Climate of change

ABSTRACT

Climate change has become a key narrative of our time and prompts us to look forward, to imagine tomorrow. Museums, with their strong community connections and their focus on stories of place and people, are influential settings for that narrative to play out. They gather a rich community of thinkers, creative practitioners and changemakers and bring Indigenous and other non-Western forms of knowledge to the center of a climate conversation. For museums and their collections to be visible and viable, they are best when they are connected to and relevant to audiences and participants. They have the capacity to addressing relevant civic issues and imagine possible futures. This means adapting our practice, our professional development and our human resource management. This paper highlights the range of changes, from decolonizing approaches to strengthening relevance that will position museums to better respond to the change that confronts the communities we serve.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum
• climate change
• Arctic
• future
• decolonization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Julie Decker, PhD, is the Director/CEO of the Anchorage Museum in Alaska, which is a leading center for scholarship, engagement, and investigation of Alaska and the North. Decker's career has been focused on the people and environment of Northern places and building projects and initiatives that are in service to local and global communities. Before becoming Director/CEO, Decker served as the Museum's Chief Curator. She has a doctorate in art history, a master's degree in arts administration, and bachelor degrees in visual design and journalism. She has curated and designed numerous exhibitions, taught classes, and authored and edited numerous publications on subjects ranging from contemporary art and architecture of the North, to many aspects of the Arctic environment and histories.