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By: Emlyn Koster

With climate change and extreme weather frequently in the news and in light of the upcoming UN COP26 Conference, Emlyn taps his geological insights to point out what is often missing from society’s knowledge and which therefore warrants the museum sector’s urgent attention.

Prehistoric Climate Changes

Growing up in the UK where chatting about variable weather is a pastime, I was fascinated to learn about the alternating climates of glacial advance and interglacial retreat stages that occurred during an Ice Age from about 2.5 million years ago to about 12,000 years ago. Whether the UK’s temperate climate is part of an ongoing interglacial stage or in the aftermath of the Ice Age is, as I also learned, unknowable. It is however clear that over the tens, hundreds and thousands of millions of years in Earth history, not only has climate continuously changed, including with other ice ages, but so have the positions of, and ecosystems on, each continent. Homo sapiens are but a blink in the geological eye!     

‘The Great Acceleration’ and the ‘Anthropocene’

When I was born in 1950 the human population of 2.5 billion was a third of today’s 7.9 billion and the astronomer Fred Hoyle of Big Bang fame had just anticipated that the first photography of the Earth from space would transform perspectives about human history. How right he would turn out to be!

In 1953 the leading climatologist Helmut Landsberg noted in Scientific American: “The big question on Earth is the influence of human activity on the atmosphere. There is some evidence that industrial life has increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the air…”. It would take almost half a century to amass and publicize evidence for human-caused climate change. However, it was only within two decades of Hoyle’s prediction that NASA’s Apollo missions enabled the first color photos of the Earth from space: these revealed the beauty—but also the potential fragility—of our wafer-thin atmosphere. In 2006, the acclaimed film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ by the former US vice president Al Gore warned of dire consequences from global warming. In 2017, National Geographic issued a supplement with these summary points: “The world is warming… It’s because of us… We’re sure… Ice is melting fast… Weather is getting intense… Wildlife is already hurting… We can do something about it”.

With preliminary versions in 2004 and 2010, in 2015 the Future Earth network affirmed that ‘The Great Acceleration’ of 12 Earth System trends and 12 socio-economic trends began in the mid-20^th century: “Human activity, principally the global economic system, is now the prime driver of change in the Earth System—the sum of our planet’s interacting physical, chemical, biological and human processes”. In turn, The Great Acceleration paved the way for the ‘Anthropocene’ which was proposed in 2002 by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen as a guide to society. The International Science Council recently stated: “For the first time in a relationship spanning 300,000 years, instead of the planet shaping humans, humans are shaping the planet”. I describe the Anthropocene as a much-needed recognition that humanity, the world’s dominant species, has extensively detached itself in a geological nanosecond from the natural state of the Earth System (see Emlyn Koster, 2020. Anthropocene: transdisciplinary shorthand for human disruption of the Earth System. Geoscience Canada, 47:1-2, 59-64).

Climate Change and Extreme Weather

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015, known as the Paris Agreement, catapulted anthropogenic warming of the atmosphere into a global anxiety. The tipping point to a perilous future, widely stated as a maximum further increase of just 1.5°C (2.7°F) by 2030, frames many profound challenges. Here are three examples. The first surrounds society grasping the massive difference between a seemingly tiny increase in average global temperature over many decades versus local daily and seasonal variations commonly 5-10 times this amount. The second is that a focus on temperature obscures the consequences of sea-level rise in planning for the future of coastal cities (see here, here, and here for examples). The third concerns communities, often poor ones, on deltas and islands where occupation is already or soon will be unfeasible, thereby creating a situation of climate refugees.

What began as the greenhouse effect, the labels for climate change have evolved―global warming, climate crisis, climate emergency, and climate justice. In my geological view, each of these has interpretative limitations. Change?: which direction and how fast? Warming?: what about wetter, stormier and drier trends? Crisis?: should the concern be upgraded to existential, meaning anxiety over the future of human existence? Emergency?: do unforeseen circumstances warrant an immediate response? Justice?: does a moral violation needs a new public policy focus? Today’s talk about climate change uses success-sounding adjectives such as addressing, combatting, fighting and overcoming. But resilience and sustainability are only buzzwords if the reality of many irreversible adverse trends is not confronted. At a recent Youth4Climate summit in Italy, Sweden’s Greta Thunberg again described the efforts of world leaders as too little and too late.

