Curating the Future ─ Museums, Communities and Climate Change

It is very difficult to represent planetary change in the gallery space of a single museum, or even several. There are no obvious objects. Numbers and graphs in isolation do not make for an exciting exhibition or appeal to the very mixed audiences that museums attract. Nonetheless the museum sector has a moral obligation to use its collections and exhibitions and other events to explore some of the inequalities wrought by global warming.

Curating Climate Change explores the power of real objects and collections to stir hearts and minds. The book tackles the broad global issue of climate change through specific collections and in local places. It reflects the Pacific community at its core, but also embraces many other communities who will experience the adverse effects of climate change sooner or later. It is part of a wider endeavour where material collections, with cultural and humanities traditions, can work with sciences and together build new networks and collaboration for the environmental humanities, not just in New York and Samoa, but more broadly. The book is rich with practical museum experience and detail, as well as critical, analytical and philosophical about where a museum can intervene to speak to this great conundrum of our times.

This book is essential reading for all those working in museums and grappling with how to talk about climate change. It also has academic applications in courses of museology and museum studies, cultural studies, heritage studies, digital humanities, design, anthropology, and environmental humanities.

Dr Jennifer Newell is the curator of Pacific Ethnography at the American Museum of Natural History since 2012. Previously she was?a curator in the British Museum’s Oceania section for seven years (2001-2008). She teaches Museum Anthropology at Columbia University, USA,?and administer a web-resource called the Museums and Climate Change Network.

Libby Robin is Professor of Environmental history, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, and Senior Research Fellow, National Museum of Australia.She joined the international board of the Rachel Carson Center, Munich, a joint initiative in environment and society of Munich University (LMU) and the Deutsches Museum in 2012.

Dr Kirsten Wehner is Head Curator of the People and the Environment program at the National Museum of Australia, Australia. She is a foundation member of the Mellon Australia-Pacific Observatory in Environmental Humanities and a professional associate of the Donald Horne Institute Centre for Research in Creative and Cultural Practice at the University of Canberra, Australia.

?