The first work of art visitors will see as they enter the Climate Museum’s latest exhibit is a map of the world in black, white, and gray.
At first glance, the map illustrates which countries are responsible for the highest emissions, with the biggest emitters appearing black and the smallest emitters in white. But as the viewer shifts their perspective to the right, the map reveals itself as a lenticular print—a 3D artwork where the viewpoint changes the image entirely. From the right side, the map displays the vulnerability of each country to the effects of climate change, and the nations that were once in black are now in white, and vice versa.
The impact of the map is only visible when the viewer moves. In other words, visitors cannot remain stationary—they have to actively choose to see the inequities the map presents.
The map highlights a key strategy employed by the Climate Museum, which installed the piece at The Nest Climate Campus at New York City’s 2024 Climate Week: engaging viewers through interactive art, in hopes that they will subsequently take action.
“We combine art with educational opportunities and calls to action in such a way that visitors leave the show recognizing their own agency and prepared to take action in a new way,” museum founder and director Miranda Massie tells TIME. “This very simple formula is incredibly effective at helping people understand themselves as agents of change.”
Massie explains that the creation of the museum—the first in the United States dedicated to climate—was partly inspired by recognizing the “superpowers” of museums as cultural institutions, possessing both high levels of and , assets that are particularly valuable in tackling an issue rife with misinformation and partisan divides, while trust in public institutions overall .
To that end, the Climate Museum has a specific target audience in mind for the lenticular map and other pieces of art, including a towering 70-foot-mural narrating the story of past industrialization and an envisioned positive future titled by artist R. Gregory Christie. Massie states that the team typically directs their exhibitions to members of the public who call the “alarmed”—those most concerned about climate who are inactive but willing to be engaged.
“We need worried people to become more actively involved and to acknowledge their own agency,” Massie says. “A museum is a means of achieving this goal, one that can advance this purpose and therefore support progress on climate policy.”
According to Anais Reyes, senior exhibitions associate at the museum, this is where art plays a pivotal role. It serves as an “entry point” for people to react to what they see and feel, to attempt to open themselves up to understanding that they are not alone in their anxieties about the climate crisis.
A key example of an installation that encourages viewers to participate in the artwork is the sticker wall. There, at the end of scheduled programming or when people happen to wander over, participants are invited to place a sticker on a blank wall, stating what they are willing to commit to doing to address climate change. “I will talk about climate justice,” one says. “I will tell people about the climate supermajority,” another reads, referencing that while 66%-80% of Americans support policies that mitigate the climate crisis, Americans estimate that number to be only 37–43%.
At Climate Week, what was once an empty wall is quickly covered in commitments.
“The sticker wall began as a way to represent the collective, to portray how you might feel alone in this, how you might feel [an] existential threat, but in reality, there are so many people who feel the same way as you, and we’re all interconnected, and we’re all striving to make things better,” Reyes says.
Yet as the museum strives to inspire viewers to enact change, it’s engaged in its own battle to secure funding for a permanent home. The museum, which held its first exhibit in 2018, still lacks a building or long-term space for its exhibitions. Its booth, programming, and art at the Nest’s Climate Campus for Climate Week, which runs from Sept. 22 until Sept. 29 at the Javits Convention Center in Hudson Yards, Manhattan, shares a space with multiple other organizations including General Motors. “We’ve faced an incredibly challenging time coming into existence and staying in existence, and we have not been able to grow in a way that matches public interest in our work, and that is profoundly wasteful,” Massie says. In 2022, less than two percent of philanthropic funding worldwide went to climate crisis mitigation, according to a study done by
Despite reasons for despair in both the climate crisis and museum fundraising, the Climate Museum also prioritizes hope. During the museum’s Climate Week programming on Sept. 24, Nicholas Badullovich, a researcher from George Mason University, presented findings from a study on the museum’s previous exhibit, “The End of Fossil Fuel,” that determined people left feeling hopeful, even though the exhibit presented tragedies related to the climate crisis, the fossil fuel industry, and climate injustice.
“We’re not here to dwell in doom and gloom,” Reyes says. “We’re here to envision that better future, to acknowledge that there are many things that can be done, and we all just need a little bit of guidance to channel that energy into something productive, into something hopeful and actionable.”
