Ocean STAGE
The Future of the Ocean Is Also in the Museum
Exhibition in Busan, South Korea

On September 17, the Busan Museum of Art in South Korea opens Future Museology, an international project that brings together cultural institutions from around the world to rethink the role of museums amid growing social and ecological uncertainty. As part of this initiative, TBA21–Academy presents Ocean STAGE, a dynamic space for debate, reflection, and artistic experimentation around the most pressing issues shaping the ocean’s present and possible futures.

Ocean STAGE is conceived as a physical extension of Ocean-Archive.org, TBA21–Academy's living digital platform for collaborative research and ocean literacy. The program unfolds through two parallel strands. First, a continuous film cycle brings together works from the TBA21 Collection, Ocean-Archive.org, and audiovisual works by invited artists developed in collaboration with Schmidt Ocean Institute. Alongside this, a public program of talks, workshops, performances, and other activities invites local and international artists to share the space with scientists, researchers, citizens, and specialists from a range of disciplines to address the challenges facing our ocean today. Ocean STAGE thus offers a meeting place for research, knowledge exchange, and collective imagination, in keeping with TBA21's belief that museums can—and must—go beyond preserving cultural heritage to become civic spaces from which we can address the social and environmental challenges of our time.

TBA21–Academy launches Ocean STAGE in Busan ahead of the 2028 United Nations Ocean Conference, which will be held in South Korea. The project brings the debate over the Ocean's present and future into a public setting and places artists’ voices and practices at the heart of the conversation, grounded in the conviction that they are vital to fostering a shared ocean awareness.