Watch this recorded webinar with Douglas Flandro from CambridgeSeven Associates, Inc., Brenda Leigh Baker from the Madison Children’s Museum, Stephanie Ratcliffe of The Wild Center, Pamela Caserta Hugdahl, Rochester Art Center, and Ryan Kenny from the Anchorage Museum to find out how museums that have signed the Museum Exhibition Materials Pledge are now working toward their sustainability goals. Presenters will share their experiences—good and bad—with bird-safe windows, moveable gallery walls, upcycled materials, internal carbon audits, and other sustainable features. Also learn about “The Climate Action Playbook for Young Learners” and other tools that help children understand and cope with climate change. Ask questions and share sustainability successes and failures at your own museum.

Transcript

Douglas Flandro:

We get away with, you know, the lowered lifespan of material and replace it if it’s a lot lower carbon footprint? Just another factor to think about in fact thinking about commenting This is a QR code that will lead you to the, both a place where you can sign on the materials pledge, and where you can, you can download a copy of the toolkit.

So, we’ll show this again at the end of the presentation. And give me one second in case you’re taking a picture of it now, and then I’m gonna turn the time over to Pamela. About what she’s doing at the Rochester Art Center.

Pamela Caserta Hugdahl:

Great. Thank you so much, Douglas. I’m Pamela Hugdahl, director of Rochester Arts Center. And, we had a problem with birds hitting our building. So, I’m gonna tell you a little bit about what we, did in the process of trying to mitigate that. So, some of the things that I noticed when I came to this institution five years ago is, like, fill me prints on our windows. So, this is a representation of, some of the things I was seeing on our Third Floor in our conference room, our on our Second Floor, weird marks that I didn’t I wasn’t putting two and two together at first.

Go ahead and in advance.

This is an actual photo. Of a pigeon outside of our event space. Where people have weddings and all sorts of big events. And we really you know, it’s like coming into this job. I was like, okay. This is a normal thing. But you can see the list of different kinds of birds that we were finding. Blue jay, goldfinch, finch, pigeons, sparrows, Pigeons are not small birds, so this is pretty disturbing. But even when it’s just a beautiful goldfinch, you’re like, I it’s pretty upsetting. And we wanted to kinda change that climate, not even not just for our visitors who might be like, why is there a dead bird or a carcass or skeletons of birds outside of our building, but, for our staff to, and myself, you know, having a sense of well-being coming into work every day. I don’t wanna be scooping up birds Go ahead and advance.

Some more examples. Yeah. This was, two that evidently collided at about the same time. I just kind of imagine them, you know, merrily flying together courting in the spring, and didn’t go so well. Okay. So, we’re right all along a migratory path. You can see our building is right where, near the bend in the river, and we have glass all around the riverside and front and back of the buildings. So, you know, for 50 feet up, you can see through the building, and it just for a bird, it might look like you can just soar right through

Go ahead and advance. Around the time that I was trying to secure funding and trying to drum up support for this project. This headline came out, nearly 1,000 birds die after striking Chicago building. And I, you know, I had to let the city know we’re in a city building. That we didn’t wanna end up being this statistic. And they took it to heart. So, the city ended up being the primary funder of the project that we undertook. But it was really, an effort to drum up additional support and to make sure that people understood how our building is impacting birds.

So, we held a call for art, and we received a number of really interesting proposals. But one of the things that we were contending with was didn’t know what project we wanted to use. So, the artist had to kind of decide what was gonna be appropriate for them.

But then we also knew that we didn’t want this project to necessarily impact the visitor experience from the inside. Because our exhibition spaces are very connected to these large, spans of windows. And they’re always changing. So, if we if we pick one, for example, Richard Bohn’s design in the in the bottom middle. Beautiful design.

But it’s the same on both sides. And so, that would have really made a permanent impact on how the interior of the building feels.

Go ahead in advance.

So, we ended up selecting an artist with support from the jurors listed here. We had local artist, Sophia Che as our Sierra Club organizer for our local chapter, Chris Acuna, and Lynn Cornell who, was helping our save the Rookery project, Rookery Of Herons that was under fire. So, these people all had a very specific interest in this project.

Go ahead and advance. So, we ended up with the panel selecting Alyssa Boggess’s proposal. And Alyssa her proposal was strong because she not only had she already done some research on the materials, that she wanted to use, she proposed a, project that would not significantly change the feeling of the interior of the building. But she also wanted to involve another artist in her project. And that is Erin Sharky, who is an organizer, cultural worker, and food producer. Both are based in Minneapolis, near us. So, that was you know, help helping to support our local artists and bringing multiple voices into this project.

You can advance, please.

So, the product that Alyssa chose is called Kaleidoscope. And the material is similar to what you might see on a bus wrap so you can see I’ll show I think you can see me. So, you can see that it’s a vinyl, and, unfortunately, it is PVC. The company had tried some other non-PVC versions, and they didn’t have the same, lasting effect. One of the things that we preferred about this product is that it’s rated to last ten years as opposed to two to three years. And our technician who was installing it had never worked with this particular product before but noticed that it was very different to work with compared to, regular perforated vial. Its vinyl. It’s not as gummy, so it was much easier to install.

And, again, for us, the ten-year lifespan was imperative for the amount of money that it takes to do the physical printing and install we needed to know that this wasn’t gonna be a two- or three-year installation.

So, this is an image of the installation process on the front of the building. And as you can see it going up, it’s a poem written by Aaron Sharkey. And I’ll share that with you as we get near the end of the project. This is an image from the interior of our concert conference room looking out over a park.

Behind our building. And what I loved about you know, we didn’t really know how this was gonna have, you know, be seen from the inside. We thought it would be pretty minor. You know? Just it’ll just diffuse the light a little bit.

But the patterns in Alyssa’s design the back of the building come through kind of as a shadow and it ended up adding some, some interest visual interest inside of our conference room. So, it’s kind of like a magic eye. You can see the park, but you can also refocus and see a bit of the pattern. There’s a little bit more of it that you can see and that is the completed, front of the building.

