world whose number of air travels in 2024 exceeded the number of the chocolates I have eaten last Christmas. Let’s be optimistic in 2025, which marks the 10th birthday of the Paris Accord: the synergy between creativity and environmental stewardship will be increasingly palpable.
1. Italy will, once again, show the way, with two major events
Design and architecture will be on the stage with strong environment commitments, both in Italy, with Venice Architecture Biennale and the Milan Triennale.
The 2025 Architecture Biennale in Venice—produced by La Biennale di Venezia and directed by renowned architect Carlo Ratti—will be open to the public from Saturday, May 10 to Sunday, November 23, 2025. Titled Intelligens. Naturel. Artificiel. Collectif, the exhibition will explore how ‘intelligence’—understood as the capacity to adapt to one’s environment with limited resources, knowledge, or power—might hold the key to solving pressing ecological and social challenges. All participants are asked to include eco-design in their process through a manifesto :
Meanwhile, La 24e de la Triennale Milano will run from May 13 to November 9, 2025, under the theme Inequalities. This edition is conceived as a major forum for reflecting on contemporary societal contradictions and the pressing planetary challenges we all face. By bringing design to the forefront, the event aims to stimulate new collaborations and cultivate holistic solutions for a just and sustainable future.
2. The Year of Otobong Nkanga
Who will be the most emblematic artists on sustainability in 2025? For sure, Otobong Nkanga is one of them. After the success of Cadence at MOMa, and many art prizes including Nasher Prize and Golder Afro Artistic Award, she will be on the most prestigious stage of Paris, with a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art of Paris. She fully deserves this high international recognition.
Happy new year, my dear Otobong!
3. Classical Museums bring solutions from the past for the future
The Getty has showcased remarkable resilience and adaptation to the increasing threat of wildfires driven by climate change, capping their PST ART program with a focus on environmental and social challenges. As institutions like MoMa and the National Museum of Taiwan lead the ecological transition in the cultural sector, other major classical museums, known for their traditional collections, are poised to follow suit in 2025, placing the environment at the heart of their missions. This shift extends beyond operational sustainability to include programming — an overdue but welcome change! Classical museums are now proving that preserving cultural heritage and protecting the planet are intertwined priorities, illustrating that heritage galleries are not merely stewards of the past but active architects of our collective future.
The Baltimore Museum of Art, home to centuries-old masterpieces, is devoting its entire annual programming to “Turn Again to the Earth,” featuring nine exhibitions and a rigorous sustainability action plan.
The Musée d’Orsay in Paris, will start next April the “100 masterpiece that tell the story of climate”, an ambitious climate-focused initiative in partnership with with 31 other French museums.
4. A creative convergence in major international events, on climate, biodiversity and oceans
On the geopolitical stage, 2025 promises to be a pivotal year for the planet, with major events shaping its future. These include COP30, marking a decade since the Paris Agreement was adopted at COP21, the IUCN World Conservation Congress, and the third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3).
The ocean takes center stage first, with UNOC3 in Nice, France, from June 9 to 13, 2025. Surrounding this global gathering, 11 art exhibitions will explore the connection between humanity and marine ecosystems, including Becoming Ocean: A Social Conversation About the Ocean, a major group show curated by TBA21 in partnership with the Tara Foundation at Villa Arson, Nice.
In the fall, the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Abu Dhabi, UAE, from October 9 to 15, 2025, will unite thousands of global leaders—government officials, scientists, indigenous representatives, and civil society—to confront biodiversity challenges and update the IUCN Red List of threatened species. Finally, COP30 in Belém, Brazil, from November 10 to 21, 2025, will focus on advancing climate action while amplifying the perspectives of local communities in the Amazon, a critical region for global biodiversity and climate stability.
The non-profit Art of Change 21*, specialized in bringing art to COP Climate since COP21 and to IUCN world congresses, with exhibitions, monumental installations and performances, with artists like Thijs Biersteker, Julian Charrière, John Gerrard, Lucy Orta or Tomas Saraceno in more than 10 editions, will promote the role of art and artists at a higher stage, preparing a major collective action for both of these events. The Climate Heritage Network, leading network to advocate on art, culture, heritage and climate action will take the lead at COP30, preparing an official recognition of culture as part of climate action.
Selection & Text by Alice Audouin
*Founded by Alice Audouin, author of this article
