A Cultural Institution Taking Action on Climate and Inequality: The Climate Museum in New York City
The Talking Climate series at the Climate Museum
The lessons learned through the 2020 online panel discussions curated by the Climate Museum, and the public reception of the events, inspired the formalization of a discussion series centering themes at the intersection of climate and inequality. This series is called Talking Climate.
In addition to bringing together an interdisciplinary panel of experts, the events also typically feature a poetry reading that is resonant with the themes of the conversation at the beginning of the event. Since these conversations have been hosted online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, audience interaction occurs primarily through the chat on YouTube, and the poetry reading became a feature to bring people together into the virtual space of the livecast and situate the space of the forthcoming conversation in a way that is distinct from other kinds of panel convenings—academic conference panels or TV news talking heads, for example, which create a very different kind of emotional experience. Black Lives and the Climate Crisis opened with a reading by Aracelis Girmay, and COVID’s Lessons began with Ross Gay reading two of his poems. The audience response to “You Are Who I Love” by Girmay*4 *(4) and “The Joy of Caring for Others” (Gay 2020)
(*17) and “A Small, Needful Fact” (Gay 2015) (*18) by Gay emphasized the benefits of an emotionally poignant opening as an entry point into discussions of injustice, and what to do about it. In addition to opening with poetry, these discussion events concluded with a call to action, urging attendees to use what they learned and felt during the conversation as a springboard for having a climate conversation with someone they know and to call their congressional representatives to urge them to pass climate-forward policy.
In a recent profile in the Washington Post, Climate Museum Director Miranda Massie said that “the real change comes in what people feel in relation to each other, and in relation to their own capacity, their own agency in the world … That’s where the transformation comes, and that’s when people are able to decide to act.” (Schlossberg 2021) (*19) Even prior to the formal launch of the Talking Climate discussion series, the idea of being able to create an experience where attendees could feel something, learn something, reflect on climate and inequality with nuance through the conversation between the panelists with Massie as the moderator, and be bolstered by an action ask at the end of the event was a key goal of the planning going forward.
The Climate Museum launched Talking Climate in January 2021 with a conversation titled Talking Climate: Displacements.*5 *(5) Curatorially, we knew we wanted to challenge some of the prevailing common sense that the climate crisis will lead to mass displacement across national borders. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has noted that much of current and projected climate displacement will actually happen within the national borders of countries (UNHCR 2020) (*20) and furthermore, displacements due to the climate crisis are not simply a future prediction but are crises that have occurred and continue to occur in multiple forms. Talking Climate: Displacements focused on three different forms of displacement that highlight the twinned crises of climate and inequality in the United States: internal displacement in the Gulf Coast following hurricanes, most notably the traumatic long-term displacement those affected experienced after Hurricane Katrina in 2005; climate gentrification in Miami; and land reclamation amid the threat of displacement for the Shinnecock Indian Nation in New York.
The expert panelists speaking to these issues were Vann R. Newkirk II, Senior Editor at The Atlantic and the creator and host of the Peabody Award-winning podcast Floodlines that investigates the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina fifteen years later. The Atlantic’s press release after the Peabody win noted that “the podcast presciently revealed the structural dynamics that shape all disasters in the United States: systemic racism, governmental incompetence, viral misinformation, and failures of empathy.” (The Atlantic 2020) (*21) In the conversation, Newkirk was joined by Marleine Bastien, immigrant rights activist and Executive Director of the nonprofit advocacy organization Family Action Network Movement (FANM) in Miami, who explained that due to rising sea levels and increased flooding in the city of Miami at scenic beachfront residences immediately along the coast, developers are now looking to build on higher ground. One such site of climate gentrification in Miami is a neighborhood known as Little Haiti, an area where Haitian immigrants and refugees have settled in over the past 40 years, many themselves displaced by the Duvalier dictatorships, hurricanes, and the 2010 earthquake. And Shavonne Smith of the Shinnecock Indian Nation’s Environmental Department spoke to the originary displacements arising from settler colonialism in the United States and highlighted the Nation’s climate adaptation plan, first put into action in 2013. Smith said it is commonplace for some people to dismiss American settler colonialism as something of the past, but she rightfully rejects this claim, saying “‘a few hundred years ago’ is still impacting people today.” (Smith 2021) (*22)
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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/
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