A Cultural Institution Taking Action on Climate and Inequality: The Climate Museum in New York City
Henry McGhie points out that “social norms are important, and cultural institutions have a responsibility and a role to play in supporting collaborative, constructive social norms.” (McGhie 2018) (*13) The terminology, juxtapositions, and narrative modes of framing can impact the construction of these social norms as audiences encounter museum programs. McGhie also adapts Fiona Cameron, Bob Hodge, and Juan Francisco Salazar’s “nine principles for museums and science centers as agents to promote understanding and action on climate change,” (Cameron et al.) (*14) listing the key elements of why and how climate can be centered in museum programming. I want to highlight three principles in particular:
McGhie writes:
- “Allowing people to draw on a range of perspectives, ideas, scales and disciplines and to form their own conclusions is important, but it is also important for museums to express their own position in contested positions.”
- “Museum-goers need to be able to connect with the scale that is appreciable to them.”
- “Museums need to be part of an ecology of partners from different sectors. Museums … can facilitate dialogue across sectors.” (McGhie 2018) (*13)
I read these particular principles as follows: 1) Museums can and should take a stance on climate; 2) Museum audiences need on-ramps to climate in ways that are consonant with their lives and experience; and 3) Museums can create and sustain spaces for interdisciplinary dialogue. As we shall see, each of these principles resonates strongly with the goals and execution of the Talking Climate series at the Climate Museum.
The above principles are also motivators of action. A majority of Americans are worried about the climate crisis but have yet to take action, (Leiserowitz et al.) (*15) and being provided with multiple points of entry into climate discussions, a clear perspective from a trusted source like a museum, and a set of concrete pathways for taking action can be transformative for museum audiences. Sarah Sutton urges an openness to risk-taking for museums to adequately address climate in their exhibitions, programs, and institutional operations. (Sutton 2020) (*16) She acknowledges the multiplicity and simultaneity of crises that affect people today, citing COVID-19, the pandemic’s economic impacts, racism, and climate as “four interrelated crises,” each with parallels that can inform the others. (Ibid.: 631) (*16)
The precursors to the Climate Museum’s Talking Climate series, which emphasized the importance of regular public discussions on the themes of climate and inequality, were the panel discussion events Black Lives and the Climate Crisis (July 2020) and COVID’s Lessons for Climate and Inequality: From Sacrifice Zones to Justice (September 2020). These hour-long discussion events, held via an online livecast and archived at the Climate Museum’s YouTube channel,*3 *(3) responded to the demands of the moment in the United States: the Black Lives Matter movement and the nationwide summer of protests against police killings spurred by the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin, and the ravages of the pandemic on communities of color across the U.S. These conversations, which brought together experts from distinct fields ranging from activism, medicine, journalism, advocacy, policy, and science, reflected on the climate crisis in relation to the unequal realities of contemporary American society. The panelists in COVID’s Lessons discussed the disproportionate deadly effects of the global pandemic on people of color—particularly Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and immigrant communities— in the United States as a grim foreshadowing of lasting climate impacts unless swift and decisive action is taken at a national scale. Both events go beyond Sutton’s formulation, showing how the historical exacerbations of racism and its impacts are not simply related to COVID and climate, but are constitutive of the very grounds of these global conditions, and are intimately tied to the severity of their impacts for populations on the frontlines of multiple unfolding crises.
Dilshanie Perera ( 2021): A Cultural Institution Taking Action on Climate and Inequality: The Climate Museum in New York City. In: p/art/icipate – Kultur aktiv gestalten # 12 , https://www.p-art-icipate.net/a-cultural-institution-taking-action-on-climate-and-inequality-the-climate-museum-in-new-york-city/