Hello and welcome back! Today we will be covering the most fulfilling part of the art journey, the art exhibition! After spending countless hours working on art pieces, the time has come to share them with the world. Last year, I had the chance to showcase my artworks at my school’s graduation show and it was a surreal experience that I will never forget. While I had a fun time setting up my space, I couldn’t help but think about some of the impacts that art exhibitions can have on the environment. Let’s look into this a little more!
My final year exhibition
As discussed in an earlier post, we talked about how wasteful creating the artworks themselves can be, but it doesn’t stop there. Beyond the artworks, one of the most wasteful practices when it comes to maintaining art exhibitions is excessive air-conditioner usage. Not only do we waste lots of electricity from this practice, we also add to greenhouse gas emissions from the increased electricity usage, which can exacerbate climate change (Hill, 2018).
So, how bad is the impact of a student exhibition exactly? Our graduation show ran for about 7 days from 12pm to 8pm each day and the air-conditioner was turned on throughout its duration. I thought it would be interesting to calculate how much electricity we actually used for the show so I went to search for some data! According to Vivint Solar’s company website, the wattage of an air-conditioner can be as high as 3500 watts per hour (Vivint Solar, n.d.). Multiplying this value by the duration of the show, we would have used a grand total of 196,000 watts of electricity from the air-conditioning alone!
After seeing how much energy is consumed, this begs the question: is keeping the air-conditioner on throughout an exhibition really necessary? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. High humidity levels can promote mould growth and cause certain pigments to fade (Aslan, 2018). As such, stringent atmospheric controls are recommended to help maintain the physical integrity of the artwork (Moskalyuk et al, 2016), and sadly such measures include the use of air-conditioning to dehumidify exhibition spaces. Although it may be a little difficult to compromise on this part, we can still do our best to look out for more energy-efficient air-conditioner models to help cut down our energy usage at art exhibitions. Perhaps in the future there may be even more environmentally sustainable ways to maintain optimal atmospheric conditions at art exhibitions!
References
Aslan, A. (2018). Why Is It Important to Maintain Humidity of Art Galleries? Retrieved from https://artefuse.com/2018/09/02/why-is-it-important-to-maintain-humidity-of-art-galleries/.
Hill, T. (2018). High time Singapore does something about its inefficient reliance on air-conditioning. TODAY. Retrieved from https://www.todayonline.com/commentary/high-time-singapore-does-something-about-its-inefficient-reliance-air-conditioning.
Vivint Solar. (n.d.). How much electricity does a ceiling fan use? Retrieved from https://www.vivintsolar.com/blog/how-much-electricity-does-a-ceiling-fan-use.
Moskalyuk, V. M. et al. (2016). Study of air conditioning systems for storage and display of artworks. ARPN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 11(23), 13878-13883. Retrieved from http://www.arpnjournals.org/jeas/research_papers/rp_2016/jeas_1216_5468.pdf.
October 18, 2020 at 8:37 pm
Hi Sarah-Ann,
As a person who know nothing about Art, would keeping your art work in frames help? HAHA Sorry if this is a stupid question.
Are there other factors that affect the physical integrity of the artwork ? If preserving artworks is causing a waste in electricity , is there value art ?
Regards Azhari
October 18, 2020 at 10:32 pm
Hi Azhari, thank you for the questions! Firstly, I think that keeping artworks in frames would be a good idea for two-dimensional works (like paintings and drawings) but not all types of artworks can be kept in frames (e.g sculpture or ceramic works). While keeping the artworks in frames may be a good idea for some works, adding a frame can sometimes ruin the effect that an artist may want to achieve so it may not be the best solution for all works. I don’t think this is a stupid question, please don’t beat yourself up over it! Secondly, other than humidity, some factors that can affect artworks include heat and exposure to sunlight. As for the last question, I think this is something I myself struggle to answer very often. As wasteful as art may be, it can still be used to encourage others to make a positive change for both the environment and society. While there would be some waste generated from creating/displaying an artwork at a gallery, many people could be impacted by this work and be motivated to do something good. The resulting positive change could exceed and offset the initial amount of waste generated from making the artwork, hence I would opine that there is still value in creating art! I hope that answers your question!
