THE CAMPAIGN

Beyond Lies was a public art collaboration with celebrated illustrator Mona Chalabi. This initiative featured a series of posters by Chalabi distilling extensive work by investigative journalists and academic researchers on the fossil fuel industry’s long-standing disinformation crusade. The campaign offered pathways to further learning and inspires community action to break the industry’s grip on climate policy.

The campaign launched on July 31, 2021 on Governors Island and extended to various sites in all five boroughs of New York City and beyond. Members of the public were invited to participate in the project in numerous ways—including hanging the posters in their communities—to advance public understanding, civic engagement, and a cultural shift toward collective action on climate.

A majority of Americans—57% as of a recent study—now believe that the fossil fuel industry should be held accountable for the damages caused by global warming. But fossil fuel disinformation is still at work in fossil fuel-enabling policies. We can join together to demand change. Nothing short of our collective future is at stake.

THE ARTIST

Mona Chalabi is a data journalist. She writes for print as well as radio and TV. Her journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, New York Magazine, The Guardian and many more locations, including Netflix, BBC, Channel 4 and NPR. She is also an illustrator whose work is regularly exhibited at institutions like The World Trade Center, the Tate, The Design Museum, The House of Illustration, and the V&A. Lastly, she’s a producer and presenter of programs like Vagina Dispatches, The Fix, and Strange Bird. 

She’s an honorary fellow of the British Science Association. 

Before she became a journalist, Mona worked with large data sets at the Bank of England, Transparency International, and the International Organization for Migration. She studied International Relations in Paris and Arabic in Jordan. Mona grew up in London and is a grown up in New York. Check out her website here.

THE MUSEUM

The Climate Museum’s mission is to inspire action on the climate crisis with programming across the arts and sciences that deepens understanding, builds connections, and advances just solutions. 

The Museum is currently scaling out to a permanent, year-round presence in New York City. In its public programming to date, it has created an activist cultural approach to community engagement with climate, recognizing that most Americans are worried about the climate crisis but unsure how to take meaningful action. The Museum’s free, accessible exhibitions, art installations, advocacy tools, events, youth programs, and more have touched tens of thousands of New Yorkers and visitors and received extensive recognition, broadening the climate movement with an emphasis on community, justice, equity, and inclusion. Programs are presented at the museum’s exhibition hub on Governors Island, in parks, galleries, and other venues citywide and, in 2020-2021, through virtual events. Additional information is available at climatemuseum.org.

THANK YOU

The Climate Museum team thanks our essential collaborators on Beyond Lies: Mona Chalabi; the Trust for Governors Island; and Amy Westervelt, journalist and creator of Drilled. 

We are grateful for the financial support that makes our work possible, and thank the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Hilo Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and our dedicated community of monthly and annual donors.    

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

Kubi Ackerman; Christine Arena, Generous Films; Sujatha Bergen, NRDC; Robert Brulle, Climate Social Science Network; Jake Carbone, Influence Map; Andres Chang, CDP; JaRel Clay, Hip Hop Caucus; Rich Collett-White, DeSmog; Kert Davies, Climate Investigations Center; Joy Fan, Flowcode; Nathanael Greene, NRDC; Faye Holder, Influence Map; Mat Hope, DeSmog; Brian Kahn, Earther; Duncan Meisel, Clean Creatives; Naomi Oreskes, Harvard History of Science; Pessia Steck, Atlas Print Solutions; Geoffrey Supran, Harvard History of Science; Johnny White, ClientEarth