Climate Museum

We need a broad cultural shift on climate—a major increase in civic engagement across all sectors, so that diverse constituencies feel connected and empowered to advocate for climate solutions.

As we enter a decade of what must be rapid, fundamental climate progress, the Climate Museum is committed to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. The Museum focuses in particular on the connections between climate and inequality, supporting progress on several other SDGs (Good Health and Well Being, Gender Equality, Reduced Inequalities). The Climate Museum also works to advance the SDG of Sustainable Cities and Communities. Our work in New York City, much of which has been carried out in partnership with a range of City agencies and departments, builds a culture for civic action on climate within the largest city in the U.S. Our programming also tangibly advances work for Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, inviting audience members into civic engagement and building a healthy democracy.

The Climate Museum provides the context of a community of action to empower visitors, offering them confidence that their own actions are meaningful and scaled. In addition to expanding our own programming, we will continue providing leadership within a growing global movement to integrate a climate focus into the work of the cultural sector, given the remarkable trust and popularity that the sector enjoys.

The Climate Museum offers exhibitions, installations, events, and online content to create a space for climate dialogue, engagement, and action, with broadly ranging subject matter approached in an interdisciplinary way.
Here are examples of how the Museum’s programs work to transform the culture of silence into a culture for action.

- Ask A Scientist: this ongoing program connects members of the public directly with climate scientists, using the cultural authority that science resiliently holds to create space for engagement. By an overwhelming margin, the question most asked at these events has been “what can I do?”

- Taking Action: at this 2019 exhibition, thousands of visitors committed to actions including signing a petition demanding climate-focused coverage of the 2020 Presidential campaign, calling Members of Congress to urge climate action and rejection of fossil fuel campaign funds, joining an organization doing climate work, and more. As with other Museum programs, emphasis was placed on the collective nature of the actions being taken to reduce the sense of being outscaled—a key impediment to climate action.
The show was so successful that the Museum is creating a traveling version of it, and the oldest museum in the U.S., the Peabody Essex Museum, is working with the Climate Museum to create its own version of the show, set to open in late 2021.

-Youth programs: the Museum has iterated a series of youth programs—high school internships, a climate arts program, advocacy workshops—that have invited scores of young people into climate leadership and community engagement. For example, last summer, the Museum offered an intensive six-week internship to 47 students from around the U.S. and beyond which culminated in the students creating individualized climate action plans for their communities.

-Talking Climate: each installment of the Museum’s 2021 monthly series of interdisciplinary conversations at the intersection of climate and inequality ends with a joint call for action by the Museum and expert panelists.
The Climate Museum’s work creates necessary civic and cultural conditions for other climate protagonists by placing climate change at the center of community life. This shift is a predicate for the intense and sustained societal efforts required to achieve major emissions reductions.

We are committed to mobilizing partnerships, our programming is free, open to the public with attention to accessibility, and delivered by a collective leadership with a proven track record of reaching diverse audiences.

The power of museum programming is foundational to our theory of change. Museums are deeply trusted and popular, and cultural programs offer variegated, accessible pathways into climate engagement. The prosocial qualities of museums make them vital spaces for community-building. In partnership with many allies, the Climate Museum aims to mobilize this transformative potential for a widespread shift in civic culture on climate.

The Climate Museum’s effectiveness depends upon its own continued, indeed accelerated, scaling. In its four three years, it has created more than 200 events and more than 81,000 first-person touchpoints and onramps for members of the public, with substantial ripple effects. One visitor to the Museum’s exhibition Taking Action, who committed to each of the options the Museum presented in the show to empower individuals to join a broad community of civic engagement, later wrote us to report on the impact the exhibition had on her husband and her: “Day by day we’ve multiplied our actions, replacing our despair with determination.”

That multiplication is what we need: a growing sense of personal and collective efficacy that, in addition to its inherent democratic benefits, will both enable and sustain the structural changes required to reduce emissions dramatically. The Museum, in its own continued growth and its coalitional role in orienting the cultural sector toward climate, is a key to that multiplication.

We hold equity concerns at the center of our work as essential tenets of our identity as a socially engaged, activist museum and a climate organization. In its work, the Museum looks to elevate the leadership of traditionally underrepresented groups across its governance, operations, and programming. The staff at the Climate Museum represent diversity of race, sexuality, gender identity, disability and socioeconomic status. Our reach extends through our volunteer Advisory Council, Youth Advisory Council, and Science Working Group.

The Climate Museum is the first museum in the United States dedicated to climate change.

Our programs, exhibitions and online content have consistently evoked the same response: a profound appetite for more. We have hosted 6 major exhibitions and over 200 events, attracting more than 81,000 first-person touchpoints and onramps for members of the public since late 2017.

Our interdisciplinary programs throughout New York City have supported a wide range of socially engaged creative expression, welcoming diverse constituencies into climate arts and education. Throughout the pandemic, the Climate Museum has empowered national and international audiences to engage with and talk about climate. Our advocacy resources advance the environmental movement towards broad civic and personal engagement.

The staff is very active within the coalitional efforts of a growing international movement to integrate climate work into the cultural sector. The Museum has partnered with dozens of organizations from small arts and justice groups to various NYC government departments.

The entire climate sector will be intensifying its work, doubling down as the crisis accelerates. The Climate Museum is on a growth trajectory but needs to grow rapidly to meet the demands of the moment. The Museum’s next major breakthrough and challenge is to operate a year-round exhibition space. With our amazing staff, supporters, volunteers, and donors, we have confidence we can rise to this challenge.