Sustainable Museum Missions

Sustainable Museum Missions: Environmental Awareness at Cultural Institutions In collaboration with the Sea Level Solution Center, the CLEO Institute, Vizcaya Museum  & Gardens, and other existing partner organizations, we will  convene a series of meetings for representatives from South Florida museums and cultural organizations to discuss how they might integrate environmental stewardship into their existing missions.  This initiative builds on Vizcaya’s successful efforts to draft an  institutional climate change statement, which is the basis for their  ongoing commitment to address climate change at every level of their organization. We will ask participants to engage  two key topics: 1) How is your institution already seeing the effects  of climate change and sea level rise? How well do your existing  conservation and preservation plans and strategies accommodate those effects? 2) How can your institution integrate  environmental stewardship into your existing missions  related to public programming, exhibition, education, conservation, and  curation? With research support from staff at the Sea Level Solutions Center, environmental humanities faculty will compile the results of  those conversations as a report, which will include a case study and  recommendations about best practices for cultural institutions and museums  to address climate change and sea level rise. We will use a collaborative review process to get input and feedback  from participants and partners, and have the resulting report designed  and printed as a booklet to distribute across the region.