‘The climate impact of the arts in German is a blind spot’, said the Federal Cultural Foundation in a statement regarding the new environmental impact project. Think about it: the electricity used to illuminate vast, often empty rooms, the air miles travelled both by curators and artworks themselves going off on loan, the heat escaping from thermally inefficient historical gallery buildings. It must add up.
But now, 19 cultural organisations across Germany, including the Dresden state art collections and the Lenbachhaus in Munich, are conducting investigations into their carbon footprint, backed by federal funding. The move echoes initiatives in other spheres worldwide, as businesses and organisations integrate environmental goals into their post-COVID rebuild strategies.
The Lenbachhaus in Munich. Photo: Rufus46, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Elsewhere
In other news, Urs Jaeggi, social theorist, writer and visual artist, has died aged 89. Professor and mentor of assassinated ’68 student movement leader Rudi Dutschke, and subsequently winner of the Ingeborg Bachmann prize for fiction, Jaeggi later turned to abstract painting, reaching similar grades of acclaim. Read Süddeutsche Zeitung’s obituary and find out more about his fascinating, multifaceted life here.