The incentives for US art museums to green their operations are expanding, with an announcement today from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation that it is awarding $5.1m to 79 institutions across the US in its first round of climate grants.

The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art put an international call out for “The Anthropocene Epiphany: Art and Climate Change” exhibit. The show is centered on Anthropocene, a time period in which humans have a significant impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems. Artists responded with work across all mediums — painting, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture, video, installations and fashion pieces.

“When you first meet Jill, you don’t see all of her,” says Lynne Pelto, the stepmother of climate change artist Jill Pelto. “You really need to spend some time with her to get to know her. She’s very deep and there’s so much to her that’s valuable. It takes time to get to know someone like that.”

There’s a lot to consider when curating an art exhibit that showcases more than 50 artists working across diverse media including drawings, paintings, videos, sculptures, and soundscapes. Now imagine doing it on a ship bound for Antarctica, a vessel that may face 35-foot swells in notoriously unforgiving polar waters. (Pro tip: Work closely with the ship engineers, and forget about showing any freestanding pieces.)

As the director of an interactive art and nature space, I’ve included climate change as a topic in many shows and programs over the years. But until recently, I had convinced myself that focusing an entire exhibition on climate change would be a mistake. I thought, “It’s too big, too depressing, and no one will want to come see it.” Yet here I am, curating an exhibition about our climate’s future, co-curating two other climate-related shows, and co-leading Peabody Essex Museum’s new Climate + Environment Initiative.

There are many options available for museums to address climate action and become more sustainable, but recent work at two institutions has highlighted the value in one particular method: creating “microclimates” which confine environmental conditions directly to display cases.

In an echo-y Zoom call with four full pages of participants, you can watch dozens of bots read articles about climate change, and click every ad along the way while they’re at it, to support the publication. Synthetic Messenger, a project from artists Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne, is relying on these bots to make climate change news more visible.

Floridians have always responded to climate change in interesting ways, from denying it’s happening to suggesting that the Navy drop ice into the Gulf of Mexico to stop Hurricane Dorian. And let’s not forget that hilarious social media joke telling folks to aim their firearms at Hurricane Irma and shoot it off course. It’s all made for very interesting, but mostly unproductive, conversation. But if anyone should be taking climate change seriously and having a real conversation about it, it’s Floridians.

A digital artist known as Beeple sold a piece of entirely digital art through Christie’s for over $69 million in March, flipping the art world upside down. But the digital registry where that piece of art, called an NFT, is stored is responsible for the annual emission of more carbon into the atmosphere than most small countries.