Over the past two decades, museum programming has spread out like the sea before a castaway. No horizon. More public exhibitions. More visits. More purchases of works. More transport. More, more and more when many experts suggest the opposite, especially if these spaces want to be sustainable. The Bizot Green Protocol initiative launches two strategies to alleviate this problem. The first of these focuses on reducing the calendar of temporary exhibitions to reduce the costs of packaging, insurance and travel. In addition, emissions in these museums are reduced: by extending visits to 24 weeks, instead of the usual 14, the carbon footprint of traveling shows would be halved. The Guggenheim in New York has discovered that its visitors are mainly tourists who arrive with the seasons. What do temporary proposals contribute? In 2013, 12 exhibitions were designed and, in 2018, half. The New York-based Whitney has also gone from 22 exhibitions in 2016 to 13 this season.
Of course, this situation occurs mainly in contemporary art museums. “The preservation and conservation of works is non-negotiable,” warns a spokesperson for the Prado Museum. “Temporary exhibitions cannot be based on sustainability criteria, because this factor is already applied daily in the museum. We are even studying—respecting the architectural heritage—the installation of solar panels,” he adds. There, a supreme law governs: the absolute care of the collection. If all art is political, the Prado Museum is political. slow museum, where small temporary exhibitions prevail, it is equivalent, in importance, to the historical We the People (we the people), the beginning of the American Constitution. In Miami, rising sea levels and hurricanes are becoming more common each season. That is why the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) is built on stilts that raise its height to protect the bottom from the high waters that enter and recede in Biscayne Bay. “But the big concern is hurricanes. Before installing any work outside, we design a plan to withstand the howling winds,” reveals Patricia García-Vélez Hanna, art director of Related Group, a real estate company owned by Jorge Pérez, a patron and one of the richest Latinos in the world, who supports the Miami museum.
The other proposal is to relax the thermostat standards, which are up to the curators. In principle, the Guggenheim in Bilbao proposes to relax the temperature by 20 degrees, between 40% and 60% relative humidity and a maximum daily variation of 10% in 24 hours. This margin also gives small organizations with unstable climates the opportunity to bring important works to their community. Something good for nature and for areas forgotten by art. The Prado, which cares for pieces that are centuries old, never varies from 21 degrees, a humidity of 65% and a fluctuation of 5%. Meanwhile, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles proposes “virtual messaging” whenever possible. “It avoids the cost in CO2 of air travel,” argues a spokesman. This is crossing the red line. Neither countless lenders nor many directors want a video to replace the expert. Problems could arise during the transfer and it is forbidden the minimum risk. The Prado always employs couriers. It prefers the road – even if it is polluting – to any other means of transport: because the work is always under surveillance. Art and the climate emergency have not yet found their vanishing point.
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