Ecomuseums, Biodiversity and Contemporary Art in Europe: Curatorial Frameworks for Socio-ecological Engagement

This article examines how European ecomuseums mobilise contemporary art to make biodiversity visible, interpretable, and open to public engagement through curatorial practice. It draws on a comparative survey of 446 ecomuseums in France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy from 2011 to 2024, complemented by 26 case studies selected across forest, coastal and marine, rural, agro-pastoral, riverine, and community-based contexts. The analysis identifies recurring curatorial frameworks through which biodiversity is translated into place-based narratives: participatory studios and co-produced outputs, material temporality and weathering as interpretive media, documentation practices that function as public archives, and strategies that connect local ecologies to wider debates on land use, labour, and environmental change. Although only a minority of institutions develop sustained programmes at the intersection of biodiversity and contemporary art, those that do rely on curatorial infrastructures—partnerships, workshops, learning formats, and distributed display devices—to negotiate stewardship and collective responsibility. By foregrounding these infrastructures and practices, the article offers a museum-centred approach to biodiversity discourse that is transferable to comparative research across museum types.