Atmospheric warming is an imperceptibly slow whole-planet process whereas record-breaking weather involves sudden local phenomena. The following examples remind us that headline-making events often lack ultimately more vital wide-angle contexts:

• Superstorm Sandy in October 2012, mostly of sub-hurricane strength, caused an overnight 14-foot surge in New York Harbor and left $70 billion of damage. As restoration proceeded, an opportunity was missed to make known that irreversible sea-level rise by 2100 AD is estimated to be as much as 5 feet which will radically alter shorelines and where people can live and work.
• NOAA rated the snowfall and power cut in Dallas last February as the nation’s costliest winter storm. Dalhart, 440 miles NW of Dallas, received the most snow with 8 inches. It would have been pertinent for the public to also know that Houston had 20 inches on Valentine’s Day in 1895 which was the Texas record until a 26-inch fall near Dallas on December 20-21, 1929.
• Last summer’s drought-caused, record-breaking wildfires in California coincided with New York City’s near-normal monthly temperature averages but these were jolted by two record-breaking one-day (and also record-breaking one-hour) rainfalls: 4.45 inches (1.94 inches) from Tropical storm Henri on August 22 and 8.8 inches (3.1 inches) from Hurricane Ida on September 1.  

The Earth System

While dangerous weather grabs public attention, climate change in relation to other major changes in the Earth System is often missing from news coverage. For example, the Earth’s biosphere also functions as a virosphere in which pandemic diseases are exacerbated by climatic change. The American Journal of Managed Care recently stated: “All the negative health outcomes associated with increased heat, pollution exposure, and natural disasters call into question whether existing infrastructure—and particularly health care systems—will be equipped to handle the rising demand for care”. Other consequences of Earth System disruptions include a stunning loss of natural biodiversity and a prediction that about half of the world’s people will likely suffer from water insecurity by 2050.

I wish that, starting in the late 20^th century, formal education had included the Earth System as a core subject to equip society to ecologically grasp the interconnectedness and susceptibility of the planet’s controlling forces.

Museum Sector Response

My first career stage as a geologist, and starting a decade ago also as an advocate for the Anthropocene, led to past-present-future links being a frame of reference in my second career stage as a museologist. At the Ontario Science Centre where I was preceded as its director by the renowned J. Tuzo Wilson of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics fame, this institution partnered with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research in 1996 to convene ‘The Earth System: Geology Lessons for Our Future’ as a pioneering international conference in the public eye.

Museum literature on climate change has been relatively light. In 2015, Fiona Cameron and Brett Neilson co-edited ‘Climate Change and Museum Futures’ and in 2017, Jennifer Newell, Libby Robin and Kirsten Wehner co-edited ‘Curating the Future: Museums, Communities and Climate Change’: Australia deserves a shoutout for these initiatives. In the US, the Journal of Museum Education in March 2020 focused on ‘The Climate is Changing: Why Aren’t Museums?’ and AAM’s Exhibition journal in spring 2021 asked ‘Can Exhibitions Save the Planet?: Tackling Climate Change and Environmental Threats’. A recent issue of Museum & Society, published by the University of Leicester, included a review on Anthropocene-focused exhibitions. Noting that all but nine of the 41 it discovered were/are in art museums, the Danish authors remarked: “… most exhibitions appear to deliberately exclude significant controversies about the Anthropocene and the predicament of the world from their arenas for reflection”. A new international development is The Anthropocene Project based in Toronto.

Last spring, I contributed to the ‘Crisis and Resilience’ issue of AAM’s Exhibition journal with an article advocating for a paradigm shift to illuminate humanity’s pervasive impacts on the Earth System. In this month’s thematic issue of the Informal Learning Review about what the museum sector has learned from the pandemic, my focus is on the continued sidelining of external relevance. In particular, I am concerned that the far-reaching challenges of climate change are understated due to a scarcity of wide-lens and long-view perspectives. I therefore fervently hope that the museum sector responds to the inevitable clarion calls when the UN COP26 Climate Change Conference convenes from October 31 to November 12, 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland.