And then this is so you’re seeing the front on the left, the back of the building on the right. The back of the building’s design is, based on the poem that’s written in the middle of the screen, which I’ll read to you in a moment, but the back of the building’s design that Alyssa Boggis did was reflecting on the words in the poem and this idea of flight and soaring and migration. So, you’ll see I think as you as I read it, you’ll you’ll recognize that. There is a space in the middle of the design that looks just white. That is clear perforated vinyl. That still, serves the same function. Still deterring birds from colliding into those windows.

But it doesn’t change or very, very minimally changes how you can see in and out of the building. From those two windows, which is a gallery. We didn’t wanna we didn’t wanna impact the view of that space because sometimes there’s big, interesting installations happening in there. Sometimes they’re active installations. And it’s nice to be able to see what the artist is doing or how the how the gallery is changing from the park.

So, the poem says, not everything real is material. Pain, pain can mean vessel or sore. Spectacle to see through. Aperture to see through.

A portal, a glass house, not stone, not launched, but melted hard, a fragile protection, this is a tool Glass eye. Spy glass. Glass half full. Looking glass. To perceive the invisible, one must name a feeling both transparent and inert. Take new shape space in the sand soar, flap, lean, wonder, loft, glide.

So, I encourage you to check out some other writing by Erin Sharkey. And it’s really wonderful artist. And then this project was, supported mainly through the city of Rochester, through our Rochester Downtown Alliance.

And then we also have some other local funding that came through a support from the Destination Medical Center. Which worked to help us secure deed funds. And for people who are wondering how much it cost, everyone wonders that. We were able to do this, I think, really for the scale of the project on a shoestring. But we wanted to make sure to compensate the artists And, then there’s the collide escape for two spans of 50 foot by 18 feet sections of window.

And then staffing and install so 42,000. And that is the finished product, and I’m so pleased to share that we have not had a fatal or, well, any bird strike against these windows that we have seen any evidence of since it was installed last September. So, we’ve gotten through two migration seasons when we normally would have picked up at least 40 birds in that span of time. And we haven’t had any. So, really pleased that it’s working.

Thank you so much, and feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.

Stephanie Ratcliffe:

Can you hear me now? Okay. Sorry. Hi. Stephanie Ratcliffe from the Wilde Center. I’m gonna be talking about two different exhibitions, one indoor and one, out of door. The first exhibition, next slide,

Douglas Flandro:

Great.

Stephanie Ratcliffe:

is called Climate Solutions, and this exhibition was funded by, the Institute for Museum and Library Services and HLA and Peter Kindler. This exhibition’s purpose was to demonstrate that climate solutions already exist and extend invitations to the visitors to join in the process in any way they can. And we did this with the storytelling approach, which was really profiling people in our community. That were already making a difference, already working on solutions every day.

It was a storytelling approach. And so, you’ll sort of see that as you see these slides. Sustainable materials were obviously very important to us all along the way, and we wanted to walk the walk. And while I can you know, you can start this process, as Douglas said, at any point, even if you’re almost sort of halfway through a design project, you can start it. Because for me and what I noticed with the team, it really becomes a habit of mine. So, you can, you know, you can start it now, but it for us, we did start at the very beginning. It was very intentional, but I don’t wanna say that as if that’s the right way to do it. As you can start this at any part of the process and make better choices as you go along. And these questions were the questions that we consistently asked ourselves every step of the process, and we allotted a lot of time to brainstorm and to research these particular questions. So, what else can we what can we reuse or repurpose

How can we consume less? Asking ourselves about the entire life cycle of a material choice and very particular to us because the Wild Center has a particular aesthetic. How can we use less plastic and more wood And which product, even if more expensive, is the best environmental choice? And so, I’ll go through some of these as we go along. I guess the other important note I should say is that this was an in-house development team, in house fabrication with an external three, two d three d designer. Who was on board with this process from the very beginning. I think that, it was so intentional and the whole process that I think that people could get in trouble with is if you’re going out for a bid, you’re asking for someone gives you a, a design bid, and then the questions you are asking is asking a lot more time of them.

And so, there could be some tension there between the client and the designer if you are not clear from the beginning that it is an ask to do this extra research, that the extra brainstorming will happen, the weighing, the decision making, all those things take time. But for us, it was a little easier because it was it was an internal design team, and it was all part of the idea from the get-go. So, one of the very first things we asked ourselves is what can we reuse? So, in this image, look at the four screens that are basically just large projections screens of our environmental graphics that were left over from the previous exhibit. So, we went into the space, we looked around.

 What, if anything, can we reuse? We ended up leaving these screens here and finding a new purpose for them. And not sort of stripping them down when we were stripping out the gallery. And there were also some large, tree, structures that were there from a previous exhibit that we also reused. And we just said, okay. These things are staying. They’re part of the design. And let’s work around them. So, in this case, what we did is we had we created an interactive where people could actually change the images that are up there. And it was really about the spirit of what we’re all trying to save here. So, they were beautiful images of nature.

Next slide.

In the process of taking down the previous exhibit, we had a lot of Unistrut, the black railings that you see there. We knew that we were gonna have we’re gonna need these railings, and so we took down Unistrut that was used in a lighting grid and repurposed it and built these, railings. And then on the you can see the Lumicore was used in the center. And that particular choice, we made it because it was 60% recycled content. We all know, you know, you could’ve you we could’ve chosen a lot more sort of you know, we were trying not to use plexiglass, but in this case, it was the easiest way to make this do what it needed to do for code wise and also block some visual things. There were things that we needed it to do, so we did use this product, but we did pay extra for the highly recycled content. Next slide.

We also, as everyone’s seen on their set of Instagram feed, things that you can do with pallet wood, and you see projects making so we did use some pallet wood. And I will tell you it was very labor intensive. We did this in house.

