Changing Climate Management Strategies Workshop

Cultural heritage institutions worldwide are increasingly under pressure to operate in a more sustainable manner in response to the global climate crisis, symptoms of which include rising energy costs and government mandates to reduce carbon footprints.

Recent environmental guidance in the heritage field has also signaled a shift away from prescriptive narrow ranges of temperature and relative humidity towards the adoption of broader environmental parameters suitable for many classes of objects. However, many heritage institutions have been reluctant to adopt these wider conditions due to a lack of evidence-based risk analysis for climate-induced damage and limited expertise on the sustainable management of the collection environment.

This workshop, presented as part of the Conservation Institute's Managing Collection Environments Initiative, addressed obstacles in developing and implementing more adaptive environmental management strategies in museums.

• Preworkshop: Encompassed online activities, including lectures about risk assessment, and object and environmental monitoring, a brief description of participant case studies, access to essential readings, and a discussion forum (~15 hours).
• Day 1: Introduced the changing environmental and political contexts in which museums operate and included discussion of environmental guidance, government regulation, sustainability, leadership, and participant case studies.
• Day 2: Examined the key roles of life and cost cycle assessments as tools to support decision making, the impact of loans processes on sustainability, mechanical and non-mechanical environmental management strategies, and a gallery tour addressing damage, change, and value.
• Day 3: Provided an introduction to material properties and responses and damage mechanisms, followed by discussion and demonstrations of select object monitoring techniques.
• Day 4: Included discussion of data analysis tools, followed by exercises on risk assessment, life cycle analysis, and environmental assessment; presentation and discussion of sustainability case studies.
• Day 5: Featured presentation and discussion of sustainability case studies, followed by participant discussion on the practical application of the workshop curriculum for a range of heritage contexts; optional speed mentoring sessions with workshop instructors.

The workshop was delivered in person over five days at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Supplementary online components were made available before and after the workshop to deepen participant engagement.

The teaching team of Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) staff and other esteemed heritage conservation professionals have extensive experience in environmental management and object monitoring. Workshop instructors included:

• Vincent Laudato Beltran, Scientist, GCI
• Ashley Freeman, Associate Scientist, GCI
• Naoki Fujisawa, Scientist, GCI
• Theofanis Karafotias, Senior Project Specialist, GCI
• Camille Kirk, Head of Sustainability, J. Paul Getty Trust
• Kelly McCauley, Preventive Conservator, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
• Michał Łukomski, Senior Scientist, GCI
• Kanoko Sasao, Head of Registration, J. Paul Getty Museum
• Cecilia Winter, Senior Project Specialist, GCI

For further information or questions, please contact MCE@getty.edu.

"Changing Climate Management Strategies: Sustainable Collection Environments and Monitoring Object Response" is presented as part of the Conservation Institute's Managing Collection Environment's initiative (MCE). The most recent version of this workshop was held at the Getty Center in Los Angeles (2025). Previous editions were co-organized with the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (2023) and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (2024). In each workshop, forty professionals from the wider region participated in a week of lectures, panel discussions, learning exercises, demonstrations, and case studies.

A related MCE course, “Preserving Collections in the Age of Sustainability,” was held in 2017 and 2019. As part of the course curriculum, a suite of technical notes, Managing Collection Environments: Technical Notes and Guidance, were developed presenting a holistic perspective on environmental management in museums, galleries, archives, and libraries.