New Exhibition Climate Impact Report

As one of the foremost Spanish sculptors of the twentieth century, Eduardo Chillida (1924 – 2002) is widely celebrated for his monumental public sculptures and enduring fascination with interconnected shape, space and organic form. The Hauser & Wirth exhibition invited new encounters between Chillida’s work and the unique environment of Somerset, drawing parallels with the artist’s own vision for Chillida Leku, a public museum and sculpture park created during his lifetime that expanded the relationship between art and nature.

In line with the Paris Climate Agreement of the United Nations, we are reducing our carbon emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030. Since making our commitment, we have reduced our emissions by 9 percent and continue to drive actions to accelerate meeting our target. Reductions are happening by switching to renewable energy, transitioning to LED lighting, purchasing electric vehicles and tracking carbon emissions and waste associated with our air freight.

Calculating our emissions has been one of our first actions. Since 2019, we have measured our Scope 1 and 2 (energy and fuel) emissions and have recently calculated our Scope 3 (flights, freight and exhibition construction) emissions. To track and reduce emissions have introduced carbon budgets for exhibitions, identifying where we can make changes to increase our decarbonization efforts.

Our process is driven by a hierarchy of prevention, reduction and investment, using a metric-centric approach. To this end, we have enrolled in the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which will help us measure, track and monitor our reductions. We believe in transparency and share our carbon emissions as part of the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) carbon reporting tool. We support the development of a meaningful and industry-specific response to the climate emergency and we have been patrons and members of the GCC since 2020.

Appointed in April 2021, our global Head of Environmental Sustainability, Cliodhna Murphy, oversees the implementation of the gallery’s measures to achieve our reduction targets. Murphy’s role is to drive the urgent actions to decarbonize and minimize waste in our daily operations. For broad sustainability measures, we are switching to renewable energy in all locations; transitioning to LED lighting; decarbonizing our energy in locations where we can control sources and lobbying our landlords to introduce more green energy into the buildings in which we operate.

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Read the Climate Impact Report (CIR) for the exhibition ‘Eduardo Chillida’ at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 26 Jun – 3 Jan 2022, published on the artist-led sustainability platform Artists Commit. Launched in November 2021, the CIR concept was created by Artists Commit. Written in November 2022, this is the second CIR published by Hauser & Wirth.

Learn more about our first CIR for the exhibition ‘Gustav Metzger’ at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2021.

We support barder.art, a peer-to-peer resource for sharing exhibition furniture, materials and packing materials. The aim is to reduce waste, recover valuable space, lower operating costs, foster industry connections, and invest in a circular economy. Our teams have posted items from our exhibitions that are available to collect from storage in London, New York and LA. Learn more here.

In 2022, ‘Sustainability In Action’ was hosted at Hauser & Wirth Somerset as part of our ongoing commitment to facilitating dialogue and disseminating information with the global art community.