A visitor looks at Vancouver Art Gallery's exhibition, Future Geographies: Art in the Century of Climate Change, on May 22.Rachel Pick/The Globe and Mail
Museums are not only tasked with curating and displaying artwork and artifacts, but also shipping and preserving them – a job that comes with a significant environmental impact.
In 2021, the art world’s global carbon footprint was 70 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, according to a report from British non-profit Julie’s Bicycle.
In recent years, conversations about the sector’s climate impact have also turned to energy use and greenhouse gas emissions of cultural buildings themselves. Buildings as a whole account for 18 per cent of Canada’s GHG emissions, making them the third-largest source of carbon in the country after oil and gas and transportation. On that backdrop, Canadian museums and galleries are looking at new ways to lower emissions while fulfilling their cultural mandates.
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Combatting energy use is a particularly thorny challenge for the art world, because preserving and displaying art has traditionally involved a narrow threshold for lighting, temperature and humidity. Early conservation principles suggested that operating outside those standards could damage textiles, oil paints or historical documents.
Maintaining those conditions often uses significant energy, producing carbon emissions that exacerbate climate change. When artwork is loaned to galleries, those preservation requirements are typically a stipulation in the loan agreement.
The new climate exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Future Geographies, uses several sustainable pilot initiatives that the museum hopes to make permanent.Rachel Pick/The Globe and Mail
Those ideal conditions for preservation were originally proposed in the 1970s by American scientist Garry Thomson. “It was taken as something that museums had to follow,” says Kirsty Robertson, director of the Centre for Sustainable Curating at Western University. Those industry-wide standards are increasingly being questioned by the country’s cultural institutions in efforts to establish a more flexible functional threshold.
Robertson references author and professor Fernando Dominguez Rubio, who wrote that storing and displaying art in major cultural institutions, such as New York’s Museum of Modern Art, uses more energy than an intensive care unit in a hospital.
In 2014, the Bizot Group – a network of museum directors - published the Bizot Green Protocol to guide museum and gallery leadership in implementing “greener museum practices.” The protocol was last updated in 2023.
Using those guidelines, architects and facility operators alike have experimented with a range of solutions to lower the carbon footprint of buildings. That includes swapping natural gas for geothermal or electric heating, wrapping building facades in different materials to make them airtight, and incorporating natural rather than artificial lighting into some spaces.
As for transporting the art, some institutions have begun prioritizing lower-carbon transport options such as sea and rail transport. The green protocol is less stringent with temperature and humidity requirements.
The architects behind the new Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario are building the new wing from scratch, allowing them to experiment with sustainable solutions.Supplied
The Art Gallery of Ontario is currently undergoing construction for the $100-million, 40,000-square-foot Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery, scheduled to open in 2027. The architects from three separate firms - Diamond Schmitt, Selldorf and Two Row – have the advantage of building the new wing from scratch, allowing them to experiment with some of these solutions.
The project team has designed the expansion to have a compact form with high levels of insulation on the walls and roof, which in turn reduces the need for artificial heating and cooling, says Diamond Schmitt principal Michael Leckman. Opting for an all-electrical building means more efficient energy recovery, putting less strain on heating and cooling systems. This is particularly important, considering that an art gallery, unlike an office building, still operates at night.
“In other words, you’re making best use of the exhaust air. You’re using air source heat pumps ... you’re creating a very warm winter coat through which very little energy is escaping,” Leckman says.
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In 2014, the AGO was one of the first institutions in the world to adopt the Bizot Green Protocol. Under its guidance, the gallery has gradually been widening temperature and humidity conditions in existing exhibition spaces, allowing it to reduce electrical energy and natural gas use in the building. The gallery has also installed high-efficiency windows, updated water fixtures and overhauled its waste strategy to prioritize reusing materials from exhibitions and temporary spaces.
“Making operations more sustainable impacts the entire building,” says Jessica Bright, the AGO’s chief of exhibitions, collections and conservation. “… Across the museum – from plant operations and facility services to exhibitions and art services – we are making a collaborative effort to adopt a ‘greener practice first’ mindset.”
A rendering of new exhibition space at the AGO.Supplied
Sustainable practices can also apply to the operational details of exhibitions. At the Vancouver Art Gallery, the new climate exhibition, Future Geographies, uses several sustainable pilot initiatives that the museum hopes to make permanent. It shipped dozens of artworks for the exhibition by land instead of air, and crafted text panels accompanying the art from recycled cardboard, for example.
The gallery also had “virtual couriers” connect with staff over FaceTime to help install various artworks, instead of having to fly those people to Vancouver to deliver and set up the art.
In some instances, this strategy can work directly with artists themselves. For a separate installation featuring work by Mumbai-based artist Reena Saini Kallat, the artist conducted a series of online sessions with staff to help them install her pieces – large-scale human migration maps constructed with circuit boards and electrical wires.
“We learned those lessons in the pandemic, actually: You can do some of this work virtually, but it also has the benefit of being sustainable,” says Eva Respini, the gallery’s interim co-CEO and curator at large.
The Future Geographies exhibit in Vancouver had 'virtual couriers' connect with staff over FaceTime.Ian Lefebvre, Vancouver Art Gallery/Supplied
Respini hopes the gallery can eventually hire a staff sustainability strategist, following in the steps of other institutions, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Overall, says Western University’s Robertson, the sector is slowly but steadily making progress in its fight against climate change – and she’s hopeful that will continue. “Nobody was even talking about sustainability in the museum sector five or six years ago,’ she says. “And now, lots of people are trying different things.”
Robertson sees the most roadblocks in terms of updating the operations and facilities of smaller cultural institutions, which make up approximately 80 per cent of Canada’s galleries and museums. Many of these are historic buildings and may be leased by their operators, which can make retrofits expensive and complicated. Smaller cultural institutions are also unlikely to have the renovation budget of a larger museum, such as the AGO.
Many smaller institutions are already struggling to stay afloat and wouldn’t necessarily have the resources to dedicate to sustainability efforts, she says.
In Canada, zero-carbon buildings, including cultural institutions, are certified through the Canada Green Building Council. Mark Hutchinson, the council’s vice-president of green building programs and innovation, is hopeful that a sector tasked with showcasing creativity will continue finding solutions for climate change that are as imaginative as its mandate.
Though the AGO’s Dani Reiss expansion is the first cultural institution of its size to be awarded the zero-carbon design certification, Hutchinson says the art world at large is showing leadership in sustainable operations, despite the unique challenges associated with these spaces.
In the past few years, almost a dozen art galleries and museums have applied for zero-carbon design certification, including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, just north of Toronto, which is undergoing a major revitalization.
“One of the challenges that we face as a society when we talk about climate change is that sometimes we aren’t able to think long-term,” Hutchinson says.
“We can see the Mona Lisa, we can see all these things 1,000 years from now. And to have a museum or an art gallery that reflects that kind of long-term thinking, long-term return to society, I think is just a great pairing.”