https://reasonstobecheerful.world/the-delicate-art-of-greening-a-museum/
"When you walk into most popular museums, you’re greeted by a distinct air. The
just-so temperature signals: You are in a separate space.
That climate-controlled environment can be traced back to a British man named
Garry Thomson who published
The Museum Environment in 1978. In the
influential text, he laid out the ideal conditions for preserving art: 19°C
(66.2F) in the winter, 24°C (75.2F) in the summer, with a fluctuation of 1°C up
or down. Relative humidity was fixed as well. These guidelines were taken as
gospel by Western museums, regardless of their local climates or the origins of
objects they were displaying.
However, there’s a growing recognition that this temperature control is one of
many ways that museums, where we go to appreciate art and stare at dino
skeletons, contribute to climate change. The heating and cooling regimes
require a lot of electricity, the main source of which is fossil fuels. In
addition to HVAC, museums’ carbon footprints get heavier with the global
shipping of artwork and waste disposal.
Increasingly, museum practitioners are working to make their buildings — and
institutions — more environmentally sustainable. They’re assessing energy use.
They’re even reconsidering where they get the art they display. From the
beginning, public museums were interlinked with colonization, with nations
collecting objects from around the world to display their empire’s power.
Today’s museums are starting to break from that past, and turning to local
communities as curators and creators, not just as the audience."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
