The Natural History Museum collaborates with frontline communities, artists, scientists, and scholars to create new narratives about our shared history and future, with the goal of educating the public, measurably influencing public opinion, and inspiring collective action. Through award-winning exhibitions and films, public events, research and publishing, and campaigns we support community-led land and water defense and spur scientists, heritage professionals, and museums to advance climate and environmental justice.
NHM is a museum for the movement. We have a mission to build a community of practice around a natural history for the future. This future is informed by a non-dominating and non-exploitative relation to life, labor, and land, and guided by an obligation to generations past, present and future.
A traveling museum without walls, our programs take place online, in museums and cultural centers, in communities and at conferences, and in our outdoor exhibition and IMAX-style film projection venue, under the stars.
The museum is a project of Not An Alternative, an art collective and 501c3 nonprofit. Since 2004, we have specialized in working with communities on cultural organizing, narrative-changing, and alliance-building strategies. Our work has helped to generate worldwide media coverage for the campaigns and community-led struggles we contribute to, and our projects have been featured in the Guggenheim, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, PS1/MOMA, Queens Museum, Tate Modern, Museo del Arte Moderno, and beyond.