This article is part of our Museums special section about how artists and institutions are adapting to changing times.
Daniel Ksepka, the curator of science at the Bruce Museum here, visited Fairbanks, Alaska, in May 2022 for a research project on fossil birds. But Ksepka, a paleontologist by training, found himself more drawn to the city’s drunken forest — an unusual landscape of tilting trees — instead.
“The trees were leaning in seemingly random directions because the permafrost underneath the soil was thawing from increasingly warmer temperatures,” he said. “They were slumping as a result of not having a firm base. It almost felt like being in a bomb crater.”
Ksepka said that the setting illustrated the dramatic impact of global warming and profoundly affected him. “I couldn’t get the sight out of my head,” he said. “Back home, I started looking into other the ways that climate change is shaping the Alaskan landscape through the de-stabilization of permafrost, changing vegetation patterns and loss of ice.”
That trip and the drunken forest are the impetus for the Bruce’s exhibition “On Thin Ice: Alaska’s Warming Wilderness,” curated by Ksepka. It opened March 6 and will be on view until Oct. 19.
“It made a lot of sense to me to focus specifically on Alaska because it is on the front line in terms of climate change,” Ksepka said, in interviews by phone and video. “Research has documented that air temperatures in Alaska are rising twice as fast as in other parts of the United States.”
According to Ksepka, what happens in Alaska will affect everyone no matter where they live because its “permafrost stores unimaginably large amounts of carbon.”
Taxidermy animals in the exhibit — 17 in all — represent the wildlife that inhabits Alaska’s wilderness and are the star attraction of “On Thin Ice.” “I wanted to show some of the animals threatened by global warming because they rely on these habitats to survive,” Ksepka said. “They also bring in an emotional component to the damage it causes.”
A combination of pieces from the Bruce’s permanent collection and loans from the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium in Saint Johnsbury, Vt., the animals include a brown muskox, a gnarly-looking creature covered in shaggy hair that resembles a bison, and a snow fox, a mammal with short ears that changes its fur color from white to a grayish-brown, depending on the time of year.
The most majestic animal may be Charlie, a polar bear donated to the Bruce by SeaWorld in 2019 after his death. Weighing 948 pounds, Charlie is emblematic of the Arctic, Ksepka said. “When you think of Alaska or any other Arctic environment, polar bears come to mind,” he said.
On a recent weekday afternoon, a small crowd, including school groups, families with young children and couples, studied the parade of wildlife and paused to snap pictures of their favorites. Charlie drew the most “oohs and aahs.”
Roberta Tunick, a retired publisher who lives in Greenwich and is a museum regular, was among the attendees and brought her three young grandchildren along. She said that she wanted to educate them about the environment in an engaging way. “They’re fascinated by the animals and asking me questions about them,” she said. “I’m reading a lot about climate change, and this exhibit brings it to life.”
Models of the landscapes where the animals live are also part of the show.
“One of the things I love to do in exhibitions is look at things from different scales, because it helps you tell a more compelling story that viewers can understand,” Ksepka said. “The landscape models illustrate startling phenomena such as the ‘browning’ of the breathtaking spruce and birch forests due to climate-driven factors like forest fires.”
The Bruce’s exhibition artist, Sean Murtha, created the depictions using materials such as plaster, clay, paint and epoxy resin.
Charlie poses, for instance, next to a swath of sea ice because polar bears hunt for food by standing on it and ambushing seals when they come to the surface to breathe.
In another example, the tundra wolf is displayed next to the notorious Harry Potter Lake, in northern Alaska. “The lake drained in a single day in 2022 because of the melting permafrost, and many animals, including the tundra wolf, relied on it for drinking water,” Ksepka said.
As for the spruce and birch forest model, several animals, such as the black bear, the moose and the snowshoe hare, call it home.
Judging by the line of children impatiently waiting to play with the interactive displays included in “On Thin Ice,” younger audiences aren’t left out of the fun. They can touch animal fur, identify footprints and listen to the sounds of five species: muskox, polar bears, moose, arctic fox and caribou.
Like the Bruce, a growing number of museums are exploring climate change in their exhibitions, said Mallika Talwar, who advises museums on how to engage audiences with climate change and is the deputy director of partnerships for the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, a research center at Yale School of the Environment.
“We’ve found that many Americans want to learn about climate change through visiting museums because museums are a trusted source of information in a low-trust era,” she said. “A growing number, including ones that focus on art and history, are feeling the responsibility to communicate on the topic as the impacts of it worsen.”
Talwar cited a 2020 survey conducted in collaboration between the Yale program and the Wild Center, a natural history museum in Tupper Lake, N.Y., of its museum goers. The results found that an overwhelming majority were concerned about climate change and led to the Wild Center’s ongoing show, “Climate Solutions.”
Other exhibitions on the topic are ever more prevalent. They include “Climate of Hope,” at the Natural History Museum of Utah, which delves into climate change in the state, and “Climate Action Heroes” at the National Children’s Museum in Washington, D.C., which uses a gamelike approach to help children find a “climate action superpower.”
Climate change exhibitions may not be new, but their scope has changed, according to Stephanie Shapiro, a co-founder and managing director of Environment & Culture Partners, a nonprofit that advises and collaborates with the cultural sector on becoming more sustainable. “They’ve been going on for at least a decade, but today, they are much more common and expansive,” she said. Shapiro noted that many, such as “Climate of Hope,” have an eye on the local environment, while larger museums typically put a lens on global warming as a whole.
She added that climate change exhibitions are also more action-oriented than in the past: “They aim to not just educate, but to actually inspire people to take actions to be more sustainable.”
To that point, “On Thin Ice” ends with a digital interactive display at which visitors can pledge an action to shrink their carbon footprint. They can choose to ride a bike instead of drive, for example, eat one vegetarian meal a week to save a significant amount of carbon a year, or buy an electric car.
Kspeka said that the display is meant to illustrate how anyone can play a role in minimizing environmental damage. “Collectively, all our efforts will add up,” he said.
Shivani Vora is a New York City-based travel writer who considers herself a very savvy packer.
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