Balancing Acts: Dilemmas in Sustainable Curating

ABSTRACT How do contemporary art curators relate to the challenges of curating sustainably? In this article, I share my personal experiences with curating in a sustainable framework in the 2‐year exhibition project HABITAT (2022–2023) at Agder Art Centre in Kristiansand, Norway. Through “the curatorial” as a practice‐led method, I explore my efforts to challenge artists to engage in sustainable production, to limit CO 2 ‐emissions, and to navigate difficult, ironic, or revealing tensions in the process. I argue that this personal and practice‐led research approach can illuminate the nuanced dilemmas that sustainability introduces into curatorial work. Focusing on three key “balancing acts”—between locality and globality, between artistic freedom and sustainable production, and between curatorial care and curatorial organization—I contend that these dilemmas are not merely circumstantial but structural, and that they reveal contradictions deeply embedded in the systems of contemporary art.