Bergit Arends is a curator of contemporary art, museum professional and currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Bergit creates and studies interdisciplinary artistic and curatorial processes with focus on environment, natural history collections, and visual art.
She has curated many contemporary art projects for the natural history museums in London (2005–2013), including Galápagos (2012–2013); Lucy + Jorge Orta: Amazonia (2010); After Darwin: Contemporary Expressions (2009); Mark Dion: Systema Metropolis (2007); The Ship: The Art of Climate Change (2006); Tania Kovats TREE (2009), as well as in Berlin, including Elizabeth Price BERLINWAL (2018).
She publishes widely, recently on the politics of natural sciences collections, British imperialism and colonialism, and critical engagements, ‘Unequal Earth’ in (NaturKultur 2021), The Botanical City (2020), Botanical Drift (2018), Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (2018), and on decolonising natural history museums (Art in Science Museums 2019). Her thesis ‘Contemporary Art, Archives and Environmental Change in the Age of the Anthropocene’ (2017) resulted in the award-winning publication Chrystel Lebas. Field Studies: walking through landscapes and archives (2018). Bergit currently works on montage and the Anthropocene as well as the project ‘Seeds of Empire’ by British photographer Joy Gregory and South African composer Philip Miller.
She is a trustee of electric voice theatre, which promotes the works of historic and contemporary women composers and women scientists.
