Cognitive Dissonance and Traveling Collections
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.
If we acknowledge that it is safer for an object to remain at its institution, then why do we loan it to other institutions? If we acknowledge that it is more environmentally sustainable for an object to remain at its institution, then why do we loan it to other institutions? If we acknowledge that it is cheaper not to borrow objects for exhibitions, then why do we borrow it at great expense?
Exhibitions are the public face of any institution and a large reason for their existence, but they can also undermine many of their core values just by shipping objects all over the world. Now, we must reconsider their contradictory role in creating carbon emissions and actively damaging objects to better align our practices with our values.
What if we stop lending our objects, or, at least de-incentivize their travel as a cost-saving, environmentally sustainable, and safer way to operate an institution and care for its collection? We note the positive effects that a decreased use of fossil fuel resulting from the shutdowns imposed as a result of the global pandemic has had on the environment as sheer proof of this aspiration. Could we make this permanent?
Instead of returning to our pre-pandemic practices of liberally sending objects around the world, I will suggest a few impractical incentives for objects to remain in place as well as to re-imagine ways to travel exhibitions with a radically smaller carbon footprint. Emissions resulting from traveling exhibitions is a logistical problem. We do not, however, need to plan exhibitions based on logistics but need to make them more of a consideration.
We must first decide whether to lend at all; we can clearly solve a logistical problem by removing the logistics. However, this defeats the purpose of most of our institutions. So, for the sake of proposing ideas, I will assume that your institution will continue to lend its collection. Still, you could lend less and borrow less, have a stricter criteria for lending and borrowing, and determine in advance which of your most sought-after objects can travel and how. More to the point, we should focus on how we lend and borrow.
Now, assuming we will continue to lend and borrow, I propose some wild ideas for immediate cost savings and improvements in efficiency that will also reduce carbon emissions. This is an economic eclipse I already wrote about where economics and sustainability align and beg for implementation.
Before you can evaluate your procedures for improvement, however, you have to have baseline metrics. Your budget is one metric: what you spent yesterday versus what you spend today. Efficiency is harder to measure but improvements will likely appear in the form of budget reductions or reduced staff involvement. Online carbon calculators will, lastly, demonstrate another form of improvement. Julie’s Bicycle and the Gallery Climate Coalition both have calculators that will help with the process in a fairly accurate way. Calculate current emissions and compare to post-exhibition emissions. You could also calculate an independent auditor at much greater expense but with much greater detail and accuracy. For our purposes though, we do not require it.
As a point of reference, SustainableTravel.org points out:
A one-way flight from San Francisco to Paris can produce just over 1.25 metric tons of carbon emissions per passenger. That is over a quarter of the amount of carbon that the average person worldwide produces per year – just from one round trip [sic – is it one-way or roundtrip?] flight.
Once we establish a metric by which we can measure our progress, we must employ new protocols and benchmarks. An easy way to disincentivize a “negative” activity is to raise the cost of it. We can make borrowing objects cost a lot more and, consequently, reduce its carbon footprint.
One way to acheive this is to increase your loan fees. If we typically ask between $150–300 per object, why not increase the fee several times. We only want to do this to completely discourage lending and/or simply to fund a specific activity like carbon offsets, departmental improvements or actions, or charitable giving for example. This is a blunt tool that we can quickly refine. If loans actively damage objects, then try to send the most resilient.
Why not create progressive loan fees? In other words, adjust fees for different objects based on their demand, fragility, location, urgency, size, or type. In other words, use price to incentivize the lending of some works over others. Perhaps your most iconic objects have loan fees in the thousands while exhibition copies or time-based media that do not require shipping have no loan fee. Fragile objects have high fees and those within 25 miles have no fees.
Another way to use this tool is to incentive the exhibition of underrepresented artists or groups as well as under-viewed objects. Perhaps objects that we, as an institution, want to gain more visibility have fewer barriers for lending. Allow the water to flow downhill.
Further, returning to our discussion about logistics, we can put a heavy price on objects that require lots of resources (travels a long distance, requires a large crate, requires a lot of staff involvement, etc.) and a minimal price on those that do not. Lower cost; lower carbon emissions.
As I mentioned before, we can use the money raised from these new-found loan fees for good. For example, we can purchase carbon offsets. Many will argue that carbon offsets, or paying into investments that support the reduction of carbon emissions, do not really have the effect that they intend, but, likewise, many companies attempt to do it right. Regardless, in your loan contracts require carbon offsets for carbon emissions on lent objects. It costs roughly $5–10 per metric ton (some say it should cost more like $70 – still cheap) and your shipping agent can add that to their bill. Dietl already offers this, and others will do it if you ask.
Take the idea a step further and require twice the amount of your CO2 emissions offset and four times the amount if you require a courier. Galleries can add a percentage to each sale to go toward offsets. In theory, I like offsets, but they feel like throwing money at the problem and without doing the necessary work. Either way, they have a part to play.
Another weapon in your loan contract’s arsenal has to be reusable crates. An unofficial poll between a select group of international shippers that I know, shows that somewhere between 60–90% of works that they ship (many many variables here) are 2 dimensional objects that hang on a wall. In other words, the same objects that fit with the available reusable crates (that, of course, is no coincidence). This will be the future. Period. By adopting them sooner, you help expand the market for them and, thus, reduce their cost and innovation faster. They will only get more and more efficient, and with increasing demand, they will get better and work for more objects.
I have many more ideas for things we can implement but will finish them next Friday as I am only about halfway through and this post has gotten long. Stay tuned for the rest of the list and please suggest any of your own in the comments below.
I've thought about progressive loan fees a lot. Museums will need to pool resources to set standards, in order for these to make sense across the board. Money/fees are not a bad thing if they are used to save the environment.