About the Author

Emlyn Koster, PhD integrates the vantage points of geology, humanism and museology for a holistic past-present-future, nature-and-culture lens. During CEO appointments at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, Ontario Science Centre, Liberty Science Center with The New York Times and Wall Street Journal profiling his philosophy, and the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, he was 50^th anniversary board chair of the Geological Association of Canada, a member of the Committee for the Public Understanding of Science for the AAAS, and the inaugural chair of ICOM’s Anthropocene Working Group. His presentation to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change contributed to the addition of museums as a public education agency in Article 12 of the Paris Agreement and he is involved in UNESCO’s new Language of the Anthropocene project. He welcomes comments and inquiries at koster.emlyn@gmail.com. You can read his previous blog posts for RK&A here.

The post Geological Context of Climate Change: Implications for Public Understanding and Museum Relevance appeared first on RK&A.

[…] the first post of this series, I described how the unique combination of nearly infinite access to information […]

By: Sadiya Akasha

In the first post of this series, I described how the unique combination of nearly infinite access to information (and a global reach) coupled with a near-constant evaluation of the motives behind consumable content has caused Gen Z to become both global and critical thinkers in a way quite beyond the norm for previous generations. In the second post, I suggested that Gen Z is not only the most racially diverse and multiethnic generation to date but that their identity-building goes beyond clear demarcations of race and ethnicity. Exploration and constant self-examination is a foundational trait to Gen Z and is foundational to their values of freedom, equality, and healthcare for all. In this final post, I posit that Gen Z is values-driven and that cultural institutions will have to put their values at the forefront in order to connect with and engage directly with this generation.

Engagement Through Values

Market research makes it clear that Gen Z consistently chooses to interact with brands whose values align with their own. This values-driven approach is not limited to shopping choices but is expressed by members of Gen Z in their proactive approach to civic engagement as well. Everything we’ve learned about Gen Z indicates that values are central to their engagement. 

In this call to action to fellow Gen Z’ers, the author, Cameron Katz, describes her values in action, along with the kind of reception she often receives:

“When I and other members of my generation criticize July 4th, we’re met with disbelief and offense. It’s the ultimate taboo. “Can’t you just have fun?” “Why do you have to make everything political?” However, my criticism isn’t coming from a place of hatred. On the contrary, I’m interested in how we can honor our country by better upholding the promises made during this foundational moment in its history. Liberty, equality, the pursuit of happiness— these ideals were written into the Declaration of Independence in 1776, but they aren’t yet realized for everyone, even in 2021. 

I, along with many other Gen Z’ers, want to know why.”

The Weisman Art Museum’s student group, WAM Collective, along with the Student Advisory Council at the Tang Museum, and the Agents for Creative Action (ACA) of the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), together convened a virtual roundtable exploring the museum of the future. The student groups described the role of museums “historically, as gatekeepers of knowledge and history.” In this roundtable, the students gave clear guidelines for what the ‘Museum of the Future’ should be, not just look like, for it to engage members of their generation.

At the most foundational level, the Gen Z student groups demanded that cultural institutions should flatten their organizational hierarchies, disengage from the ‘cult of the curator’, refocus their programs to center humans rather than objects, and increase access to be more broadly and holistically inclusive. This missive from the student groups’ to museums is to simply put their values and principles into action. This is a direct message from Gen Z to cultural institutions and they provide ample examples and ideas for immediate action.

Collaborative Cultural Institutions

Made By Us, is a consortium of 100+ history and civics organizations that are collaborating with young adults to reframe historical events in current, politically-aware ways and support civic participation. They’re modeling a whole new approach of collaborative engagement where institutions have an opportunity to engage directly with members of Gen Z. Made by Us recently kicked off an inaugural tradition called ‘Civic Season’ taking place between Juneteenth and the Fourth of July. The season focused on celebration as well as criticism, on learning as well as the sharing of diverse voices. Events and activities were held across the country from regional institutions to digital platforms, creating broad access and a multitude of ways to engage. This new tradition is an amazing example of decentralized, democratized, human-centered, highly accessible, and values-driven programming that seeks to support and partner with Gen Z.

