Bergit Arends

Bergit Arends is an Associate Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art, specializing in contemporary art, exhibition histories, and curatorial practices. As a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (2019-2021), she developed research on art-environment relationships in the Anthropocene era.

Her research examines:

• Artistic responses to environmental change
• Decolonizing museum practices
• Anthropocene narratives in contemporary art
• Interdisciplinary art-science collaborations

Publications frequently analyze how artists reinterpret natural history through photography, archives, and installation works. Recent articles (2024) investigate montage techniques in environmental film and Black Anthropocene perspectives. She received the Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award (2018) for Chrystel Lebas. Field Studies.

Curatorial projects include significant exhibitions at London's Natural History Museum (2005-2013) and Berlin institutions, exploring climate change, botanical histories, and decolonial approaches to natural history collections.