Bridging Indigenous Art and Sustainability: Transformative Museum Learning in Management Education

In their seminal book, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered, Devall and Sessions (1985) argued that cultivating ecological consciousness is essentially “a process of learning to appreciate silence, solitude, and rediscovering how to listen” (p. 8). As a management educator, I was particularly intrigued by their assertion that the true work of developing ecological consciousness can be found in minority traditions, especially within Native American cultural heritage. This first-person photo essay reflects my reflections on two exhibitions of contemporary Native American art: The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans, first displayed at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. (September 22, 2023 – January 15, 2024), and later at the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut (April 18 – September 15, 2024). Through photographs I took, I share my reflections on the ecological insights I gained from attending these exhibitions. I also explore the pedagogical possibilities of transformative and humanistic museum learning in the context of management education for sustainability.