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The Sustainable Museum
The Sustainable Museum
The Sustainable Museum
The Sustainable Museum is the first book to outline a coherent strategy for
the direction of museums, as it relates to sustainability in the museum and
heritage sector.
Arguing that museums must place sustainability at the centre of all their
activities, if they are to become key actors with a clear societal role, Garthe
considers the issues that museums will likely face as they take on their new
roles. Presenting case studies from a wide range of museums around the
world, the book considers different ways of implementing sustainability in
different types and sizes of institutions. Whilst the book clearly outlines the
need for change, it also provides guidance about how to change. Garthe does
this by considering specific concepts and approaches to sustainability in rela-
tion to the different aspects of museum operations. The book includes a
hands-on manual for implementing sustainability management in a museum,
whilst also considering the challenges practitioners will encounter and
considering what the future of the sustainable museum might look like.
The Sustainable Museum will be essential reading for museum and herit-
age professionals around the globe. The book will also be of interest to aca-
demics and students engaged in the study of museums, arts and cultural
management, business administration, change management or sustainable
development.
This series provides essential practical guides for those working in museums,
galleries, and a variety of other heritage professions around the globe.
Including authored and edited volumes, the series will help to enhance
practitioners’ and students’ professional knowledge and will also encourage
sharing of best practices between different countries, as well as between
different types and sizes of organisations.
Christopher J. Garthe
Cover image: Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2023 Christopher J. Garthe
The right of Christopher J. Garthe to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Garthe, Christopher J., author.
Title: The sustainable museum: how museums contribute to the great
transformation / Christopher J. Garthe.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, [2023]
| Series: Routledge guides to practice in museums, galleries and
heritage | “This is an extended and supplemented version of the
original German version, translated by Ray Cunningham.”--Title page.
| Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022035263 (print) | LCCN 2022035264 (ebook)
| ISBN 9781032049274 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032049267 (paperback)
| ISBN 9781003195207 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Museums--Environmental aspects--Handbooks,
manuals, etc. | Sustainable design--Handbooks, manuals, etc.
| Museum techniques--Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Classification: LCC AM7 .G35 2023 (print) | LCC AM7 (ebook)
| DDC 069--dc23/eng/20220728
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022035263
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022035264
ISBN: 978-1-032-04927-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-04926-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-19520-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003195207
Typeset in Times New Roman
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
Contents
PART I
Museums and sustainability 3
PART III
Putting sustainability into practice 183
Index 248
Figures
DOI: 10.4324/9781003195207-1
2 Introduction
sustainability play for museums? Does the topic of sustainability offer new
opportunities for museums? How can museums contribute to a sustainable
future? The book thus pursues an exploratory approach. The aim is to make
utopias possible and to initiate thinking that does not involve a binding con-
cept of sustainability in museums, but it rather explores the thematic terrain
in a search process.
In order to explore the terrain, the book picks out relevant aspects of the
wider sustainability discourse and relates them to the museum. It shows over-
laps and connections between the idea of sustainability in the broadest sense
and the museum sector as a whole. The book is thus conceived as a broad and
multifaceted compilation of aspects of sustainability in museums. Using the
approach of applying already existing concepts to the museum, it adapts
familiar tools and methods to this new field. As an overview, it also provides
a context in which different discursive threads can be combined and thought
through together. It thus helps to provide orientation and can contribute to
the development of a consistent frame of reference.
A wide-ranging compilation of this kind inevitably takes a bird’s-eye view,
and at many points it will therefore not extend beyond the surface. Thus,
important details of everyday work in museums cannot be addressed in
detail. The book is not a guide to implementing sustainability in museums
and for the most part refrains from making concrete recommendations for
practice. It is also set within a rapidly changing context. Accordingly, this
book seeks to provide an introduction to the topic and hopes at the same
time to be able to provide some specific suggestions. In the spirit of a collec-
tive learning process, it is not only desirable but necessary that practitioners
and academics should take up and explore aspects of this work in greater
depth in future.
The vision
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