GCC and New Alliance of Art Fairs Including Art Basel, Frieze, and TEFAF Commit to Slashing Carbon Emissions by 50% by 2030

A new alliance of major art fairs – including Art Basel, Frieze, and TEFAF – and the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) on Thursday announced a new unified commitment to combatting climate change.

The GCC said its Art Fair Co-Commitment Statement and Art Fair Toolkit for Environmental Responsibility “represent an unprecedented inter-fair alliance and roadmap for change.”

“United by the understanding that the climate crisis will disrupt the visual arts sector as we know it, 13 organizations representing more than 40 art fairs have committed to a consensus on new standards of operating,” the GCC said in a statement.

Each of the Art Fair Co-Commitment Statements’ signatories has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030. The fairs will measure and report emissions – and try to actively reduce them – while striving to educate their visitors and supply chains about limiting C02.

According to the GCC, as much as 30 percent of a typical gallery’s yearly emissions are linked to art fair activities, with air freight representing about 70 percent of that figure.

The signatories are ARCO, Art Basel, CHART, Easyfairs, ESTE, Frieze, Liste Art Fair Basel, Market Art Fair, Ramsey Fairs, STAGE Bregenz, TEFAF, The Art Show, and Untitled Art.

“We are now deep into an era of climate breakdown with its devastating impacts reverberating across the world,” Helen Lowndes, the GCC’s director, said. “In light of this, leading art fairs have recognised 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.”

The Art Fair Toolkit for Environmental Responsibility includes a roadmap of practical steps, targets, and strategies that art fair organizers can follow to track and reduce their emissions. The reduction of single-use materials and air freight are priorities.

Hope Solutions, which helps businesses to be more sustainable, audited Frieze London’s carbon footprint in 2019. It turned out the fair had cut its emissions considerably in a year, recording almost 90 tonnes of CO2, compared with 207 tonnes in 2018. The audit, however, did not include the footprint of Frieze’s visitors or exhibitors, nor the carbon costs of transporting works to the fair.

“Frieze is proud to be an active member of the GCC sharing a commitment to a more sustainable future,” Jon Ashman, Frieze’s CEO, said in a statement. “The establishment of this toolkit marks a significant step forward, offering invaluable guidance to reduce the environmental impact of the art world.”

Will Korner, TEFAF’s head of fairs, said his organization is already seeing visible results, with energy consumption at its Maastricht event down by 43 percent since 2019. “With our position in the art community comes a huge responsibility. Structural change requires immediate collective action,” he said.

More than 1,500 arts organizations have signed up to the nonprofit GCC since it was founded in 2020.