When you’re on the internet sating your various social appetites, do you ever decide to culture yourself in an online museum?  How about one stocked with environmental art?  Sound cheesy?  Save your face. 

You might check out Greenmuseum.org. 

Based in the San Francisco Bay area, the museum is actually a “network of museums, parks, cities and educational institutions,” trying to “interconnect people, information and ideas to help inspire the creation of more art that heals our communities and ecosystems.”

The site showcases dozens of environmental “artists” of all kinds:  writers, sculptors, landscapers, etc.  It also provides “Toolboxes” for teachers, park managers, and other community leaders to generate more eco-communal art.  And the events calendar shows upcoming happenings around the world.

It’s really a novel spin on the museum concept. 

Instead of cherishing dusty relics in refrigerated rooms, Greenmuseum.org showcases the dynamic human interplay that turns aesthetics into action.  As beauty is valued, so is function.  One member non-profit, AMD&ART, is even using their “public art” and “community engagement” to remedy abandoned mine drainage (AMD) on former strip mines in Appalachia.

If your common association with museums is anything like mine, it has largely been an evolution of pretense:  covert role-playing as a child, sassing teachers as a teen, and attracting mates with feigned inspiration as an adult.

But we may hopefully find something of custom-tailored interest, such as a Dulles airport hanger filled with vintage military jets, a north Dublin town home devoted to Irish writers, or a Berlin holocaust museum that’s designed to give its visitors motion sickness. 

I think I just found a new favorite in GreenMuseum.org:  environmental art used for grassroots mobilization.

It’s hard to appreciate museums until we can realize the service that they provide to society.  With focus and purpose, though, they gain a great deal of intrigue and importance.