Art Fairs Join Forces to Halve Their Carbon Footprints by 2030

Thirteen organizations representing more than forty artfairs, including Art Basel, Frieze, and TEFAF, have united with the London-based Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) to significantly reduce their own carbon emissions by 2030. The organizations signed the Art Fair Co-Commitment Statement, promising to reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced in connection with their events by 50 percent by the end of the decade. The fairs will monitor and report their carbon emissions and will encourage participants, attendees, and those making up their supply chain to be mindful of the environment.

Among the participating fairs are the Armory Show, the Art Show, ARCO, CHART, Easyfairs, ESTE, Liste Art Fair, and Untitled Art. The commitment comes on the heels of a GCC study showing that roughly one-third of commercial galleries’ emissions are owing to their participation in art fairs, with the majority attached to air freight and the rest to in-venue energy consumption and the generation of single-use materials waste, much of it connected to the building of temporary structures for such events.

Based on information provided by the fairs regarding their emissions data, the GCC additionally released the Art Fair Toolkit for Environmental Responsibility, which outlines practical steps, terminology, methodology, targets, and strategies for fairs to reduce their carbon footprint.

“We are now deep into the era of climate breakdown with its devastating impacts reverberating across the world,” said GCC director Heath Lowndes in a statement. “In light of this, leading art fairs have recognized that there is no more business as usual. For the art sector that has meant facing up to some hard truths about how it operates and starting to adapt practices accordingly. The collaborative approach in making this groundbreaking statement—as well as the work that has gone into creating the shared resource—is a testament to the potential for collective action to lead to systematic changes.”