Grants Awarded

Academy of Athens
Getty Global Art & Sustainability Fellows in residence at the Academy of Athens’s Research Centre for Atmospheric Physics and Climatology will investigate the impacts of changing climate conditions on art and cultural heritage. Working in close collaboration with scientists and heritage experts, Fellows will concentrate on developing comprehensive methodologies for the preservation of ancient amphitheaters and Byzantine paintings.

Bibliothèque Nationale de France
The Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF) is researching ways to save energy in exhibition and storage areas by expanding the permitted ranges for temperature and relative humidity. Working with BnF’s facilities staff, conservation scientists, conservators, and curators, Getty Global Art & Sustainability Fellows will create and analyze climatic models, perform tests and monitoring, collect measurements of the different indicators, and set up an optimized, tailored climate management strategy for different scenarios. They may also test new materials and approaches and contribute to BnF’s laboratory research on restoration practices with bio-sourced and eco-responsible materials.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Getty Global Fellows at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao will help coordinate the work of the GU-Zero Sustainability Group, a multidisciplinary team of professionals from across the museum that develop and implement annual Sustainability Action Plans in support of the museum’s goal of being carbon neutral by 2030. Partnerships with colleagues from conservation, curatorial, education, facilities, and finance will give these emerging professionals the opportunity to develop a range of skills and experiences, which may include feasibility studies for the replacement of fossil fuels with biofuel or hydrogen in the museum’s environmental control systems or implementing sustainability criteria for the design of future exhibitions.

James Cook University
Getty Global Fellows at James Cook University (JCU) will learn advanced techniques for assessing and preparing for climate risks at heritage sites, enhancing the sector’s ability to adapt to climate change. They will be supervised by JCU professor of physics Scott Heron, who holds the UNESCO Chair on Climate Change Vulnerability of Natural and Cultural Heritage and co-led the development of the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI), a science-driven, values-based rapid assessment tool to systematically assess climate impacts on World Heritage sites. The initial Fellow will help design and implement CVI facilitator training workshops to expand the pool of qualified facilitators. Subsequent Fellows may collaboration with First Nations to develop expanded CVI protocols for Indigenous communities.

Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi
Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi is the oldest scientific institution in the Brazilian Amazon, with a long history of interdisciplinary research, public outreach through exhibitions, and international collaboration. It maintains a research station in the high Amazon forest and cultivates close ties with Indigenous and traditional communities by jointly developing exhibitions, programming, and research agendas on the cultural and biological diversity of the region. Fellows will work with researchers, artists, and traditional knowledge holders, as well as with staff in Goeldi’s departments of archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics to develop collaborative research projects based on the museum’s cultural collections. Projects will be tailored to Fellows’ individual areas of expertise while working toward the overarching goals of preserving local knowledge about sustainability and the natural world and interpreting the collections in context-sensitive and culturally appropriate ways.

Photosynthesis Networked Artist Residencies
Photosynthesis is a networked artist residency program that will engage early to mid-career artists as Getty Global Fellows at six partner organizations: Denniston Hill (Woodridge, New York, USA), LUMA Arles (Arles, France), Pivô (Salvador, Brazil), Srihatta—Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park (Sylhet, Bangladesh), Tate St Ives (St Ives, Cornwall, UK), and The Mothership (Tangier, Morocco). Each of these non-urban sites is already experiencing climate change threats and has active sustainability initiatives that engage contemporary artists. Individual residencies will be tailored to the ecological conditions and resources of each partner site, and collaboration across the whole Fellows cohort will produce lasting contemporary artworks and community engagement about the human aspects of climate change and artistic resilience.

Rochester Institute of Technology
The Image Permanence Institute (IPI) at Rochester Institute of Technology is dedicated to supporting sustainable preservation of cultural heritage collections in libraries, archives, and museums around the world. Fellows at IPI will generate new ways to help cultural organizations overcome frequent technical and economic challenges that prevent the adoption and implementation of more sustainable practices. Anticipated Fellowship outcomes include new digital resources, publications, hands-on workshop curricula, or webinars that bring granular, actionable information to the field to support widespread adoption of energy-saving preservation approaches.

Singapore Art Museum and National Gallery Singapore
Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and National Gallery Singapore (NGS) are in the early stages of sustainability planning that aims to measure, manage, and minimize their own environmental impact and ensure their exhibitions and programs accommodate and confront ecological concerns in enduring ways. SAM and NGS will jointly host Getty Global Fellows who will develop environmentally sustainable approaches to curatorial research, exhibition design, and program development in addition to mapping the environmental impact of their buildings and facilities. Fellowship projects may include working with SAM’s Public Art Team to design and support research leading to more environmentally sustainable practices in commissioning, installing, and interpreting land art.

University College London
The Institute for Sustainable Heritage (ISH) at University College London delivers sustainable solutions to cultural heritage problems through cross-disciplinary research and teaching for future heritage leaders. Getty Global Fellows at ISH will bring scientific expertise to interdisciplinary research projects in collaboration with faculty and outside partners. Working with the Victoria and Albert Museum as a principal case study, the initial Fellow will work focus on understanding and mitigating “scope three emissions” in the cultural sector. Future fellowship topics may include innovations in sustainable collections management or ways artificial intelligence and crowdsourcing might help save heritage threatened by natural disasters.