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)star (*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.)star (*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)star (*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.)star (*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)star (*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)star (*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.

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Bhatish, Aatia/Choi-Schagrin, Winston (2021): Why Record-Breaking Overnight Temperatures are So Concerning. The New York Times (published July 9, 2021). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/upshot/record-breaking-hot-weather-at-night-deaths.html, accessed September 12, 2021.

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Cotton, William R. (2021): Wildfire burn scars can intensify and even create thunderstorms that lead to catastrophic flooding – here’s how it works. The Conversation (published September 10, 2021). https://theconversation.com/wildfire-burn-scars-can-intensify-and-even-create-thunderstorms-that-lead-to-catastrophic-flooding-heres-how-it-works-163164, accessed September 12 2021.

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Dilenschneider, Colleen (2017): “People trust museums more than newspapers. Here’s why that matters right now (Data).” IMPACTS Experience. https://www.colleendilen.com/2017/04/26/people-trust-museums-more-than-newspapers-here-is-why-that-matters-right-now-data/, accessed September 13, 2021.

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Mann, Michael E. (2021): The New Climate War. New York: PublicAffairs.

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Marks, Elizabeth/Hickman, Caroline/Pihkala, Panu/Clayton, Susan/Lewandowski, Eric R./Mayall, Elouise E./Wray, Britt/Mellor, Catriona/van Susteren, Lise (2021): Young People’s Voices on Climate Anxiety, Government Betrayal and Moral Injury: A Global Phenomenon. The Lancet (preprint). http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3918955

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Shindell, D./Zhang, Y./Scott, M./Ru, M./Stark, K./Ebi, K. L. (2020): The effects of heat exposure on human mortality throughout the United States. GeoHealth, 3. https://doi.org/10.1029/ 2019GH000234 

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Plumer, Brad/Popovich, Nadja (2020): How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering. The New York Times (published August 24, 2020). https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/24/climate/racism-redlining-cities-global-warming.html, accessed September 10, 2021.

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Hoffman, Jeremy S./ Shandas, Vivek/Pendleton, Nicholas (2020): The Effects of Historical Housing Policies on Resident Exposure to Intra-Urban Heat: A Study of 108 US Urban Areas. Climate 8, no. 1: 12. https://doi.org/10.3390/cli8010012

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Massie, Miranda/Reyes, Anais (2020): Chapter 34: The Climate Museum. World Scientific Encyclopedia of Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811213946_0035

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Massie, Miranda interviewed by Anais Reyes (2020): Museum Programming for Civic Engagement on Climate Change with Miranda Massie. Museum Education Roundtable Blog. http://www.museumedu.org/museum-programming-for-civic-engagement-on-climate-change-with-miranda-massie/, accessed September 13, 2021.

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Newell, Jenny (2020): Climate museums: powering action. Museum Management and Curatorship, 35: 6, 599-617. https://dor.org/10.1080/09647775.2020.1842236

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Garlandini, Alberto (2021): G20 Culture Ministerial Meeting, Addressing the Climate Crisis through Culture. Rome, July 29-30, 2021. https://icom.museum/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/President_Speech-G20-Culture-climate-crisis.pdf, accessed September 19, 2021.

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McGhie, Henry (2018): Climate Change Engagement: A Different Narrative. Addressing the Challenges of Communicating Climate Change across Various Audiences, Walter Leal Filho, Bettina Lackner, Henry McGhie, eds. Switzerland: Springer, p. 21.

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Cameron, Fiona, Bob Hodge, and Juan Francisco Salazar. 2013. “Representing climate change in museum space and places.” WIREs Clim Change, 4: 9–21. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.200

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Leiserowitz, A./Maibach, E./Rosenthal, S./Kotcher, J./Carman, J./Wang, X./Marlon, J./Lacroix, K./Goldberg, M. (2021): Climate Change in the American Mind, March 2021. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

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Sutton, Sarah (2020): The evolving responsibility of museum work in the time of climate change. Museum Management and Curatorship, 35:6, p. 618-635, https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2020.1837000

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Gay, Ross (2020): The Joy of Caring for Others. The New York Times (published May 18, 2020). https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/style/caring-joy.html, accessed September 12, 2021.

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Gay, Ross (2015): A Small Needful Fact. Poets.org. https://poets.org/poem/small-needful-fact, accessed September 14, 2021.

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Schlossberg, Tatiana (2021): The Climate Museum is the first of its kind in the U.S. – and its founder is on a mission. The Washington Post (published September 10, 2021). https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/09/10/museum-miranda-massie-art/, accessed September 12, 2021.

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UNHCR Staff (Siegfried, Kristy/Reyes, Austin Ramírez/Azamy, Naik Mohammad/ Siddo, Boubacar Younoussa) (2020): How climate change is multiplying the risks for displacement. UNHCR News and Stories. (published December 2, 2020) https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/stories/2020/12/5fc74f754/climate-change-multiplying-risks-displacement.html, accessed September 13, 2021.

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The Atlantic (2021): The Atlantic’s Floodlines wins Peabody Award June 21, 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/press-releases/archive/2021/06/the-atlantics-floodlines-wins-2021-peabody-award/619260/, accessed September 14, 2021.

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Smith, Shavonne (2021): Direct quotation, Talking Climate: Displacements. (Livecast January 8, 2021).

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Massie, Miranda (2021): Direct quotation, Talking Climate: Displacements. (Livecast January 8, 2021).

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López, Arcenio (2021): Talking Climate: Food. (Livecast May 21, 2021).

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Figueres, Christiana (2020): How Can We Choose Optimism — Even in the Darkest Times? TED Radio Hour (broadcast May 20, 2020). https://www.npr.org/2020/05/22/860128259/christiana-figueres-how-can-we-choose-optimism-even-in-the-darkest-times, accessed September 15, 2021.

See, for example, the global flooding news aggregator FloodList: https://floodlist.com/, accessed September 12, 2021.

Recordings of Talking Climate series events are archived on the Climate Museum website (https://climatemuseum.org/talking-climate) and the Climate Museum YouTube page for viewing.

All of the discussions on climate and inequality held at the Climate Museum can be accessed here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuVeADJ3Es83evjF6YuYQP3FjaXHeokUO

The archived reading of “You Are Who I Love” (2017) by Aracelis Girmay during Black Lives and the Climate Crisis can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt2VOg2RI84&t=129s&ab_channel=TheClimateMuseum

You can access Talking Climate: Displacements here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lCJ9rbuOyo&t=1s&ab_channel=TheClimateMuseum

You can access Talking Climate: Food in its entirety here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2Wr5BWNhVg&t=78s&ab_channel=TheClimateMuseum

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/