It took an enormous amount of time. And although I’m happy aesthetically with what it did for us in the exhibit, I don’t think we would do it again, but there is plenty of repurposed wood out on the market, whether it is barn wood or, things from other there’s a whole cottage industry around repurposed wood. So, I don’t go ahead and use the pallet wood, but the problem was it’s not good wood to start with. Okay. Next slide.

We also made a choice to use a lot of use wood, as much as possible. So, we screened all of our labels on plywood. I know you’ve seen this in other museums. It is an aesthetic that really works well. With our museum, and it will probably be the only way we do things in the future because of the embodied carbon in the wood. And we like the aesthetic. It’s fits us, and we sort of knew this was gonna be our graphic choice from the get-go.

The other thing, these images you these large images of people that we are profiling all that is a is a, a rent a frame and a piece of canvas that has been pressure, fit into that into that frame, and those frames are reusable.

So, this is not a big piece of plastic. It has a beautiful mat. You can there’s all kinds of finish choices, but I think these work really well. And the great thing is that we can take down these images and reuse these frames, going forward. That’s why we made that choice.

Next slide.

In another case, what we decided to do instead of using a lot of videos, although there’s video in this exhibition, we really wanted you to connect with this the person that we were telling the story about. So, we used these large portraits, and then what we did is took, old telephones and MacGyvered a solution with the shelf pieces and parts, electronic parts And what happens is you pick up the phone and, the person that is in the portrait is talking to you. We have, you know, it might be a two-to-three-minute loop. Something like that. And I will say just that effectively as an exhibit technique, it was, I think, in this case, more effective than video, which would have changed the whole aesthetic of the exhibition. There is something about feeling like you’re talking to them on the phone. It’s just kind of embedded in the use of that product. Anyway, we had fun finding all these old phones and turning them into, basically, you know, a hand wand. And we did use those in other places. Because with the video, this does not work well with an interface in which you need to choose stories with buttons or another thing like that in a video menu. It works well when there is one two-to-three-minute loop is the way it worked for us.

Next slide.

We also, very purposely used natural materials. We needed a large map of the Adirondack Park where the Weld Center is located, and so, we created sort of a what it what it what it need to do graphically, and then we went out and, sustainably harvest a lot of moss. We had a whole preservation process. And then we used that moss as a very texture rich, graphic in part of the exhibit.

Next slide.

There was a part that we were talking about things that you can do at home, and so this allowed us to showcase some other materials what you’re seeing on the bark siding on the on this particular house is something that is was a product that is used during the furniture making process in North Carolina, and you and they, basically steam it flat, And when you use this siding, you never need any maintenance. So, it’s an incredibly, sustainable material over time. It’s and it looks beautiful, and it has this wonderful texture. And it’s a very Adirondack y type thing. On the inside, we used some wood flooring, which were cut off cuts during the manufacturing process of wood floors. From a company in Vermont. You know, what you’ll find often in the sort of manufacturing, if you sort of dig down and find these and research these materials, there’s a lot of, you know, things that have to be sold in sort of a perfector. And there’s if you’re just off perfect, there’s a lot of different materials that you can use that were just fine for our purposes. So, again, the flooring was used, that were basically offcuts from a flooring company in Vermont.

Next slide.

The carpet, you know, we’re all using carpet. Squares, but we made this choice. Which, you know, was probably a little bit more on the in, expensive side But the carpet was made from recycled materials, and the company it’s a full lifecycle product. The company will take the product back at the end of its useful life for So, there’s and they will recycle it or dispose of it in a way that is environmentally friendly. So, we like that that life cycle approach of this product. And that’s why we chose it.

Next slide.

We also you know, in asking ourselves what could we consume less. There you’ll see you see the freestanding, text panel. But you can see that know, back in the old days, I would’ve we would’ve probably built something that was a box, a hollow box, which we’ve all sort of built. In this case, we said, how can we minimally build this? And you’ll see that it’s there’s no front or back and you know, I guess I’m surprised about how quickly I have accepted that aesthetic from set of more museum traditions, which kind of create a lot of boxes and, you know, that you don’t need. Was the wood really do we really need to use that wood? In the chairs that you see there, there were Facebook marketplace. There was a place that we found there was a lot of, industrial upholstery material, and we bought the upholstery material, mix and match it, and then found a local reupholster to kinda create the seating, in the exhibit. There was a tabletop that we needed in our tinkering studio, and that is a repurposed bowling alley.

Next sign.

We wanted to put, these cranes that were symbolic of another project, and we basically went to a local arts center and, young people and others helped us fold don’t know. It might be a thousand cranes. It’s a lot of cranes, but we used our old brochures in order to do this.

Next slide.

Then we try to sort of see how far can we push this commitment to wood on our labels and we tried it outside. And so, what you’re seeing is an experiment that did not work. So, we did the woods the four-color woods screening on wood. We sealed it. We waxed it. We did everything we could to see if it was gonna hold up, and it was it failed, I would say, within six months, the splitting and, you know, so many people could have predicted this, but we thought let’s give it a try. And so, in this we did redo them, and we did use a traditional plastic wrap substrate. So, we gave into the plastic here because we needed them to last, and the and the images in the graphics were already done. There was no way to start it. From the beginning. So, something’s working, something’s not, but I’m glad we tried it.

Next slide.

And we have a new, one-mile outdoor, accessible trail, and there’s a bowl run that runs all alongside this particular trail. And here, we really, again, wanted to commit to wood panels, so next slide. So, early in the process, we did a little bit of figuring, and we figured out if we bought this this machine, the engraving machine, which, you know, a lot of artisans have and people have, that we could make our own labels in house, and it and the cost would be comparable to, creating the way that we might have traditionally done them in in other in other ways like the previous slides I show I’ve shown you. So, in this case, we knew from the get-go that this was gonna be the aesthetic. So, working with our designers, they worked within the constraints of what this fabrication method looks like. So, what it is, it’s very woodcutty.

