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Science serves the common good. It protects the health of our communities, the safety of our families, the education of our children, the foundation of our economy and jobs, and the future we all want to live in and preserve for coming generations. Faced with the muzzling of scientists and government agencies, the immigration ban, the deletion of scientific data, and the de-funding of public science under the Trump Administration, the NHM co-organized a series of rallies that led to the International March or Science, which drew millions on all 7 continents.

This video profiles a rally held in Boston during the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science convention, where 3,000 scientists and supporters stood behind the message: Science must serve the interests of all people, not just those in power.

More info here: https://thenaturalhistorymuseum.org/thousands-of-scientists-rally-outside-of-aaas-conference/

As part of The Natural History Museum’s exhibition Mining the HMNS, on display at Project Row Houses in 2016, the NHM developed a series of pepper’s ghost hologram dioramas, featuring a docent tour of the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences (HMNS) and a toxic tour with communities living along the fenceline of Houston’s fossil fuel infrastructure.

This mini-diorama depicts a hologram of NHM’s Beka Economopoulos giving a tour of the HMNS.

More information: https://thenaturalhistorymuseum.org/events/mining-the-hmns/

As part of The Natural History Museum’s exhibition Mining the HMNS, on display at Project Row Houses in 2016, the NHM developed a series of pepper’s ghost hologram dioramas, featuring a docent tour of the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences (HMNS) and a toxic tour with communities living along the fenceline of Houston’s fossil fuel infrastructure.

This mini-diorama depicts a hologram of two members of the local environmental justice group TEJAS giving one of their “toxic tours” of East Houston’s Manchester neighborhood. The installation was part of The Natural History Museum’s exhibition “Mining the HMNS”, on display at Project Row Houses in 2016.

More information: https://thenaturalhistorymuseum.org/events/mining-the-hmns/

Is the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences a museum, or a PR front for the fossil fuel industry? This was the central question of “Mining the HMNS”, a 2016 exhibition by The Natural History Museum that interrogates the symbiotic relationship between the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences and its corporate sponsors.

In this video, NHM’s Beka Economopoulos offers a guided tour of this exhibition, which excavated key narratives and displays in the Houston museum, and highlighted the voices and stories that are excluded–those of the low-income predominantly Latino and African-American fence-line communities along the Houston Ship Channel.

More information: https://thenaturalhistorymuseum.org/events/mining-the-hmns/

In the spring of 2015, shortly after launching our campaign urging museums to cut all ties to the fossil fuel industry, The Natural History Museum occupied the largest exhibitor space at the American Alliance of Museums annual convention in Atlanta. The AAM convention is the world’s largest gathering of museum professionals, with 7000 museum staff from 60 countries in attendance.

The Natural History Museum highlights the socio-political forces that shape nature, yet are excluded from traditional natural history museums. Our primary subject of study is the “fossil fuel ecosystem”, characterized by a complex set of interrelated feedback loops encompassing land, energy, politics, society, economics and culture.

At the AAM convention we turned our anthropological gaze on traditional science museums as ideological habitats within this ecosystem. We re-created installations from New York’s American Museum of Natural History, including previously excluded socio-political context about the museum’s board member and biggest sponsor, David H. Koch.