Promoting Sustainable Practices in the Art World

What role do creators and collectors have to play?

Stonehage Fleming - In this third and final piece in our series on sustainability trends affecting the art world, Anna Smith looks at the role of key individuals – the collectors and artists – adding their voices to the movement.

Many artists have long been ringing the alarms of climate change, environmental sustainability and protection. Back in the 1960s and 70s artist Agnes Denes established herself as a pioneer of environmental art with works such as Rice/Tree/Burial and later Wheatfield, using live plants like trees, rice and wheat to comment on human consumption, waste management and our relationship to the earth.

Latterly, contemporary artists like Icelandic-Danish artist, Olafur Eliasson, known mainly for sculptured and largescale installation art, have taken up this mantle. Eliasson’s work, Ice Watch – a city-spanning temporary installation consisting of 30 blocks of glacial ice placed in public spaces around London, then allowed to melt – is a case in point. The work was meant to serve as a visual and visceral reminder of the impact of global warming on the environment. Since then, he has taken his activism a step further, his Berlin-based studio announcing their intention to be carbon neutral within the next ten years, avoiding airfreight and curtailing travel wherever possible.

Other artists, like Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui, incorporate sustainability into the very materiality of their creations. Anatsui uses found objects, recycled and repurposed materials to create their artwork, not only reducing their environmental footprint, but also encouraging viewers to re-evaluate what is considered waste and what is considered art.

There is much that collectors can do to try and mitigate the effect that their passion for collecting art can have on the environment. According to a 2022 study by charity, Julie’s Bicycle, of the 70 million tons of CO2 emissions created by the art world annually, a whopping 85% of this is created by visitor travel emissions. This puts a lot of power into the hands of art collectors – especially high net-worth collectors – to influence how the art world responds.

Our last article in this series looked at the increased interest in sustainability by galleries, museums, auction houses and art shippers. This trend has been driven in large part by the collectors themselves. For example, Christie’s Global Head of Operations and Sustainability Programs has said their net-zero policy goals are a "direct consequence of the environmental concerns of its clients and collectors".

In our experience, many collectors have made collecting climate-conscious artists a core tenet of their collecting strategy as a way to help promote and support public awareness around the issues of climate change.

By checking which galleries and institutions are members of climate organisations, such as the GCC, collectors can choose to do business with organisations that prioritise sustainability and are making active efforts to reduce their carbon footprint. And although it might require a small sacrifice in terms of speed or price, collectors can also choose more sustainable shipping methods, such as sea freight, and encourage others to do the same.

Creative solutions to find alternative energy sources, different shipping methods and new ways to do business are out there if those at the top of their organisations deem it important enough to use them. If collectors continue to prioritise sustainability in their buying decisions, which looks likely, it will become more difficult for companies to participate in the process without making changes themselves. In this way, the hope is that the move towards increased sustainability in the art world will become a self-propelling cycle for positive change.

Read more from Anna’s sustainability in art series:

What are art industries doing to keep pace with collectors’ changing needs?

Sustainability: what are museums doing to support ‘greener’ practices?

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