As Tate aims to cut its carbon footprint by at least 10%, Elizabeth Fullerton speaks to the gallery group’s director and others to find out what environmental commitments entail in practice.
Last spring, a woman clad in a coat of living grass rode a white horse into Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall at the head of a procession of artists and activists demanding that cultural organizations declare a climate emergency. In the wake of school strikes and traffic stoppages across London by protesters incited by the environmental group Extinction Rebellion, the theatrical action marked one of many mounting high points for a cause gathering momentum in the cultural sphere.
In a high-profile move three months later, Tate—a network of four museums including Tate Modern, which ranked as Britain’s top tourist attraction, with 5.9 million visitors in 2018—announced it would join the cause and pledged to cut its carbon footprint by at least 10 percent by 2023. “Large public buildings, attracting millions of visitors from the U.K. and overseas, require energy,” reads a declaration issued in July, which saw the highest-ever temperature recorded in the U.K. and record-setting heat across Europe. “We see caring for and sharing a national art collection as a public good, but it also consumes resources. . . . That’s why we pledge to make our long-term commitment ambitious in scope. We will interrogate our systems, our values, and our programs, and look for ways to become more adaptive and responsible.”... Keep reading on Art News
Last spring, a woman clad in a coat of living grass rode a white horse into Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall at the head of a procession of artists and activists demanding that cultural organizations declare a climate emergency. In the wake of school strikes and traffic stoppages across London by protesters incited by the environmental group Extinction Rebellion, the theatrical action marked one of many mounting high points for a cause gathering momentum in the cultural sphere.
In a high-profile move three months later, Tate—a network of four museums including Tate Modern, which ranked as Britain’s top tourist attraction, with 5.9 million visitors in 2018—announced it would join the cause and pledged to cut its carbon footprint by at least 10 percent by 2023. “Large public buildings, attracting millions of visitors from the U.K. and overseas, require energy,” reads a declaration issued in July, which saw the highest-ever temperature recorded in the U.K. and record-setting heat across Europe. “We see caring for and sharing a national art collection as a public good, but it also consumes resources. . . . That’s why we pledge to make our long-term commitment ambitious in scope. We will interrogate our systems, our values, and our programs, and look for ways to become more adaptive and responsible.”... Keep reading on Art News