Anthropocene Collection

Thanks to the Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea (Plan for Contemporary Art) PAC2022- 2023 promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, the first Italian collection of Anthropocene art is born.

The most important ministerial fund for the acquisition, production and valorisation of works of contemporary art and creativity destined for the Italian public heritage has recognised our longstanding commitment to the dialogue between art and science. It has acknowledged the opportunity to create a newly conceived museum collection, a symbol of the fruitful alliance between science and the environmental humanities in order to embrace, understand and shed light on the current environmental crisis in its complexity of social, economic, political and ethical causes. In this sense, the language of art was considered particularly appropriate for addressing the Anthropocene, because of its ability to offer a synthesis, even an emotional one, of the complexity of the Anthropocene concept itself.

The new MUSE Anthropocene Collection has been created as a tool for working with the public. It will be unveiled with a special exhibition event in November 2024, a masterclass for artists and creatives ‘From the Anthropocene to the Biocene’, and a programme of talks between art and science.

The 14 works of art that will form the founding core of the Collection come from the MUSE project “We Are The Flood”, an experimental platform for expression and capacity building for artists and creative people involved in the context of ecological transformation, conceived and curated by the artist Stefano Cagol.

The original core of the collection will be expanded over the years with acquisitions and productions related to MUSE’s exploration of the Anthropocene through art.

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The MUSE Anthropocene programme is supported by