We can stain the wood. We can bring some color in that way, but you’re not a four-color bed chips. That’s important to you. But knowing from the very beginning that we wanted to commit to Wood, were talking we did a lot of work, and I’ll show you one more slide about for the first time, really, talking about embodied carbon within, the landscape and we just wanted to walk the walk and show the example, and so, we really wanna use the wood. So, the first year, we did it with, a plywood product. That also split, and then what we did in this case was to, use solid wood, and there has it’s been out there a year, and that is working There is a whole process of waxing and several three coats of this and that, which I can anyone’s interested, we can get to the specifics of that. But this is working.

So, next slide.

It’s, of people using the embedded cards. So, we just I cannot see the slides. I think that was the last slide for me. Is that right? I’m now my image just went to the group of us. So, I can’t see what everyone is seeing.

Brenda Baker:

Yeah. That’s what we’re all seeing. Okay. Alright.

Stephanie Ratcliffe:

Thank you. That was last slide. Thank you.

Brenda Baker:

Alright. Thanks, Stephanie. I’m Brenda Baker from Madison Children’s Museum, and Madison Children’s Museum is, is nestled between 5 Lakes. In a very progressive community in Wisconsin across from the state capital. And we’ve been working in sustainable exhibit design for the past thirty years. You can go to the next slide.

So, I just wanna start with the why, and we know that that young children are born with a sense of empathy. And we feel like it’s our job now more than ever to really take on this climate crisis with more sense of urgency and to support children’s, growing empathy and curiosity about the world.

And we think we can do that through sustainable materials.

Next slide.

I just wanna start with sort of outlining our museums understanding of, of green exhibits and what we this is sort of the definition of what we, strive for every day. So, designing for circularity and disassembly, the whole idea of acting like we’re a biological system ourselves, where waste equals food. The idea of eliminating waste eliminating toxins, working toward using materials that have low embodied energy, as Douglas and Stephanie both already spoke about, using local, sustainable and reused materials whenever possible. Decreasing our transportation, and also promoting the idea of regeneration.

So, next slide.

And I think the most important thing for us is a children’s museum is really thinking through why we’re why we’re doing this, and we believe that we really need a new design paradigm that centers children’s health and well-being in every decision and the idea that we’re doing no harm. We know that young children, have they have their immune systems are not fully developed until they’re five They their respiration rates are twice that of adults. They put everything in their mouth, and they’re lower to the ground where toxins generally fall. So, we really feel like if we center all of our work about around, really thinking about children first, we know that if we solve the world for children, we’re also solving it for the planet.

Next.

So, I’m gonna show three different projects today that we’ve done within the last five years. This one is the trash lab. This was a partnership with the Dane County Department of Waste and Renewables. And this, project was really exciting because we’re really telling the story of waste in the hopes of trying to decrease waste. In our community. So, the trash lab, the goal from the very beginning was that we would use reclaimed materials. We used 90% of the materials that were used to make this exhibit, came from the waste stream. Including the vehicle that you’re seeing here. This was, was refurbished for us to use, so it was not new. All of the images on the outside of the trash lab were things that were found in the landfill. That still had a real, that still had worth and purpose.

Next.

Inside the trash lab, we really tried to change that understanding of the three r’s and we added we added two more refuse and refuse and redesign. That’s the last one. So, all of the materials inside you know, again reiterate that com that, that notion of trying to reuse everything that we can. So, all the materials you’re seeing, the plastic above the refuse, that mural, was all created with things found from the landfill.

Next slide.

Even on the ceiling, you can see that there are more items from the landfill. So, it was sort of organized by color. There are three sections of the exhibit, each one-color code coordinated, to go along with, the components of the exhibit.

Next.

That you’re seeing some corrugated metal here. This was all reused. We use we use wood. Again, that we found in the landfill. The only sort of new material that we used aside from, like, screws and those kinds of things were, were the Baltic birch panels. Again, like the Wilde Center, we printed with soy ink on these on the Baltic Birch, and then installed everything with screws. So, everything was made for disassembly. We didn’t use any wood glue or anything like that. In the pieces as well. But by using that soy ink, these panels can be reused. You can sand them down and reuse them for another purpose.

Next slide.

So, the next project that we did was the underground, and this was the project we took on during, during COVID. And so, we had a giant parking lot that was in disrepair that needed to be torn down, and our whole goal was to create tear down the parking lot and put up a paradise sort of.

So, next slide.

So, this is the building of the underground and we made a decision early on again with our really strong sustainability ethic at our museum we made a decision to use local materials to use natural materials, and to use materials with low embodied carbon. Again, following with an ethic we have about working locally. So, we do have an only local ethic where we try to use everything from within our state or at the very least within 100 to 200 miles of our museum. So, the material that you’re seeing here in this image, this is and then this one as well. You can go to the next one. That’s fine. Is, this is black locust. And black locust is an interesting material because it’s an invasive species. And so, so we know that by cutting down an invasive species, we’re also, talking about biodiversity loss. The more that we can use clear invasive species from our land, we can provide more opportunity for native species. That that are better for our environment. So, sort of attacking that other, issue besides climate change, biodiversity loss, which is equally as terrifying really as climate change. So, but anyway, the by using these natural materials, like the carbon couch you saw in the Wild Center, we’re also using materials that store carbon. So, not only are we using materials that, help restore first, but by using this these solid wood structures where, we’re also you know, looking at the embodied carbon and working in that direction.

So, next image.

So, this is our this is our, branch climber. The branch climber was made by artists. We have a also a strong sort of communication with our the artists in our community. We have lots of people who are helping us make handmade exhibits. So, the underground was also made by artists this image is really nice because you can see that there’s so many opportunities for climbing up and down. So, unlike a standard, playground piece of playground equipment where there you know, a child might find five, 10, 15, 20 ways to climb up and down, Here, you can find, you know, hundreds and hundreds of ways to climb. To find a path upwards.

