Early on in the Audit, Tony the Chief Preparator waved a survey under my nose. The survey was drafted by Stephen Mellor, from the Tate Gallery in London. Stephen, then in charge of the Tate’s installation team, had taken this initiative to try to get an idea of how art galleries and museums around the world were tackling the challenge to “go green”.
Tony discovered the survey too late – it was distributed in 2008, so the official period of research was already done and dusted. But he and I decided to go through it anyway, on the principle that asking ourselves the questions it posed might help to get a picture of what the MCA does (or doesn’t) do.
The questions relate to whether or not there is a green committee, how lighting is done, climate control, freight and so on: all the stuff that I nosed around trying to find out during this project. I believe that being forced to answer “no” to a lot of the questions (eg “do you currently have recycling schemes in public areas”) helped Tony get a sense of the MCA’s wonderful – how shall we say it? – opportunity for improvement…
With Stephen’s permission, I’ve posted the results of his survey online, with the hope that they might be useful to museum professionals everywhere. Feel free to download and distribute it.
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