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Robert Janes has worked in and around muse­ums for more than 45 years, includ­ing as a chief cura­tor and muse­um direc­tor, and he is the founder of the Coali­tion of Muse­ums for Cli­mate Jus­tice. Scott Neigh inter­views him about the cli­mate cri­sis, about the role he envi­sions muse­ums play­ing in respond­ing to it, and about the work of the coalition.

Janes rec­og­nizes the com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry of muse­ums – a his­to­ry in which they have over­whelm­ing­ly func­tioned as insti­tu­tions of the sta­tus quo. As he put it, most are deeply entrenched in broad­er his­to­ries of colo­nial­ism, glob­al­iza­tion, and cap­i­tal­ism. And as such, they’re close­ly bound up with many of the forces that have now led the plan­et to the brink of eco­log­i­cal col­lapse, to the sep­a­ra­tion of human and non­hu­man life, to the mar­gin­al­iza­tion and oppres­sion of Indige­nous peo­ples, and the cel­e­bra­tion of nar­ra­tives which are depen­dent on unlim­it­ed eco­nom­ic growth. In oth­er words, muse­ums are main­stream as insti­tu­tions and we’re as respon­si­ble for this as any oth­er institution.”

Beyond that, he sees lots of imme­di­ate bar­ri­ers to muse­ums doing what he thinks they need to do in terms of the cli­mate cri­sis. They are gen­er­al­ly reluc­tant to ask big ques­tions about their mis­sion and val­ues. Muse­um gov­er­nance often reflects the sta­tus quo, and needs to be broad­ened and made more inclu­sive. Muse­ums are often very hier­ar­chi­cal, and uncrit­i­cal­ly repro­duce cor­po­rate forms of orga­ni­za­tion and lead­er­ship. They are gen­er­al­ly reluc­tant to engage in advo­ca­cy around crit­i­cal issues, and lack respon­sive­ness to the inter­ests and con­cerns of ordi­nary peo­ple in their com­mu­ni­ties. And they often present them­selves as neu­tral author­i­ties, above the fray of social and polit­i­cal life, rather than rec­og­niz­ing that they are just as inte­grat­ed, impli­cat­ed, and oblig­at­ed to fig­ure out how to deal with all of that respon­si­bly as any oth­er institution.

Nonethe­less, as some­one who has devot­ed his life to muse­ums, Janes is also a strong believ­er in their capac­i­ty to be a pos­i­tive force in soci­ety. He sees them as key intel­lec­tu­al and civic resources that real­ly have a large role to play in enhanc­ing com­mu­ni­ty well­be­ing” and that are unique­ly qual­i­fied to work on this issue.” At their best, he said, muse­ums have strong his­tor­i­cal con­scious­ness, strong ground­ing in com­mu­ni­ty and place, a com­mit­ment to knowl­edge and pub­lic access to knowl­edge, and sub­stan­tial trust from the gen­er­al public.

When he cir­cu­lat­ed the found­ing call­out for the coali­tion in 2016, around 70 oth­er muse­um work­ers expressed inter­est in being involved, and the net­work has grown to some­thing like 1400 peo­ple in the years since.

The coali­tion aims to mobi­lize and sup­port Cana­di­an muse­um work­ers and muse­ums in address­ing the cli­mate cri­sis. To do this, they aim to build aware­ness of the issue with­in the muse­um com­mu­ni­ty, sup­port muse­ums in strength­en­ing pub­lic under­stand­ing of and response to the cri­sis, get muse­ums active in pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions on the issue, and empow­er muse­ums to lead by their example.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, giv­en what muse­ums do, much of the coalition’s work so far has been edu­ca­tion­al in focus. They have a web­site which they use as a hub for rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion, and an active pres­ence on social media. They reg­u­lar­ly con­duct ses­sions at muse­um-relat­ed con­fer­ences, and Janes does sev­er­al keynote address­es a year on the top­ic. They put out a video series designed to help muse­um work­ers get more com­fort­able with the idea of con­fronting the cli­mate cri­sis and with ini­ti­at­ing con­ver­sa­tion about it with muse­um atten­dees. Mem­bers of the coali­tion have also done lots of writ­ing on the top­ic, both lay and schol­ar­ly. And a cou­ple of years ago they issued a call to Muse­um Stud­ies depart­ments to make changes in the edu­ca­tion of future muse­um work­ers that would take the cli­mate cri­sis into account.

Janes said that, on the whole, he is not aware of any major Cana­di­an muse­um that is real­ly tak­ing the lead when it comes to address­ing the cli­mate cri­sis. There are some good, small-scale efforts – some muse­ums are work­ing on mak­ing their build­ings more ener­gy effi­cient and their preser­va­tion meth­ods less resource inten­sive, and some have put togeth­er exhibits about the issue. But he and the coali­tion are call­ing for much more. They want muse­ums to ask them­selves the big ques­tions they would need to ask and make the inter­nal changes they would need to make to be able to real­ly start play­ing a lead­ing role in active­ly cat­alyz­ing and nur­tur­ing both con­ver­sa­tion and action around the cli­mate crisis.

Muse­ums, he argued, need to cre­ate the con­text and the envi­ron­ment in a sit­u­a­tion where these con­ver­sa­tions can hap­pen in a sort of non­threat­en­ing and con­struc­tive envi­ron­ment. But for the most part, muse­ums haven’t gone that far yet. They’re still talk­ing about doing exhi­bi­tions, rather than deal­ing with peo­ple direct­ly. And I think that’s got to change.”

The coali­tion is busy and active, but Janes remains con­cerned that most of the par­tic­i­pants are ear­ly- and mid-career muse­um pro­fes­sion­als, with very lit­tle reg­u­lar involve­ment from the senior lead­er­ship at Cana­di­an muse­ums. But as the cli­mate cri­sis deep­ens and all of us – includ­ing main­stream insti­tu­tions – are increas­ing­ly forced to con­front it, he remains con­fi­dent that there will be an impor­tant role for museums.