The Artworld Is Not Prepared For What's Coming

The British government’s independent advisers on the environment recently delivered a stark warning.

According to the Climate Change Committee’s latest report, A Well-Adapted UK, the UK is dangerously underprepared for the impacts of climate disruption. Much of the country’s infrastructure, public services and built environment, they argue, were designed for ‘a climate that no longer exists’. This is despite years of increasingly urgent evidence and increasingly visible consequences. 

I believe the same conclusion is true of the artworld.

From museums and galleries to art fairs, auction houses and logistics companies, the visual arts sector continues to operate as though the conditions that enabled its enormous growth over recent decades will continue indefinitely. They will not.

In reality, the systems on which it depends are becoming increasingly volatile, more expensive and therefore more exposed to risk.

The artworld is not prepared for what’s coming. In fact, it is unusually exposed. This is a highly globalised sector, dependent on moving people, artworks and exhibitions around the world at speed while maintaining tightly controlled environmental conditions. The system relies on cheap flights, stable insurance markets, high energy consumption and last-minute complex international logistics. For decades, these conditions have made the art market what it is today while being largely taken for granted. Increasingly, they cannot be.

Meanwhile, climate action has largely been framed as an ethical issue – a question of institutional values, environmental responsibility or a matter of reputation. This remains important, and the arts sector has a responsibility to reduce its contribution to the climate breakdown and support a just transition. The impacts of climate disruption continue to fall disproportionately on those who have done least to cause it, particularly communities across the Global Majority. Within the arts, in the coming years, it will likely be the individual artists, freelancers and small organisations who have the least resources to address the disruption who will feel the impacts fastest and hardest. 

But climate action can no longer be understood through this lens alone. Sustainability is not only about reducing your impact on the world, it is increasingly also about reducing the world's impact on you.

Climate disruption is no longer a distant threat; it is rapidly becoming a very real operational risk. The Climate Change Committee warns that temperatures exceeding 40°C could become commonplace across the UK by the mid twenty-first century, with longer and more intense heatwaves and increased flood risks, resulting in escalating financial impacts. Climate-related damages already cost the UK around £60 billion annually, a figure projected to rise to £260bn a year by the 2050s if adaptation efforts fail to keep pace. 

Arts organisations are not insulated from these realities. Overheating buildings increases energy consumption and storage costs. Extreme weather disrupts visitor attendance, artists’ practices, transport networks and exhibition schedules. Volatile fuel prices affect freight and travel. Rising insurance premiums threaten loans and collections. Supply chain disruption delays projects and increases costs. Individually, these challenges may appear manageable. Together they reveal a level of operational fragility that much of the sector has barely begun to confront.

Recent years have already provided warning signs. Wildfires in California, flooding in Pakistan and extreme weather in Spain have damaged museums, heritage sites, collections, artists’ studios and cultural infrastructure. These are not isolated incidents. They are early signals of the conditions under which cultural organisations will increasingly have to operate.

This is not an argument for replacing emissions reduction with adaptation. Both are essential. Measuring and reducing emissions remains critical if we are to limit future climate impacts and avoid locking in even greater disruption, but adaptation and resilience planning must also be stepped up urgently.

One way to understand this challenge is to rethink what carbon footprints actually tell us. We typically treat them as measures of environmental impact, but they should also be understood as valuable indicators of an organisation’s vulnerability.

A carbon footprint is, in many ways, a map of dependency. Large footprints reflect reliance on fossil-fuel-intensive systems: frequent flying, international shipping, energy-hungry buildings and complex global supply chains. The greater that dependence, the greater the exposure to energy price shocks, logistics disruption, market volatility, regulatory change and rising operating costs. Viewed through this lens, decarbonisation is not simply an environmental exercise. It is also a resilience strategy.

The implications are already becoming visible. Insurance, one of the hidden foundations of the artworld, is under growing pressure with the potential of climate-related losses to reshape global markets. For the art sector, consequences will be felt across loans, exhibitions, collections management and the movement of artworks.

The same is true of the artworld’s dependence on international mobility. Dashing around the world to attend private views, biennials, art fairs, as well as expectations for prestigious international loans and blockbuster shows and major touring exhibitions, all of which evolved during a period of what now looks like dirt-cheap fuel.

Regulation is also beginning to catch up with the sector. The EU’s forthcoming Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) will reshape requirements around packaging materials and logistics, with direct implications for organisations shipping works into, out of or through the European Union. While awareness about this is shockingly low, the direction of legislative travel is clear.

While this may sound like a worrying multitude of overlapping challenges, the good news is that many of the solutions already exist.

Many of the actions that reduce emissions also increase resilience. Energy efficiency lowers costs and reduces exposure to volatile energy markets. Renewable energy, battery storage and heat pumps are becoming increasingly attractive investments. Smarter building management and revised climate control strategies can improve operational stability while reducing energy demand. There are recyclable and reusable packaging products already compliant with PPWR standards. 

Aviation remains one of the hardest areas to decarbonise. However, the widespread adoption of digital meeting tools has shown that not every journey is essential, offering opportunities to reduce both emissions and dependence on increasingly volatile transport systems. These are not speculative interventions; they are practical measures with proven benefits.

Climate action should therefore not be viewed solely as a cost or burden. Increasingly, it should be understood as an investment in resilience – one that helps organisations continue serving artists, audiences and communities through an increasingly volatile future.

Regardless of political chaos at home or on the global stage, the physical reality of climate disruption will continue to intensify. These forces are already reshaping the conditions under which art is created, transported, exhibited and experienced.

In the six years since Gallery Climate Coalition was founded, awareness of climate impacts across the arts has grown significantly. Carbon reporting is increasingly commonplace, emissions reduction targets are widespread and environmental considerations are becoming embedded within governance, funding and strategic planning. Yet discussion of adaptation, resilience planning and climate risk remains far too rare.

Climate action remains an ethical responsibility. None of that has changed. What has changed is the context in which that responsibility now operates. The challenge is no longer simply how the sector reduces its impact on the climate, but how it prepares for a climate that is already changing around it. The challenge is not simply ensuring that individual organisations survive, but helping build a cultural sector capable of withstanding and responding to the profound disruptions already underway.

The question is no longer whether the artworld will be affected by climate disruption. It already is. The question is whether it begins preparing seriously for what comes next.

– Heath Lowndes is the co-founder and director of Gallery Climate Coalition and co-founder and Partner of CASI