There are cultural institutions working hard to undertake radical shifts on their own as well. After leading community-based workshops, the Walters Art Museum has decided to publish a critical history of their founder, Henry Walters in a full-fledged acknowledgment of his past. This impactful action exemplifies the Walters Art Museum’s values and overarching commitments to its community.

In the academic world, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, L. Rafael Reif, recently published a letter acknowledging the role that a former MIT president, Francis Amasa Walker, had played in advancing the American reservation system and the complex legacy that this has left behind. To face this history head-on, MIT launched a class for undergraduate students to perform research in this area and based on the students’ findings is continuing the exploration in another new class “The Indigenous History of MIT”. These classes demonstrate how members of Gen Z  are driving forward change in every institution that they are deeply engaged in.

University and college museums may be the first to feel the impact of Gen Z’s strongly held values, but the resulting changes will set the standard across the museum world as a whole.

Towards the Museum of the Future

This post abounds with examples of institutions that are doing transformative work and that are likely very happy to share what they’re learning on their journey.  Although there is no 1-2-3 formula to follow, as a starting point, take some time to watch the “Student Roundtable: The Future of Museums” to better understand the values that Gen Z wants cultural institutions to exhibit.

For cultural institutions that are keen to engage with members of Gen Z, this is a pivotal moment to listen deeply and act collaboratively. This can start with a simple push to redefine audience segmentation by asking Gen Z how they would identify themselves, and continue by partnering with them to focus on ideas that they say they are interested in exploring. This really does need to be a grassroots effort to engage with Gen Z from ideation to research, then onwards to the development of relevant programs and initiatives, all the way through to implementation. To undertake this journey you have to accept that you will need to question the basis of your institution’s foundation, your mission, your values, and goals.  This questioning, when done in collaboration with Gen Z, will drive forward new avenues of growth and transformation across your organization that propel you to become the museum of the future.

About the Author

Sadiya Akasha is the co-founder and Director of Product Development at Sitara Systems, a design and technology laboratory that creates interactive experiences with emerging technologies. Sadiya partners with cultural institutions to help them conceptualize and deliver technology initiatives by leveraging her background in human-centered design, agile thinking, and audience research. In her free time Sadiya enjoys exploring the rugged yet delicate landscapes of the great Southwest. 

The post Gen Z are Values-driven: What does this mean for Cultural Institutions? appeared first on RK&A.

Thanks very much Doug for adding these perspectives. Your call-to-action for museums “to become creative and catalytic forces in how the living culture adapts to our dramatically and constantly transforming world” hits the proverbial nail on the head. I look back on Liberty Science Center’s course of action in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and its related decision to premiere ‘1,000 Years of Islamic Science Rediscovered’ from the United Arab Emirates upon reopening from its 2005-07 expansion-and-renewal project — the seeds for which were sown in the fall of 2001 — as enduring examples. I hope you will continue to voice your crucial view that ‘sustainability’ thinking by museums needs to start locally and extend globally.. Indeed in this increasingly troubled world, the ‘relevance’ of museums to the greater good surely hinges on this ecologically-minded orientation.

Thank you for this reflection, which opens up an enormous window of opportunity for cultural organizations to rethink their relationships to their local living culture.

Trauma radiated widely as a result of the events of 9/11. The Liberty Science Center’s response shines a clear light on the potential of cultural organizations to step outside their comfort zones (and traditional missions) to embrace and foster meaningful relationships with community, specifically linked to the forces that are shaping the culture.

From your short piece it is clear LSC focused on meeting the needs of a constituency that was perhaps most affected by the attack – family and friends of those directly involved in the World Trade Center buildings. Through mobilizing collaborations with psychologists and community health organizations while engaging this population, the Center undoubtedly stretched beyond its traditional comfort zone. Further, I have to imagine that it was both humbling and creative for staff to adapt exhibits and programs, in order that they reflected on the shocks from the attacks that were rippling across the entire population.

The cultural sector generally remains primarily focused on working within the leisure-time, and tourism niches of the economy. Perhaps the field would benefit from many wide-ranging conversations about how to expand and transform how art, science, heritage, creativity, cohesion and more, become creative and catalytic forces in how the living culture adapts to our dramatically and constantly transforming world.