Next slide. And I think what I love about this image is that, you know, kids are climbing this branch climber and basically hugging trees without even knowing it. So, they’re feeling that aliveness of nature. While they’re climbing.

We also worked really closely again, as I mentioned before, with local artists. So, again, supporting our local economy by working with putting the money back into our own community. But we aside from using working with metal, we did work with wood. We did work with, metal artists and, and then have this this beautiful artwork sort of throughout the throughout the space.

Next.

This image is, is basically a barrier that that blocks our loading dock from the underground. And, you know, again, the whole idea of how can we make decisions every decision we make, be a sustainable one. So, this barrier, we wanted something that was that that where the light shown through, but would show through, but that was, made with recycled materials. So, this this piece shows a wave from Lake Mendota, one of the lakes close to the museum.

But it was made by an a local artist using 7,200 plastic water bottles.

You can go to the next slide.

To see the back of it. This is the back of this piece, but the 7,200 water bottles is the same equivalent of how many water bottles our community uses in twenty minutes. So, we also you know, in the signage about this, we’re also talking about the fact that we have, we don’t use single use plastic. In our museum as well. And the chairs in the lower right-hand corner are also made out of out of plastic water bottles and milk bottles.

Next.

We the whole idea of reuse is important to our museum, and we think that by you know, finding playful ways to reuse materials like this airplane that’s been made into a tinkering table, we can really instill in young children that the idea of using their imaginations to rethink So, I think that’s a really important part of the story. And I think that’s a really important part of the story. And I think that’s a really important part of the story. And I think that’s a really important part of the story. And I think that’s a really important part of the story. And I think that’s a really important part of the story. And I think that’s a really important part of the story. And I think that’s a really important part of the story. And I think that’s a really important part of the story. And I think that’s a really important part of the story. How we how we solve problems, how we can solve problems more creatively. In the future. So, this is just an example of the kind of reuse we have throughout our museum.

Next.

Here again, you see some of that corrugated, metal that that metal that, has been reused. We do have a little bit of plastic in our muse in in this exhibit. Only because we know that with climate change, having a steel slide in the in the back, in in the heat of the sun will not be a solution that will be, be able to we won’t be able to have that kind of solution in the future because it just gets too hot. And kids are already burning their legs and things like that, on metal slides. So, there’s those will be going by the wayside.

Next.

This image on the right is some shingles that were made out of reused fire hoses so, it’s they’re really beautiful and sort of an unconventional material. We made these shingles out of. But again, it gets the conversation going. For young people and for families about how you can think about materials in new ways.

Next.

And the last project I wanna show you is the nice age trail. Which opened a year ago. And this, exhibit was based on a couple of things. It was based on our new climate action playbook, which I’ll show you at the very end. Our we have we’re in, in a consortium with nine other museums. Okay. Back. No. You don’t have to show it yet.

Go back to the

Douglas Flandro:

Sorry.

Brenda Baker:

yeah. Go next yeah. Next one. Sorry. Anyway, the nice age trail is based on the climate action playbook. And this is a sort of a resource for caregivers of young children to help them think about how to talk about climate change. We do know that climate change is impacting young people under the age of five. And they’re having concerns in climate anxiety. And there are no resources really currently available before this. About how parents of young kids can navigate that cry the crisis of, you know, of understanding how to talk to a young child who’s scared, who sees images on television and social media, about climate change, but they don’t have the developmental capacity to understand how to talk about it yet. So, anyway, this, exhibit is really based on how do we how do we build empathy, in young children.

Empathy for all species. How do we connect them to nature even when they’re indoors? And how do we build that sort of sense of hope and collective action? So, this, I just wanted to, talk about this image. This is at the very beginning of the exhibit. This is a bear cave. And we like Stephanie, we to experiment as much as we can. We tried 20 to 30 different kinds of materials. To make something that was a sustainable material that was a better choice than concrete for building the bear cave in in the end.

After twenty to thirty and six months of time of experimenting, we couldn’t come up with a solution that would, that would be as good as concrete, and I’m not seeing the slides anymore. So, so, anyway, we I just wanted to reiterate that that, you know, that perfection is sort of the enemy of, of moving forward in progress. So, we’re gonna keep experimenting. We did end up using concrete for this image. But we’re gonna keep trying.

Next slide.

Douglas Flandro:

Are you seeing that are you seeing that image to beehive?

Brenda Baker:

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, this is, again, in terms of that that concept of using as little material as possible, we designed these, sort of beehives based on the size of a piece of Baltic birch plywood. So, that we could make the biggest exhibit we could with using the least amount of material possible. So, even the little cutouts for the little hexagon cutouts, we found another purpose, another exhibit component to make with those.

Next.

And this is, these are some trees. We have three trees in the exhibit space that are all made out of pallet wood, so there is a there is a use for pallet wood. On an internal structure where your kids aren’t gonna get splinters. But these trees are made out of chicken wire, pallet wood, and cardboard and wheat paste.

So, even something like wood glue we did not use because you can’t you know, it’s got plastics in it, and so it can’t be composted. So, this these trees, again, can be taken apart and composted when done when the exhibit’s over. Next, And then, likewise, we had this is our beaver lodge made with, again, sustainable materials that can be composted meaning wheat straw, linseed oil, beeswax, and beaver chewed logs and some that we made that to look like beaver chewed logs.

Next.

And here’s another image of the beaver lodge from the inside.

Next.

and then lastly, this is just the Climate Action Playbook. And I would encourage you if you if you’re interested in this to go to our website which is caretakersofwonder.0rg, and you can learn all about this awesome project we did that that helps, helps young people and caregivers learn more about how to how to deal with the climate crisis in sort of proactive, positive ways. So, thank you. That’s it.

Ryan Kenny

Hi, everybody. I’m Ryan Kenny. I’m a director and chief operating officer at the Anchorage Museum in Anchorage, Alaska. And I’m gonna talk you about two different things here today. Quickly, exhibition process using, our how to survive exhibition as an example and the carbon audit process for how we’re doing tracking. So, I think that I just wanna echo a couple of things that have been said here.

