We say we want more sustainable procedures for traveling collections but rarely act on that desire. However, I propose a few ways to make immediate changes.
In the first part of this two-part series about the cognitive dissonance inherent in our exhibition practices, I point out that our collections community has recognized for a long time that many of our expensive practices also come with huge negative environmental footprints but felt unable to act on it. In addition, lending objects at all actively damages them, an ironic twist given that our role as collections stewards is to protect them whilst also providing access. Like the role of a football team medic, you know that the game punishes the athlete’s body but all you can do is try to mitigate and treat the inevitable injuries.
To try to provoke thought and initiate change, I devised some options that try to disincentivize loans – or, conversely, incentivize not shipping – in order to preserve objects as well as to reduce the large carbon footprints that they exude. I previously proposed several options that we can add a la carte to our loan contracts including increasing loan fees, developing a series of progressive loan fees, requiring carbon offsets, and requiring re-usable crates. I want to now add several more items to our dim sum of ideas. Indulge in one or gorge on all.
One easy way to not ship an object is to re-create it at the lender’s venue. Many contemporary works of art do not rely on the '“hand of the artist” for their value and make them candidates for exhibition copies. Copies of works ideally produced for a show at the loan destination and destroyed after an exhibition will clearly not require crating, transportation, or couriers. To do this correctly, we would need to get the permission from the artist or their estate as well as documentation of the object’s destruction at the end of the show. All of these options we negotiate at the time of acquisition if possible. Take it a step further and offer the exhibition copy for no loan fee (because who can turn down a discount?).
If you must send the original object itself, you do not have to send your own staff as a courier. I have already written about how outsourcing personnel and taking advantage of the bookend courier practice that we have come to accept due to travel restrictions imposed by the global pandemic reduces the cost of air travel, hotels, and per diems as well as the environmental impact of that additional travel. This practice will continue to instill confidence as we more broadly adopt it. Broad adoption means a broadly accepted standard of supervision that we perpetuate globally through training courses, books, conferences, and university programs. All of this, in the end, means institutions will trust each other enough to continue the practice. Mass adoption of bookend couriers will be the most important development for our generation as it will have the biggest impact on how we operate as a global sector.
We can truly wring the most out of a bookend courier by also consolidating shipments. With a bit more advance planning, we can better strategize with our shipping agents to reduce the number of trips required for a loan which will subsequently reduce costs, carbon footprints, and the number of bookend couriers. The lack of consolidation, however, rarely originates with the registrar. Sometimes changes to packing lists stem from situations beyond our control, but more often, the problem originates in the wings of the institution that program exhibitions and determine object lists. Consequently, we must devise internal motives specific to each institution to plan ahead and stick to that plan, whenever possible, like gum on the bottom of your shoe.
Sticking to the plan can also mean sticking with the exhibition for a longer period of time. Like loan consolidation and planning ahead, longer exhibitions is an institutional and not simply a departmental decision. At the moment, fewer people travel and fewer people attend museums, so keeping exhibitions up for a longer period of time not only reduces the number of works that travel, the resources they devour, and the overall exhibition budget (which also reverberates throughout an entire museum) but also offers the public greater opportunity to engage them. Again, the stars align; economic eclipse.
Once you institutionally employ these economic eclipse strategies, make the impact greater by publicizing your sustainable practices. This demonstrates to other institutions your willingness to amend your current practices for the better as well as creates an overall acceptance of those practices. Peer pressure. It also implies that if “x” institution can do this, so can mine. Perhaps we need to label exhibitions as “sustainably developed and executed” or create a rating system for exhibitions comparable to LEED certification for buildings. The amount of carbon emitted per square foot/meter of exhibition space and/or per volume of the object perhaps?
Naturally, these are tools in a toolbox and one can choose to use one or several depending on the object, the exhibition, and the circumstance. By employing them within the registrar department we also create another by-product: a metric to measure our own performance as a collection stewards. Collections managers and registrars have a difficult time quantifying the quality of their work. In other words, when shipments arrive on time, shows get installed, and objects do not get damaged they go unnoticed. Conversely, we point to them when those problems do arise. However, if we measure ourselves based on budget and carbon emissions relative to the number of objects we move and the number of exhibitions we install, we can begin to put a number on one part of our work.
Industry wide, we all ultimately want to protect the objects in our collections, provide the public access to them through exhibitions, and do this in an economically and environmentally friendly way. Let us now recognize that we have the ability to do this to varying degrees and thus should pursue it collectively – within our institutions as well as within our industry.
In addition, I write about this from the point of view of exhibitions, but those of us charged with the care and display of objects should not bear the sole responsibility for reducing institutional costs and carbon footprints (I am not saying that this is the case either). It is an institutional effort. In other words, requiring bookend couriers should not remove any guilt from jet-setters in other parts of the institution or carbon offsets should not hypnotize an institution into feeling that they have suddenly become “carbon neutral” without actually changing any of their practices. In reality, considering our institutional charge for caring for the world’s patrimony, reducing the costs and emissions for collections care should actually be the final piece of the puzzle.
