When Winston Churchill was urged to cut arts funding during World War II, he is said to have replied, “Then what are we fighting for?”. That sentiment could well serve as a motto for Milan Garcin, Chief Curator of Fine Arts at Geneva’s Musée d’Art et d’Histoire (MAH). Garcin believes art matters precisely because of its apparent “uselessness.” For him, art’s power lies not in delivering direct messages but in affirming our capacity for creativity in every sphere of life. After all, what is a scientist if not also an artist? 

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Too often dismissed as trivial, art quietly shapes awareness and empowers both present and future generations. With this in mind, the Beyond Lab spoke with Garcin to explore a central question: can art from the past speak to today’s concerns about sustainability? The museum’s rich collection provided vivid guidelines for that conversation, reflecting the very spirit of the gallery he curates. 

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Nature: From Backdrop to Identity to Evolving Symbolism  

 

Long before today’s climate debates, artists were already aware of the power of landscape: Konrad Witz’s La pêche miraculeuse (1444) is striking proof. One of the few works to survive the iconoclastic upheavals of Calvinism, it marks the first identifiable landscape in Western art. The biblical scene of the miraculous draft of fish is not set in a vague, heavenly backdrop but on the shores of Lake Geneva itself. Commissioned by the Bishop of Geneva, this choice likely signaled his authority over the region. At a time when the printing press, new scientific findings and the “discovery” of the Americas were rapidly expanding horizons, the painting anchors the sacred narrative in a familiar and controlled world: an assertion of order amid the unknown.

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In a similar vein, Pierre-Louis de la Rive’s 1802 Mont Blanc painting shifts the perspective from mountains as distant, menacing backdrops — what Garcin calls a “distant inferno” — to mountains as luminous, familiar subjects. Having been among the first to climb Mont Blanc, de la Rive captured it not as a threat but as a majestic presence, bathed in golden light, almost a living companion. Though the idea of environmental protection didn’t yet exist, the painting reflects a desire to immortalize the mountain that looms so large in Geneva’s landscape and Swiss identity. 

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Both Witz and de la Rive point to a different kind of preservation: not of nature as a protected space, but of culture. To call it environmentalism would be anachronistic, but in their own way, these works defend the landscape as a cornerstone of what it means to be Swiss.

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Moving from landscapes to living creatures, Jacques-Laurent Agasse’s L’Orang-outang Joko (1819) adds another layer to this evolution, although dismissed by his contemporaries as a mere naturalist depiction. Joko, a celebrated orangutan from London’s Imperial Zoo, is painted not as a curiosity of nature but as a figure almost human in presence. His direct gaze meets the viewer’s, echoing the intimacy of a portrait and unsettling the boundaries between man and animal. At a time when Darwinian ideas were only beginning to emerge, this was a striking shift: nature no longer as a distant backdrop or majestic subject, but as a mirror in which humanity could begin to recognize itself.

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This shift continued into the nineteenth century, when Romantic painters like François Diday and Alexandre Calame put nature’s raw power—storms, tempests, destruction—at the very centre of their canvas. In turn, Impressionists soon turned inward, painting not just what nature looked like but how it felt, as seen in Monet’s water lilies or Van Gogh’s wheat fields. Finally, with Ferdinand Hodler in the early twentieth century, Lake Geneva became a source of abstraction and geometry, hence no longer just a scene to depict but a language of color and form. Across these centuries, the museum’s collection reveals a striking evolution: from nature as backdrop, to subject, to mirror, and ultimately to a powerful idea.

 

Art’s Idea: News Ways of Finding Sustainability

 

For Garcin, sustainability in art is less about the original meaning of a painting than about how we curate and reinterpret it today. “The meaning will always be distorted,” he notes, “but reinventing is part of preserving.” Artists themselves have long practiced forms of sustainability. Materials were costly, so canvases were often reused: paint on one side, start over on the other. Throughout history, painters also “recycled” images and ideas, quoting and reworking the language of their predecessors. For Garcin, this shared artistic language, renewed across generations, is itself a sustainable practice, marking a dialogue that stretches across centuries. The very fact that we now see and read past artworks through the lens of contemporary matters is yet another reinvention that keeps them alive. On a practical level, the museum embodies sustainability through its daily operations: walls are never rebuilt but reused, podiums are pre-fabricated and recycled, and loaned items are accepted only when grouped together to minimize transport. Working within these constraints can be challenging (i.e., everything must emerge from the existing collection) but Garcin sees this as a strength. It forces curators to know their collection intimately, to find unexpected connections across its department (paintings, sculptures, archaeology, coins, metals, watches, applied arts…), and to approach curation as anexercise of creativity. In the end, sustainability is not just about preserving objects but possibilities, rediscovering new discourses, provoking fresh dialogues and keeping the collection meaningful for future audiences.

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Hope Hides in More than Paintings

 

If sustainability is about preserving the past for the future, hope is about imagining what that future might look like.

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For Garcin, hope is not always found in grand, uplifting images but in quieter stories of survival and reinvention. One example is James Pradier’s Vase Funéraire (1840), a piece once blackened and destroyed by fire yet painstakingly restored to its original form. Though the urn’s imagery is solemn, with angels weeping over death, the fact that it could be brought back from ruin carries its own message of resilience.

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Hope also emerges through people. John Hoppner’s Portrait of Lady Louisa Manners (1805) depicts a woman who defied the constraints of her time by leaving an unhappy marriage to live freely with her lover. Whether the artist intended to defend or simply represent her, the painting now tells a story of courage and independence.

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Still, Garcin admits that hope is not art history’s strongest theme: “More often we inherit sad stories.” For him, hope lies less in individual works than in how museums reimagine them. At the MAH, this means experimenting with new ways of displaying the collection and involving contemporary artists with diverse methodologies. Hope, then, resides in the future: in how museums can keep reinventing their collections, so they remain alive, relevant and open to new ways of seeing.

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From Waves to Bridges: Looking Beyond the Frame

 

Among the museum’s many treasures, Garcin’s favorite is Carlos Schwabe’s La Vague (1907). At once gloomy and magnetic, it embodies how art continues to unsettle and question us, reminding us that even a century-old canvas can still stare us down with urgency.

For young people who wish to work with art or use it to carry a message, Garcin’s advice is simple yet demanding: look at as much art as you can, in every form and place; don’t fear unusual ideas or collapsing categories; and above all, use art as a tool for the present and future rather than as a relic of the past.

 

The museum itself is embracing this spirit. Projects like Vincent Lamouroux’s Connecting Bridge—spanning the courtyard to open new vantage points—invite us to cross both literal and metaphorical thresholds. They remind us that every structure, like every collection, is alive when it offers fresh perspectives.

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Ultimately, the path forward lies in seeing sustainability and creativity as mutually constitutive. Together, they ensure that art remains relevant: bridging us toward the future and keeping our sense of wonder intact!