The theoretical science of proving industrial causes of global warming dates to 1856 when Eunice Foote, the scientist, inventor and women's rights campaigner, conducted experiments. Geophysical evidence of impacts of industrial warming dates back to 1870. By the 1980s the carbon industries knew their activities were leading to global catastrophe.
Arguably, climate change is least visible in history museums, but there is great potential to change this. Climate is generally not strongly represented in art museums and galleries, although this is likely to change soon.
A nationwide tour of Luke Jerram’s Gaia artwork – a floating three-dimensional installation of planet earth that measures seven metres in diameter and features detailed Nasa imagery of the Earth’s surface – is increasing visitors to all the heritage sites it is being placed in.
Visitors are flocking to see Danish-Icelenadic contemporary artist Olafur Eliasson’s In Real Life exhibition at Tate Modern, which explores the artist’s deep engagement with society and the environment.
Climate is being tackled most directly in science museums, where the focus tends to be on evidence of causes or impacts. London’s Science Museum’s Atmosphere gallery is an example of this. The interpretation of natural history and geology collections is also increasingly about climate change.
Prehistoric collections are useful for sneaking in the topic of climate change under the radar into popular topics. For example, the Natural History Museum’s Dippy on Tour has included interpretation about extinction and climate change alongside the display of London's museum’s iconic diplodocus cast.
Until November next year, the National Trust will explore changing attitudes to its big cat skin collection at Nunnington Hall in Yorkshire. Local artist Layla Khoo’s artist response to the collection features 5,000 small porcelain black-rhinoceros horns, each representing one of the remaining black rhinos left in the world.
Nature collections allow positive engagement, learning from other species how we as humans can adapt to change as well as a growing an appreciation of the intelligence and value of other species.
For example, the Beavers to Weavers exhibition at Leeds City Museum, which finished in January and won the Museums Association’s (MA) Museums Change Lives award for environmental sustainability, explored how animals have evolved different ways of building homes, make tools and have changed their appearance over millions of years in accordance with their habitat.
Leeds Museums has been awarded funding by the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund (administered by the MA), along with the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, to work on the extinction crisis facing insect populations and to engage a wider audience with these issues.
A number of projects led by the zoology department at the University of Cambridge are examining the impacts that climate change has and will have on butterflies. Natural history specimens can contribute to this type of research, with scientists learning how losses from the past can help guide conservation of the future.
“Whether caused by changing climate, human overkill or habitat loss, comparing modern species with those that used to exist in a given location is one of the clearest ways to show that a change has occurred, and for us to appreciate the scale of that change,” says Matt Hayes, a research assistant at Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology.
This combined inside-outside experience can also be found at Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, where an outdoor trail links human culture and nature. This puts its collections in context of prehistoric life – how people obtained food and materials or buried their kin.
Arguably, as the climate emergency grows in urgency and magnitude, museum audiences will need a wider range of ways to engage with the subject – perhaps more learning in real contexts outside of museums, more emotional engagement and more stories about impacts on people.
Research that I did to inform the Polar Worlds gallery at London’s National Maritime Museum showed that most groups are motivated to engage much more when climate change stories focus on humans, their ways of life and their feelings.
Human narratives may offer a route to navigate the tension between the need to convey hard-hitting facts and audience needs for enjoyment, and it offers potential for all kinds of collections.
History museums
There is an opportunity for more climate stories in history museums, both local history and special interest topics. If any collections are more untapped than others, it might be those that can expose how some human groups have colonised land, exploited its peoples, extracted materials, bred animals for livestock, and converted wilderness for profit.
Alternatively, it might be collections that show how humans have lived well enough within the limits of nature, as stewards of biodiverse ecosystems, or adapting to different climates.
Museums interpreting the climate crisis might show how these two narratives intersect, as colonisation has resulted in enslavement, displacement or mass deaths of indigenous people.
In future, we might also see more museums tapping into collections to tell stories of possible futures.
Another approach is to collect local contemporary material.
The Museum of Cardiff (which used to be called the Cardiff Story Museum) has begun collecting climate protest material due to its remit to respond to local stories. Its manager, Victoria Rogers, says that this emerged from consultation about what Cardiff people want the museum to be.
Potentially, every local museum could find stories of environmental activism and resilience in their collections and begin collecting from this point.
Alternatively, existing collections of local history can be what Brendan Carr describes as “eco-interpreted” by local environmental activists. Carr is the project leader of Where’s Reading Heading?, a Happy Museum-funded project, that aims to provoke debate and active citizenship, facing up to the town’s social and environmental challenges.
The Resourceful Reading display, curated by the Reading Sustainability Centre with Reading Museum, showcases some of the many things that people are already doing to make life more sustainable, referring back to the town’s resourceful history of making things like bricks, beer and biscuits.
Given this long history, and the magnitude of the problem, it’s surprising that it is not more mainstream as a museum subject.
Art and design museums
Arguably, climate change is least visible in history museums, but there is great potential to change this. Climate is generally not strongly represented in art museums and galleries, although this is likely to change soon.
A nationwide tour of Luke Jerram’s Gaia artwork – a floating three-dimensional installation of planet earth that measures seven metres in diameter and features detailed Nasa imagery of the Earth’s surface – is increasing visitors to all the heritage sites it is being placed in.
