In a post-truth era, the role of trusted institutions of science is more important than ever. Drawing on recent initiatives organized by The Natural History Museum, a mobile and pop-up museum founded by the activist art collective Not An Alternative, this talk will explore how The Natural History Museum leverages the symbolic and infrastructural power of science museums to transform them into vital infrastructures for environmental progress, champions of science for the common good, and advocates for a just and sustainable future.

Beka Economopoulosis the cofounder and director of The Natural History Museum, a mobile and pop-up museum that highlights the sociopolitical forces that shape nature. The museum is a project of Not An Alternative, a nonprofit collective that works at the intersection of art, activism, and critical theory. Named in the New York Times and ArtNet’s “Best in Art in 2015” roundups, the group’s work has been widely exhibited around the world. Economopoulos has two decades of experience working in the advocacy and sustainability sectors as the director of online organizing at Greenpeace and the director of strategy at Fission Strategy, where clients included the United Nations Environment Programme, Global Climate Change Alliance, EarthJustice, and others.

Dan Kammen is a professor of energy at UC Berkeley, with parallel appointments in the Energy and Resources Group, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Department of Nuclear Engineering. He was appointed the first Environment and Climate Partnership for the Americas (ECPA) Fellow by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2010. Kammen is the founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL), and is a coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He has founded or is on the board of more than ten companies, and has served the State of California and US federal government in expert and advisory capacities.

Participating units at UC Berkeley: Arts + Design, Arts Research Center