First is been said a couple times. Don’t let the perfection be the enemy of progress. A lot of the things that we’re all talking about here do take time. They take commitment, and it’s really an iterative process that involves multiple different departments and buy in and a little bit of openness to, accepting imperfection or at least a new way of doing things. So, these are a few things I’ll be talking about here.

So, or how to survive that exhibition ran from 2023 through 02/2025. This was a way, while it’s a contemporary art exhibition that looked at the climate crisis through a lens of compassion and care and hopefulness as a way, I think we’ve all seen many, exhibitions revolving around climate change or climate crisis. That are can be a little bit doom and gloom. This was a bit more focused on positive things that we can do and implement in our lives and but also, but really through a lens of contemporary art still. So, but it was also a way for our museum to really put into practice a lot of the different pledges that we are signed up for and commitments that we have made, including the materials pledge.

So, thinking about ways that we could incorporate new sustainable, or at least different materials breaking away from our to existing process about exhibition design and thinking about how we prioritize relationship and different ways of working both internally as a team here at the museum thinking about our exhibition run times and what is, what’s acceptable for an exhibition duration, and really then also tracking along the way during using this as, sort of a kickoff exhibition for how we can be better about tracking our progress and to show that whether or not we’re succeeding in our goals. Or that we have or where we have room to improve.

So, next slide.

So, thinking about, how to survive a little bit here. This is a way for us to implement, I said, a lot of different processes in working with our collection here at the Anchorage Museum. Also for, working with artists differently. We can go to the next slide here. So, this was not a an exhibition that really solved everything. We learned a lot along the way. As well as prioritizing staff wellness and went to say, it’s okay to not really, you know, succeed in everything that we may have set out to do originally. We had goals for this exhibition for eliminating or at least, reducing as much as possible shipping for loans. So, we are working with different artists such as Carolina Quezado at Los Angeles, and we worked with her to actually rather than having her ship an existing artwork to Anchorage, We worked with her studio and where our team fabricated a new work to her specifications using reused and upcycled materials.

And then for mural portions of her project, we worked with a local artist to have the mural created on, Baltic Birch plywood that had been sealed that would be then able to be reused. And now that they’re at local, gardens here in Anchorage, So, finding ways to eliminate shipping, when possible, to eliminate travel, but to really to this also involves finding the right artists and partners to work with. Finding people that align with your values, with your mission, with the goals of a given project here. We were really lucky and fortunate with this project to find, some fantastic, very well-established artists who were equally committed and excited to be working with museums in a different way. I think a lot of the artists that we have typically worked with, many ex exhibitions, we’ve been working and, featuring, climate change and in exhibitions here for since about 02/1011. And, really, a lot of them are working in ways that are their artwork focuses on ways of more sustainable. So, we’re trying to put our practice now where that, that message also is.

Next slide.

So, part of the materials pledge was a way for us to, experiment with some different types of materials. This is two examples of large environmental murals artworks that were so, what many museums, we are, producing large artworks, environmental graphics on adhesive vinyl. Which are typically and historically PVC based.

And so, we are working now with our local printing company to have non-PVC based vinyl, products for our large murals. There are some the products are getting better even from when this exhibition was created. One of the drawbacks that we found with these is that the PVC base was a lot in the matte laminate that was on the adhesive vinyl. It’s creating some extra glare. So, I put these images in showing that you can see the hot spots of lights at the top. We had, kind of, a nightmare of a time lighting some of these really, tall, you know, eight eighteen, 19 foot tall, murals and, eliminating hotspots. But right now, the products have even gotten better, so we’re having more success. But this product was not even available in Alaska before this exhibition with up. And so, working with partners that value the work that we’re doing, also was, a great way. So, now that these products are available for other people in town to use too. It took a commitment and a little bit of a leap of faith because they are more costly, typically, but we find better value in them.

So, next slide.

Another thing here. So, this is a store survive exhibition. It has now been at the and been relocated over to our Seed Lab Building, which is a co-creative space that the museum runs with a project across the street from us. As an example for different types of sustainable and more eco-friendly materials that are coming onto the market or in testing. So, the community can have these as a resource with, QR codes, links to where they might be available, some of them are products that people can buy, some of them are not. But another thing I wanna talk about in here too is in even in previous images, what you’ve seen here is the material that these are mounted to and the title sign at the earlier image, we’re, moving more towards having labels, backing materials, substrates, as, on a thick cardboard material called Falcon board. There’s also Eagle cell. I think they love the bird metaphors.

So, there are these cardboard materials where typically in the past, we were using far more, expanded PVC products like Sintra or just adhesive vinyl or even polished acrylics This is for printing out labels, for, text panels, We might even be using MDF that had been clad with, wrapped with an adhesive vinyl. And these are great for color. They’re great for durability, for clean printing. And but we’ve taken a or of a leap of faith and just said that it’s okay embracing some different types of imperfection maybe you could call it, or just an openness to a different aesthetic. And so, using this cardboard for our substrate more now means that text panels at the end are at least theoretically recyclable. We’ve learned a lot along the way too about our long wait stream. We been tracking our waste stream all the way down to find out, like, really what truly is recyclable Alaska has some additional complications on top of this as you might imagine. But at least things cardboard is will break down more naturally into the environment in a landfill even if it does make into a landfill and not if it’s recycled. So, trying these different products has been, really beneficial, and we’ve carried this forward past How to Survive into other exhibitions as well.

Next slide.

Looking to dance past this one, just showing here how the materials library is also available online as a resource to we’ve created a web link for it. But I also wanna talk about then our carbon audit process. So, while it’s good to do this work, it’s really also important to track the work that you are doing. And so, starting in a few years ago, we embarked on a holistic carbon audit of the entire museum. So, for those of you who maybe are not fully familiar with a carbon audit, there’s different scopes to a carbon audit here. Scope one, two, and three. Scope one and two were completed a couple years ago here and using, 2019 data as a baseline, and now we’re continuing forward. And so, scope one and scope two are direct admissions from power plants, from the building itself, from our vehicle fleets.

