By Jarret Liotta
The question of how to best transport artwork around the globe has long been discussed in museums and galleries, and now the issue of sustainability and environmental waste is a key part of the dialogue due to the vast greenhouse gas emissions created by shipping art.
Thanks to a $750,000 grant award, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is embarking on a study aimed at exploring the most practical and proactive means of shipping art safely, securely — and sustainably.
The Carbon Reduction and Art in Transit (CRAIT) initiative is a three-year project focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from packing systems by 50 percent by the year 2030, according to Julia Latane, CRAIT project manager and LACMA’s assistant director in art preparation and installation.
“The hope is that we can find materials that aren’t so impactful on the environment to ship art in,” she said.
The three-year $750,000 award is the top tier of the National Leadership Grants for Museums provided through the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Latane is working in tandem with Laura Maccarelli, head scientist at LACMA and the scientific lead on the CRAIT project.
“A museum can be a leader for sustainability … If other institutions can see a change, they may follow that change,” Maccarelli said. The CRAIT team hopes to publish and disseminate their results to museums and galleries throughout the world.
Jay Singh, a packaging professor with California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, has also joined the effort. He noted that during its last annual budget cycle that LACMA shipped almost 5,000 pieces of artwork for exhibitions, 500 pieces for outgoing loans, and had 2,000 new acquisition and incoming loan items received.
“Over the course of my career I’ve worked with more than 250 projects within the industry, but it’s rare to collaborate with such a diverse group of experts as on this particular project,” Singh said.
“We’ve been thinking for years about how to reduce the environmental impact of crating, of packing and crating for fine art,” Latane said, not only at LACMA but at facilities around the world.
She said a great deal of research has been done, beginning with “Art in Transit: Handbook for Packing and Transporting Paintings,” a 1991 publication created through the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
“We’re talking with conservators and scientists across our field to make sure that the tests we do is adding to the research and filling in the gaps,” Latane said, “instead of (repeating) something else that someone else has done.”
“We’re hoping that we find materials that are not only better for the environment and protect artwork in transit, but are economical too,” she said. The first priority for Latane and Maccarelli is assembling a team of experts in disciplines including science, engineering, conservation and art.
Singh explains that packaging is often “unnoticed and under-appreciated” but gets attention “when a product is damaged or when packaging becomes a public concern due to its environmental impact.”
“With an estimated 104,000 museums worldwide, and about 35,000 in the U.S. alone, there is a significant potential for improvement in adopting more sustainable packaging solutions across the industry,” he said.
Latane explained that along with museums, a multitude of galleries, exhibition spaces and artists consume materials for transport, adding to the glut of packaging waste.
She said that while museums such as LACMA try to reuse and repurpose as much as possible, the packaging needs for different works of art are numerous.
The staff of 17 professionals does most of the transport work at offsite locations around Los Angeles, including assembly of unique, multi-faceted crates of different kinds, but they don’t have the space to store material for reuse and repurposing.
“We would love to reuse every material that comes in, but the thing is, museums in general just don’t have the storage space to store all of those empty crates,” Latane said.
Unlike packing a television set, she said crates and packaging can require unique designs that are simultaneously gentle and strong, consisting of materials that are safe to touch the artwork itself.
“Every artwork is unique, so there are different methods for holding an object inside a package. … Art handling in general is a very specialized field,” she said.
When private collectors or the artists ship the art, they might not understand the subtleties of the transport process, or the importance of using packaging material that won’t hurt the art.
“As a scientist I am kind of helping with the part where we’re doing the testing,” Maccarelli said. “I’m checking that the materials that we are going to pick are not going to be harmful for the artwork.”
“There’s always a push to find greener (materials),” Maccarelli said. “I think it’s great.”
While the project is just getting underway, Latane has high hopes.
“It’s a huge industry — art shipment — and if we can do this research, gather data, that demonstrates safe ways to ship art in containers that aren’t as bad for the environment, I think we can have a huge impact on our field in general,” she said.