Visitors are flocking to see Danish-Icelenadic contemporary artist Olafur Eliasson’s In Real Life exhibition at Tate Modern, which explores the artist’s deep engagement with society and the environment.
Next month, the Royal Academy of Arts in London will open Eco-Visionaries: Confronting a Planet in a State of Emergency (23 November to 23 February 2020), which brings together the responses of architects, artists and designers to contemporary ecological issues.
Design museums are also starting to raise their game. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has displayed artefacts created for or by the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion, while its recent exhibition Food: Bigger than the plate (18 May – 20 October) used an accessible and universal subject to explore supply chains and sustainability.
Science and natural history museums
Climate is being tackled most directly in science museums, where the focus tends to be on evidence of causes or impacts. London’s Science Museum’s Atmosphere gallery is an example of this. The interpretation of natural history and geology collections is also increasingly about climate change.
Prehistoric collections are useful for sneaking in the topic of climate change under the radar into popular topics. For example, the Natural History Museum’s Dippy on Tour has included interpretation about extinction and climate change alongside the display of London's museum’s iconic diplodocus cast.
Until November next year, the National Trust will explore changing attitudes to its big cat skin collection at Nunnington Hall in Yorkshire. Local artist Layla Khoo’s artist response to the collection features 5,000 small porcelain black-rhinoceros horns, each representing one of the remaining black rhinos left in the world.
Nature collections allow positive engagement, learning from other species how we as humans can adapt to change as well as a growing an appreciation of the intelligence and value of other species.
For example, the Beavers to Weavers exhibition at Leeds City Museum, which finished in January and won the Museums Association’s (MA) Museums Change Lives award for environmental sustainability, explored how animals have evolved different ways of building homes, make tools and have changed their appearance over millions of years in accordance with their habitat.
Leeds Museums has been awarded funding by the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund (administered by the MA), along with the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, to work on the extinction crisis facing insect populations and to engage a wider audience with these issues.
A number of projects led by the zoology department at the University of Cambridge are examining the impacts that climate change has and will have on butterflies. Natural history specimens can contribute to this type of research, with scientists learning how losses from the past can help guide conservation of the future.
“Whether caused by changing climate, human overkill or habitat loss, comparing modern species with those that used to exist in a given location is one of the clearest ways to show that a change has occurred, and for us to appreciate the scale of that change,” says Matt Hayes, a research assistant at Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology.
An outreach project about butterflies will fund trips to the museum and to biodiversity sites for children and young people. This combination of experiences will help show collections in relation to a living ecosystem, where climate and other factors are causing rapid change.
This combined inside-outside experience can also be found at Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, where an outdoor trail links human culture and nature. This puts its collections in context of prehistoric life – how people obtained food and materials or buried their kin.
Arguably, as the climate emergency grows in urgency and magnitude, museum audiences will need a wider range of ways to engage with the subject – perhaps more learning in real contexts outside of museums, more emotional engagement and more stories about impacts on people.
Research that I did to inform the Polar Worlds gallery at London’s National Maritime Museum showed that most groups are motivated to engage much more when climate change stories focus on humans, their ways of life and their feelings.
Human narratives may offer a route to navigate the tension between the need to convey hard-hitting facts and audience needs for enjoyment, and it offers potential for all kinds of collections.
History museums
There is an opportunity for more climate stories in history museums, both local history and special interest topics. If any collections are more untapped than others, it might be those that can expose how some human groups have colonised land, exploited its peoples, extracted materials, bred animals for livestock, and converted wilderness for profit.
Alternatively, it might be collections that show how humans have lived well enough within the limits of nature, as stewards of biodiverse ecosystems, or adapting to different climates.
Museums interpreting the climate crisis might show how these two narratives intersect, as colonisation has resulted in enslavement, displacement or mass deaths of indigenous people.
In future, we might also see more museums tapping into collections to tell stories of possible futures.
Earlier this year, Andrew Simms, a sustainable economist, proposed a Museum of Rapid Transition: “Museums give the lie to the myth of permanence. They are filled with objects and documents that show how change happens, including the possibility of rapid
transitions.”
Contemporary collecting
Another approach is to collect local contemporary material.
The Museum of Cardiff (which used to be called the Cardiff Story Museum) has begun collecting climate protest material due to its remit to respond to local stories. Its manager, Victoria Rogers, says that this emerged from consultation about what Cardiff people want the museum to be.
Potentially, every local museum could find stories of environmental activism and resilience in their collections and begin collecting from this point.
Alternatively, existing collections of local history can be what Brendan Carr describes as “eco-interpreted” by local environmental activists. Carr is the project leader of Where’s Reading Heading?, a Happy Museum-funded project, that aims to provoke debate and active citizenship, facing up to the town’s social and environmental challenges.
The Resourceful Reading display, curated by the Reading Sustainability Centre with Reading Museum, showcases some of the many things that people are already doing to make life more sustainable, referring back to the town’s resourceful history of making things like bricks, beer and biscuits.
Bridget McKenzie is the founder of the Climate Museum UK and one of the organisers of Culture Declares Emergency