But right now, what we’re doing and what I’ve been helping to be a more active participant in is our scope three portion of the carbon audit here. And this is a huge almost, can take it out into infinity for how, far this could go. It’s all the indirect emissions in your in your chain. So, it’s your materials, your waste, staff travel, and even you could take it as far as visitor travel. And in Alaska, you can imagine that our visitors have higher carbon footprint often getting here, especially during summer tourist seasons. So, we’ve decided to really keep it too. We’re focusing on our exhibition with this portion here and staff travel and, things that we have a little bit more quantitative ability to measure.

Next slide.

So, again, scope three, is staff travel or commuting exhibition design and evaluation, and our waste and recycling audit. As I mentioned, we’ve been tracking where does our waste go. We are weighing all of our waste now and, tracking how much waste are we creating.

We’re tracking what when we recycle everything with, a local company that recycles, large quantities? Where does that actually go? And where what is truly recyclable so we can be more efficient put our own staff resources to better use.

And then really for every exhibition that we are creating our own carbon audit for this process here. So, that is you can go to next slide, Douglas.

So, we are tracking what are the materials we are using? What is their carbon footprint? This is all the products we’re using, the different adhesive vinyl, plywood, screws, nails, paint, the whole kit and caboodle. So, this can be it is a very, initially complicated and daunting process. But thankfully, there are tools that are free and available to everybody that can help along the way. So, a big caveat I wanna say here is that our museum was fortunate to apply for and receive grant funding to support a climate coordinator position. So, this is as a position, and we are we’ve had such great success with this position. That even after the grant ends, we will be finding funding and making this position that we can carry forward into the future, hopefully, permanently. Because otherwise, this is an enormous amount of work.

Everyone is busy. I’m sure that you are all too. And so, to add on the extra tracking and calculations of the data here and creating these reports, is, can be a bridge too far. And so, we want to make sure that we are prioritizing staff wellness and not just adding on to people’s, scope of work. So, this climate coordinator position works with us here, using the data that we as exhibition manufacturers, designers, fabricators, can track through our design layouts, our elevations, our schedules of, printing materials. We can track this. And then there are tools, such as the gallery carbon calculator. This is through the Gallery Climate Coalition. And so, this is a free tool that can be a available to use and helps us to create reports. There are other tools which we’ll look at a second here if you wanna advance.

So, yeah, this is kind of jumping here, but we, these are the types of things that we are measuring in our, carbon footprint print of an exhibition. So, materials, construction, all of that. We are measuring our travel as well to shipping is much as materials are, shipping will be the largest, footprint here. Especially if you are shipping anything by air or have, air travel for visitors. Air travel is an outsized component. We also try to track, our digital footprint to a certain extent. We don’t track within an exhibition our energy consumption through lighting because that gets tracked through scope two as part of our overall, building usage.

If you get advanced, Douglas.

So, another tool, is the materials carbon calculator here, through Stitch. And this is another tool that’s really helpful where you put in any type of material, and it will give you the carbon footprint of what this material is. So, we’re tracking on our own relatively simple Excel spreadsheets. For the different materials that are used within an exhibition. We’re finding out the carbon footprint of them. These are getting input and then we’re coming up with one with our staff travel, which is a little bit easier to do. Even, Google flights will tell you your staff travel, what the carbon footprint of a given flight is. And then there were different tools, such as the gallery climate, calculator will tell you about for shipping. And there are there’s some generalities that need to be made with this, I wanna say. In that, not all plywood are created the same. You might have to make, some generalizations, take some liberties.

Certain materials are far more proprietary than the others. Adhesive vinyl is one of these. Companies like three m are pretty reluctant to actually share, probably for some valid reasons about what, might be the carbon footprint. One of those reasons that we scrambled with, and we started getting to the weeds too early on was, you know, where is where is ground zero for this? Is it when we buy, if you buy a two by four at Home Depot, or is it, where that supplier came from? Is it the forest? So, I encourage you to not get caught up in that because you’ll bog yourself down immediately. And to just start maybe at your point of purchase you could add on we add on just sort of the cost of the carbon footprint for a barge to come up from Seattle to Anchorage, to add in a little bit of extra shipping, recognition.

If you wanna advance, Douglas.

So, how are we then measuring this, putting this all together? We are creating reports for every one of our exhibitions now. So, this is not just the data that’s going into, these the graphs and the charts about our actual carbon footprint. What it also involves is post installation video walkthroughs that we do with our climate coordinator We have a narrative that goes into this. So, it’s an actual report and I’m happy to share. These drafts, I will say, are constantly being evolved, and we are getting better at them. Information that gets input. But I’m happy to share examples of these reports with anybody that’s interested. They have a narrative. They’re also just great for historical documentation of your exhibitions.

How did you with different subsections of an exhibition, how did you build this? Was it shipped in? Did you were you using reused components, or was it all purchased? New? Does it have a future life? What was the artist’s relationship with it? As institutional knowledge can sometimes go away if people on or staff change. This is now a report that we have of one of our exhibitions, starting from 2024 and going forward. And so, we’re really able to track all this established consistency. We document our sources for where we how we calculate our info our data and got our information from. So, it’s really been a really valuable tool. Also important is that with the evaluation is that it shows progress. It helps to answer questions for people that are curious about what you’re the work that you’re doing. And for showing funders and potential grantors about, hey. Is this is how we’re implementing and how we’re making use of the funds that you’re giving us. How we’re putting we’re walking the walk instead of just talking the talk. So, they’re really useful for all of that.

Next slide.

