‘Telling truths about this moment’: climate change author Jeff Goodell curates vital exhibition

The acclaimed writer takes on a new challenge with his first art show, bringing together work and writing that tells a long history of environmental change

Climate change is a very complex topic that is not just about data and information and physics, it's about culture and politics and psychological responses," the author and newly minted museum curator Jeff Goodell said to the Guardian. It's about how we choose to live, what we value. The science part of it is a small sliver of the larger conversation - it's really important, but it's just the beginning of the conversation. There are vast dimensions of thinking about this subject that we have not really begun to approach."

He's speaking from Austin, Texas, where he's putting the finishing touches on a new show at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas. Called If the Sky Were Orange, it seeks to bring complexity and curiosity to a climate change discourse that is often reduced to political polarization and degrees fahrenheit. Goodell hopes in talking about climate change in ways that are often not heard, the show will generate new thinking that might move us beyond the familiar impasses.