Los Angeles museums ease gallery climate rules to cut bills and carbon
Five art institutions in Los Angeles will relax the strict gallery climate rules used to protect artworks, in a bid to lower energy bills and carbon footprints.
The five announced a joint commitment to adopt the Bizot Green Protocol, a set of looser environmental guidelines for collections. They are the Getty in Los Angeles, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, and Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles, as reported on 21 September 2026 The Art Newspaper.
The bills are large. Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems — the plant that heats, cools and moves air through galleries and stores — often account for 60%-70% of a museum building's energy use.
The strict rules have deep roots. Current museum climate-control guidelines grew from 1970s research intended to set temperature and relative humidity ranges, the level of moisture in the air, for museums in London. Museums worldwide then codified a range of plus or minus 2°C and plus or minus 5% humidity into practice and loan agreements.
The older standard was even tighter. Museums traditionally held galleries at a steady 21 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit) with 50% relative humidity.
Loan agreements, the contracts that let works travel between museums, still require borrowers to hold specific temperature and humidity ranges. Museums whose systems cannot meet those numbers can miss out on loans.
The Bizot group of international museum directors, an informal group of leaders of large museums, issued the Bizot Green Protocol in 2015 to widen those temperature and humidity ranges. The protocol was updated in 2023 to encourage a more adaptive approach rather than insisting on fixed numbers.
In Los Angeles, the Getty's PST Art initiative Art & Science Collide included a Climate Impact Program led by artist Debra Scacco and climate consultant Laura Lupton. The programme supports work on the environmental effect of exhibitions and museum operations.
Other institutions are also adjusting. The Museum of Modern Art in New York strives to keep a stable relative humidity of 40 to 60% and a stable temperature of 61 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit, according to its published guidance Museum of Modern Art.
Research is backing the shift. The Getty's Managing Collection Environments guidance is a suite of sixteen technical notes on sustainable environmental management of collections Getty. The Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles has also published The Conservation Assessment: A Proposed Model for Evaluating Museum Environmental Management Needs Getty Conservation Institute.
Conservator Caitlin Southwick, founder of the non-profit Ki Culture, which helps cultural organisations adopt sustainable practices, is among the specialists working on how museums can make the change without putting collections at risk.
