About Sustainability in Museums

Modern and contemporary art museums have long been spaces for critical reflection, social engagement, and cultural transformation. As institutions responding to the challenges of our time, what responsibilities do museums have in advancing sustainability, and how can they translate these responsibilities into meaningful institutional practice?

The climate emergency, environmental degradation and growing social inequalities call for profound changes across all sectors of society, including museums and cultural institutions.

While museums have an important role in raising awareness and fostering public dialogue, their responsibility extends beyond the narratives they present. It also concerns how they operate, make decisions, care for collections, engage with communities, manage resources and collaborate with other institutions.

Sustainability must therefore be understood not simply as an additional responsibility, but as an integral part of museum governance, institutional culture and everyday professional practice. It requires rethinking established ways of working and embedding environmental, social, economic, cultural and ethical considerations across museum activities.

Sustainability cannot be achieved in isolation. Meaningful change requires shared knowledge, continuous learning and collective action.

Museums around the world face common challenges, but their resources, capacities and local contexts vary significantly. There is no single approach to sustainability that can be applied equally to every institution. Learning from the experiences of others is therefore essential to developing solutions that are both effective and appropriate to different realities.

As an international network of modern and contemporary art museum professionals, CIMAM provides a platform for exchanging knowledge, sharing practical experiences and advancing more sustainable museum practices through peer-to-peer learning.

Participation in international professional networks is an important part of continuous professional development. It enables museum professionals to broaden their perspectives, stay informed about emerging approaches and integrate sustainability into their existing responsibilities, regardless of their specific role or level of technical expertise.

This collaborative approach is at the heart of CIMAM's Sustainability Toolkit, which brings together resources, practical experiences and examples from museums worldwide to support the integration of sustainability into institutional practice.

Collaboration is not only a means of learning; it is also essential to implementation. Sustainable exhibition production, international loans, transportation and collections management depend on cooperation between museums, cultural organisations and service providers.

As CIMAM members, museum professionals become part of an international community dedicated to learning from one another, sharing knowledge and experiences, and working collectively towards more sustainable museum practices.

Why should museums take a stand?

• We cannot be bystanders in a society that frames our purpose.
• In a changing and challenging environment, we will need to be responsive, creative, and adaptive to survive.
• We are public or public-facing organizations with institutional missions centered on a notion of the public good.

How can museums respond to the climate emergency?

1. Put our own houses in order - interrogate our systems, our values and our programmes
2. Work collaboratively across the sector to address our shared conventions and operating models and the values that underpin them
3. Use our position as trusted organisations to raise consciousness and inspire action.
   

1. Put our houses in order, reduce and green:

• The energy, water and materials we use in our buildings
• Our business and research travel
• The goods and services provided through our shops, restaurants and cafes
• Construction and maintenance of our buildings

2. Work collaboratively across the sector to involve new and more sustainable systems and standards for:

• Curating, installing and deinstalling exhibitions:
• Caring for our collections
• Crating, shipping, and couriering our loans
• Climate conditions within our galleries

3. Raise consciousness and inspire action:

• CIMAM Annual Conference to coincide with UN Climate Change Conference (November)
• CIMAM 2024 Annual Conference "Sustainable Futures: How? When? For Whom?"
• CIMAM Continuous Education Webinars on Sustainability in the Museum Practice

First steps:

• Share sustainability guidelines