Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

The mission of the Climate Museum is to inspire action on the climate crisis with programming across the arts and sciences that deepens understanding, builds connections, and advances just solutions. 

The Museum mobilizes the remarkable strengths of museums--popularity and public trust--to create a broad culture for action on climate. It also demonstrates leadership within a growing global movement to integrate climate issues into the work of the cultural sector. 

Its pilot phase has delivered popular exhibitions, programming, and online content that build awareness, communication, and mobilization for a growing community of supporters, shifting cultural norms toward climate action.

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The final words in the Climate Museum‚ mission capture the underlying motivation for its work: to make progress toward just solutions. As a matter of fundamental morals and practicality alike, justice is essential to achieving a sustainable, low-carbon future. In its work to advance the prospects for that future, the Museum looks to elevate the leadership of traditionally underrepresented groups across its governance, operations, and programming. 

The Museum‚ six trustees include two women, two people of color--one of whom is Black and one of whom is Latinx--two immigrants, and one child of immigrants, with further diversity of class background. Two of the trustees are experts in climate justice and/or related fields: Joel Towers, who directs the environmental and climate justice-focused Tishman Environment and Design Center at the New School, and Maxine Burkett, who wrote the original paper on climate reparations. The board has formally adopted diversity as a priority for its ongoing growth. 

The Museum‚ staffing and operations evidence the same focus on inclusion. Its team of 14 includes six people of color, three of whom--a Latinx woman, an Asian American woman, and a Black man--occupy programmatic leadership positions. Its development work is led by a gay man. Most team members are women, like the director, and two are non-binary. Diversity of class background and disability status are also represented on the staff. 

It is a fundamental management priority of the Museum to cultivate the leadership and elevate the voices of all staff members, with a specific commitment to break from the assumptions and practices that can marginalize people of color, women, and others. 

Finally, the Museum‚ programs explicitly seek to shift attention and other resources to those underrepresented in the climate movement, for instance youth and climate-vulnerable communities. 

The Museum‚ youth arts and internship programs have led many high school students to step into active leadership positions in the youth climate movement and have provided all participants with opportunities such as performing a climate justice-themed poem on the stage of the Apollo Theater, serving as a tour guide for diverse visitor groups in an action-focused exhibition, and developing a community action plan with support from Museum staff and volunteers. 

Engagement with climate justice communities and leaderships has similarly been a focus of the Museum‚ work. In its citywide show Climate Signals, for example, the Museum chose a number of installation sites based on their proximity to climate-vulnerable communities with organizations working at the intersection of climate and justice. Its special programs in partnership with those organizations included a climate justice teach-in, the painting of a climate justice mural, and a food justice harvest fest. During the pandemic, the Museum has presented online programs that elevate the perspectives and expertise of leaders of color ( Black Lives and the Climate Crisis, Covid‚ Lessons for Climate and Inequality ) and has, for 2021, established a monthly series on climate and inequality called Talking Climate, in which racially and otherwise diverse experts explore themes such as displacement, grief, and infrastructure.

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