And so, yeah, I think that there’s a number of different things that are more tactical, excuse me, that we can all do for creating more ecologically aware exhibitions. Conversion to LED lighting, making better use of material selections, being modular and reuse and reusing things. But really, what we’re finding is that the big impacts come from trying to reduce shipping as much as possible or at least shipping in more sustainable ways. Air travel is it is it’s a heavy, heavy load on your overall chart. So, shipping by water, by ground, using local when possible, and then the other thing that we’re doing more at an organizational level and we’re really fortunate to have fantastic support from the board level on down with this. Is that we are really even revamping and happen for past couple years about exhibition duration periods. Extending the length of exhibitions.

I started at the museum here about sixteen years ago, we were often rotating, major exhibitions every four months like a lot of other organizations Kind of tied in a little bit to traveling exhibition schedules which we found was not sustainable for us, for a lot of reasons. Alaska is on a whole different model due to shipping, timelines, constraints, funding, population base. But, really, also, we would hear far more no matter as we extended our exhibition durations from four months to six months, nine months. And now some of our longest exhibitions running sixteen months to eighteen months. This is not every exhibition.

I I wanna say we have many different programs. We’re rotating through about 12 to 15 different temporary exhibitions per year still. But some of our longer ones and our more expensive ones are, larger footprints. We’re running for longer. And we still hear more commented out, I wish I could have seen that. I always said, is that already is that not open anymore? Than we do about has why is this still up? So, we are still gathering metrics for, doing surveys with our members, with our visitors. But I would encourage you to rethink about exhibition duration periods. It gives our programming education teams far more ability to curate thoughtful programming, work with artists, work with school groups that may not be interested in exhibition if it’s not available to an entire semester or a full, academic calendar year. It also gives us our curatorial teams, more time for thoughtful curation. And for everyone, if you run an exhibition twice as long, if you’re on six months and you run it for a year, you’ve taken an entire exhibition with all of that new build, new materials, and waste out of it out of the out of your waste stream and out of your carbon footprint yearly calculation. So, again, there is no judgment. It’s all every exhibition, every museum is gonna have different calculations.

But it’s really a if you wanna there’s no better way than just not doing a thing. and, you know, making better use of the programming than, with what you already have going on.

Next slide.

Or that’s it.

Douglas Flandro:

Okay. Thank you, Ryan. Since we’re running over time, do we have time for a few questions, or should we wrap up?

Cecelia Walls:

We have a couple of questions if folks are willing to bear with us. We still have over 60 folks in the webinar, so thank you so much for sticking with us through our technical difficulties, everyone. I we had a question about the reusable canvas. So, Stephanie, in the frames. Was that ordered from somewhere or fabricated in house?

Stephanie Ratcliffe:

That was not in house. That was I can look up the fabricator. It was very standard canvas printing Very it’s very thin. It’s thinner than you would think. It’s it was it’s very it was I can look it up. I can’t remember the vendor, but it’s nothing special, I guess, I will say.

But they did they did come in pre stretched for us, from the vendor, which was really helpful.

And, so, Douglas, your part I don’t know if there’s any way you can do a couple more of your slides after these questions. I think that because your section was cut off, I would definitely go to a couple of your slides, Douglas, my recommendation. For the group here.

Douglas Flandro:

Okay. Like, a QR code?

Cecelia Walls

That would be great. We Yeah. That would be great. And then if a couple of the ones from the beginning, if could go back and just quickly very quickly top-level cover some of the first few slides.

Douglas Flandro:

Sure.

Cecelia Walls

But we did have one more question. I believe it was for Brenda that I’m not positive. Were there any concerns about bringing pests into the museum space when we’re using wood pallets and parts of dead tree?

Brenda Baker:

Were there any concern about pests? Was that the question? So, we there weren’t. We kiln dried, we kiln dried our wood before we bring it into the museum. So, we didn’t have concerns about that. And, like, some of the wood that we use for, the beaver lodge, all of that was treated. Before it came to the museum.

So, great. Thank you so much. Now, Douglas, if you don’t mind just

Douglas Flandro:

Sure. And, and, yeah, again, I apologize. It’s worked on a when we practiced, so I’m not sure what happened. But yeah. Let’s see.

Let me just I think I might just introduce the museum exhibition materials pledge. I think I talked about this, but this is what it looks like. It’s just a simple commitment saying that we are paying attention to sustainability.

Is a list of the signatories of the museum. The people who are here, the museums who are here. And this is what the toolkit looks like. So, there’s the pledge in the toolkit. The pledge is signing that letter. The toolkit is this 20-page document you can download, and it just has a lot of tips and tools, for thinking about sustainability. This section talks about project timeline and what you what you can do when.

There’s a pay a few pages for each of those five categories of sustainability. Looking at, gender diversity, community hours shift, things that you can start to think about and some goals you can set.

And then at the end, there’s product specific guidelines, where we’re looking at paints or interior stains. And it lists, certifications or standards that you wanna look for when you’re when you’re choosing those materials. As well as a few in a few cases, some products that are doing really great work with sustainability.

And then I talked through let’s see. I think few other people talked about a body carbon. Are just some examples of the spreadsheets that I think, Ryan was talking about the similar thing that he that they do. We just collect information about, the card footprint.

Looking at the life expectancy looking at how much carbon footprint each product uses, how much of that product are we and then looking at how many times do we need to replace it in given life expectancy of the exhibit. So, you would make great different choices if it was a three month exhibit or a six month exhibit than you would if it’s a twenty year exhibit.

And we just showed low carbon solution, a baseline solution, and then this is what we ended up with, which was just slightly above the low carbon solution.

And that was it. Any other questions?

Cecelia Walls

Think that’s all. Thank you so much. I wanna thank you, Douglas, for running us through this. To Pamela, Stephanie, Brenda, and Ryan for sharing your, really truly innovative and excellent stories. Thank you all for, joining us today. And look for the recording coming soon.

Thank you, everyone.

Pamela Caserta Hugdahl:

Thank you, Cecelia for helping.