A museum to raise public awareness of climate change
Parts of the art world are still trying to reduce their impact on the environment, and the Climate Museum is using the power of art to teach people and get them to change. The museum opened its first pop-up space in Manhattan last month. It was an action incubator with a David Opdyke mural. The pop-up will be open until December 22. Its goal is to get people interested in the museum's mission and raise money for a permanent home. Miranda Massie, who used to be a lawyer for civil rights, started the museum in 2015. Its first public programs and exhibits opened in 2017. Since then, the museum has put on installations and exhibitions in and around New York, including pop-ups on Governors Island in 2018 and 2019.
Only one in three Americans support bold climate policy
Massie made the museum at a time when people were losing faith in many traditional institutions. He wanted to use support for cultural spaces to help people learn and take action on climate change. "Museums are trusted and popular, and the arts reach people where they need to be reached the most: emotionally and socially. Climate change needs to be talked about, expressed, and worked on right away. "Without this change in culture, we won't get the new policies we need to protect our health and all the things we love," she says. As part of this change in culture, people will try to disprove the idea that Americans don't care about climate policy. "Researchers recently found a mistaken belief that only one in three Americans support bold climate policy, but the real number is actually two in three," says Massie. Text on the walls of the pop-up at 120 Wooster Street talks about where the idea that people don't care about climate change comes from and how to get people to act. The museum is holding panels and workshops for the public that talk about, among other things, climate justice, art, science, migration, and activism.
Toward a dynamic center for engagement, dialogue, and action
Someday, all this (2021), a mural by Opdyke, makes people think about what will happen if nothing is done. It is made up of 400 old postcards of American landscapes that the artist has decorated with signs of the end of the world, such as caterpillars the size of skyscrapers and tentacles and vines squeezing buildings. There are also signs of related humanitarian crises, like signs that say "no climate refugees" and "send them back," references to people fleeing to Mars, and several cruise ships named "Ark." When you look at the postcards from a distance, they look like pixels in a picture of a landscape that is breaking up. The museum wants to set up a permanent space, and this show is a big step toward that goal. Massie says that the Soho pop-up has been well-liked so far. "Visitors have taken hundreds of actions to break the silence and promised to take hundreds more," she says. "People are leaving ready to spread the word that there is a supermajority in the US for bold climate action." As for a potential permanent space, Massie envisions a vibrant center for engagement, dialogue and action. Even after it moves to its new home, the museum will continue to help fund climate-related programs at other institutions as well as pop-ups and public installations.
Selena Mattei