About Us
Mission
The mission of the Climate Action Museum is to activate a tipping point on climate mitigation in the Chicago region through education, stimulating critical thought, and inspiring and facilitating action.
Vision
A visit to the Climate Action Museum will become a memorable and life-altering “climate awareness awakening” for a broad segment of Chicagoans. The content of the museum will be dynamic, educational, and inspire both short- and long-term actions that mitigate our Climate Emergency.
Our Extraordinary Journey
The Climate Action Museum grew out of a popular exhibit called The Energy Revolution that ran from April 2022 through January 2023 at the Chicago Architectural Center (CAC). The core of the exhibit, titled “Chicago Architecture Through a Climate Lens,” featured full-scale replica walls of three architecturally distinguished Chicago buildings representing the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. 34,000 people toured the exhibit over its nine-month run.
Three months before its closing, CAC staff asked exhibit curator Doug Farr “whether he had plans for the exhibit, or should they just landfill it?”
Calls went out to the real estate community looking for a place to store the three walls to save them from the landfill. The owner of a warehouse building in Indiana agreed to store the walls, but asked how soon he could landfill them because “storage was not a plan.” It soon became clear that storage was neither compelling nor sustainable and that starting a Museum of Climate might hold more promise.
By late 2022, COVID had hollowed out a lot of retail spaces in Chicago’s downtown Loop neighborhoods. The leadership of the Chicago Building Owners and Managers Association identified six vacant spaces willing to host a “one-year pop-up Climate Museum”. By far the best space offered was a vacant restaurant in a sunny, river-edge lobby in 300 S. Riverside Plaza. In February 2023, building ownership generously offered the Museum one year of free rent. CAM opened just four months later.
