In the light of the ongoing climate and energy crisis, Rathgen-Forschungslabor, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preußischer Kulturbesitz has been developing two initiatives to address the issue.
On the one hand, for a better benchmarking of the energy consumption of museums and archives, together with our partner at PAN Kraków, we have compiled consumption data for over 100 museums and archives in a database (heating/ventilation/cooling/electricity). We are interested in including further memory institutions, globally. We will provide all memory institutions, who share their data, with an (anonymised) evaluation from which they see read where they are standing in their energy use in comparison to others. An example you can find in the diagram attached.
On the other hand, the Rathgen-Forschungslabor is offering a classification of real climates in museums, archives and galleries according to national and international standards such as:
– ASHRAE (2019), Chapter 24 Museums, Galleries, Archives and Libraries
– Deutscher Museumsbund (2022) Empfehlung zur Energieeinsparung durch die Einführung eines erweiterten Klimakorridors bei der Museumsklimatisierung
– Bizot Green Protocol Guidelines (2014)
– DIN ISO 11799 (2017)
– DIN 67700 (2017)
The Rathgen-Forschungslabor is currently offering this service free of charge to the museum community on behalf of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Germany. Interested memory institutions please get in touch with the Rathgen-Forschungslabor at rf@smb.spk-berlin.de . We can learn a lot from this classification, in respect to energy saving strategies but also and especially for the development of a holistic risk management strategy. The Rathgen research laboratory guarantees confidentiality for the data submitted.
