Session 8 - Adapting Environments in Museums, Archives and Storages 1

By María López Teisaire, Dee Stubbs-Lee and Nourhan Ameen

Session 8 considered projects from around the world that are looking holistically at what “sustainability” means for museums and their collections, be this environmentally, socially or economically. The institutions presented projects that denote a process of transition and experimentation towards a more sustainable work environment in which, slowly but surely, they are implementing energy saving strategies that do not interfere with the preservation of the collections.

The session featured four talks–two that were delivered live and two that were delivered virtually:

The first one was “Building on successful mechanical and passive environmental controls for preventive conservation through data analysis at National Museum Cardiff”. Nourhan liked how the goals for the project focussed on the evolution of two techniques. The paper discussed their successes and limitations. The impact of both techniques was analyzed using the widely available Microsoft Power BI™ program. She was impressed by the following tenets of sustainable environmental management including the value of a cross-disciplinary team, commitment to an ongoing process, and thorough data analysis. This work has allowed for preservation and energy efficiency beyond the initial gains of reducing the extremes of temperature and relative humidity.

Some interesting questions that came up during the Q&A were for Kelly: How does the Power BI interface with the Building Management System? (From Julie Bon). And from Rebecca Ellison: Did you have to take measures to assess the condition of collections in store or introduce alternative air movement in the space after cutting off the passive air supply and air handling unit? Was the RH consistent across storage area? Were there any other impacts to the collection as a result of taking this measure?

The next talk, Implementing an Adaptive Climate Control Strategy: Collection Monitoring and Sustainability outcomes, was from the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Australia. The most important thing about this project to Nourhan was how they highlighted the importance of understanding individual gallery and building behavior, as well as the HVAC system in place.

Dee was particularly interested in the talk from the British Museum, Updating Environmental Guidance. She appreciates the unique challenges and limitations of trying to impose a preservation environment in the context of an older stone building and will be sure to have a look at the BM’s conservation policy documents, which they noted are openly available on their website. Someone from the audience asked Tatiana and Louisa, “did you include external colleagues/organizations in your stakeholder consultation, for instance lender for exhibitions?” To which they answer that no, they didn't.

The final talk in this session was Reconsidering Museums’ Climate and Seasonal Adjustment for Vulnerable Artifacts. Nourhan was fascinated by how the research indicates that the amplitude of the RH variations is decisive in terms of risk induced by environmental variations.