October 19, 2020 at 4:41 pm
Hi Sarah-Ann,
This is an interesting take on the impacts of Art on the environment! You’ve mentioned that art works may be affected by the humidity, heat and other factors, which makes them necessary to be stored in an air-conditioned place. Would you think that art works in the form of photographs/pictures would be better, as they are less prone to damage by environmental conditions (and do not necessarily have to be placed in air-conditioned rooms)?
– Jo
October 19, 2020 at 9:51 pm
Hi Jo, thanks for the question! I think photography may be a good suggestion as photographs are generally less prone to damage from environmental conditions but again, this depends on what type of medium you choose to print the photos onto. If printed onto glass, acrylic or strong paper, it may not be as prone to damage but there are artists who print their photos onto more delicate mediums to achieve a certain effect so it might be difficult to compromise on atmospheric controls for those particular works. While I think photography is great, I still believe that each medium has it’s own special charm to it and no medium is superior to another! Hope this answers your question!
October 21, 2020 at 8:53 pm
Another great post, Sarah-Ann.
Your art is so diverse and I love the bold fuschias in this exhibit !
So you know… reading your post, the 1st thing that came to mind is… OK so this is one exhibit by one group of students. I immediately started scaling up to entire museums or other venues where artwork and artefacts are displayed. And feeling a bit bummed.
I mean, some of my favourite vacation days ever have been poring over stuff in museums, like the Picasso Museum in Barcelona or the V&A in London. I spent 4 whole days at the Smithsonian in Washington DC !
And all this time, I never thought about this aspect of it, like how the climate is constantly controlled, day and night and what that really means.
PS, visiting the Vatican Museums was one of the worst vacation days of my life, maybe the worst ever. Colossal disappointment 🙁
October 21, 2020 at 11:08 pm
Hi Dr Coleman, thank you for appreciating my work! This show was definitely the peak of my artistic journey. I’m sorry for ruining your enjoyment of museums (unfortunately I have also ruined it for myself while writing this post). Maybe something that museums could do would be to tap on more sustainable resources of energy to reduce their emissions from having to control indoor conditions?
Oh no, I thought the Vatican Museum was really beautiful. May I know why you found it disappointing?
October 28, 2020 at 1:58 pm
I gather that the Vatican is the most visited site in Italy.
When we went (july 2017), you had to book tickets in advance online, and then your ticket only admitted you for one 4-hour period. We chose the latter period of the day.
K, so we enter the place, and it’s huge and there’s all this amazing art, and we want to see it all, but obviously don’t want to miss the Sistine Chapel. Well, that’s all the way at the end, with the only thing after that all the modern art.
So we basically rush through (and there were so many people), so for instance, when we get to the porphyry basin (which is amazing), the round hall is so crowded and there’s no time to look at things in depth. Rushing through the hall of maps was heartbreaking because it was so fascinating. Again, we’re watching the time, knowing the Chapel ceiling awaits.
Well, by the time we get there, there are 25, maybe 30 minutes left till closing. They give us these audio guides (because srsly, there’s so much going on up on the ceiling that you can’t understand it without the guide). And there’s all these signs asking for silence and no photography. But the place is crammed. And I’m talking legit jostling. And people taking photos and talking so loud that we can’t hear a damn thing on the audio guide.
It was actually very disturbing to me the way ppl behave not only at a religious site, but also with seemingly zero awareness that there are all these other ppl who want to look, enjoy, understand and have some peace.
After about 10-15 minutes, I couldn’t stand it anymore, we left the Chapel and then had only 10 minutes to look at all this incredible modern art, like stuff by Chagall, whose art I really love.
So I hated the Vatican. There, I said it.