A COOL MILLION (ACM) is a campaign for climate awareness and activism led by artists, arts professionals, and institutions. The initiative worked with museums to create and disseminate artwork images that motivate civic awareness on climate action urban environmental justice during Earth Month, April 2022. Project costs were generously covered by Pritzker funding. Institutions such as MOCA, LACMA, Wattis Institute, ICA San Francisco, Headlands Center for the Arts, San Jose Museum of Art, LACMA, MOAD, the Underground Museum, SFMOMA, Hammer, and the Berkeley Art Museum participated.
The initiative partnered 10 artists and 10 museums (one per each, at artists selection) to present images of artworks regarding environmental justice, civic engagement, and climate action on large format public spaces. Joining with For Freedoms, an artist cooperative, cofounded by Hank Willis Thomas, Eric Gottesman, Michelle Woo, and Wyatt Gallery, the works appeared on billboards and social media throughout Earth month, April 2022.
This partnership between artists and institutions aimed to raise funds to protect one million acres of critical hydrological-related forest conservation relevant to California's rainfall. Where feasible, the artworks pictured will be donated and sold at the gallery's direction as to process, collector and timing in the following 18 months with proceeds going to the Indigenous-led large-scale land conservation in the United States rainfall table. This fundraising effort will help permanently preserve crucial land areas, directly supporting mitigation of the climate crisis in the process.
ACM is a project of Art into Acres and Art + Climate Action, two initiatives within the arts community responding to climate and institutional sustainability.