Ansel Adams: A Legacy

The Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, Ga., is currently hosting "Ansel Adams: A Legacy." Adams (1902-1984), a highly acclaimed landscape photographer, is best known for his striking images of Yosemite National Park and the wilderness of California and Alaska.

From an early age, Adams enjoyed time spent in nature. As a passionate environmentalist, he became a member of the Sierra Club in 1919, and it was through this club that his photography career grew. Adams’s photographs appeared in the club’s 1922 Bulletin, and his first one-man exhibition was held at the club’s San Francisco headquarters.

This exhibition includes more than 100 original photographs spanning the artist’s career and will be on view through February 20, 2011.

For more information about the exhibition, check out this article in "With a Southern Twist," or visit the Booth Western Museum website, and for background information on the artist, click here.

Image from the Ansel Adams Gallery.

The Future of Art

In an article in the Guardian, artist Antony Gormley discusses the need to rethink the purpose of art. One of his main concerns is the fate of art in the face of a possible climate crisis. He asks, in reference to artists, “what do we do when faced with the global climate crisis in a culture that encourages us to do more, produce more, be seen more?”

He asserts that human evolution has been driven by cultural rather than biological changes and that we need to re-evaluate our values and material culture. The idea of “more is better” can no longer persist nor can we ignore problems created by technology.

Gormley is also concerned with the focus of art. He says, “art, certainly western art, has been an expression of confidence: confidence in a culture's lifestyle and in its continuity into the future. Now art undermines and investigates systems of power and, rather than projecting stable, traditional values into the future, questions the viability of any kind of future at all.”

To Gormley, too much focus has shifted from art’s central subject of the human being to its monetary worth. He cites the Guggenheim and Tate “franchises” as examples of the art world’s expansion and ties to capitalism. He does, however, differentiate galleries as containing “forms and experiences that inspire, question and extend human experience,” as opposed to shops that provide commodities. He wants artists to alter the function of art so that it can fit within a sustainable lifestyle, such as those of earlier societies like the Tahitians.

Gormley has made efforts at his studio to reduce his carbon footprint but wonders if his actions have produced any true benefit or if they are only serving to ease his conscience. Ultimately, he believes that his “greatest responsibility is to make work in the most direct way, and interpret his time and place in a way that makes people more aware of themselves and it.”

This article raises many important issues and questions, and we at the Georgia Museum of Art would be interested in hearing your comments or opinions.

Printing News

We recently received the following article in an email from Four Colour Print Group, a company with whom the museum has done printing business for years. It gives a nice overview of some environmental concerns with regard to printing.

FSC vs. recycled paper: What is best choice for environment?

Nearly all printers, publishers, and consumers support the idea of making books more environmentally friendly. One hotly debated topic is the question of whether recycled paper is really more environmentally friendly than virgin paper. The complex answer depends on the kind of paper and the purpose for which it's used. Newsprint, packing cartons, and brown bags fall into a different category than the coated white paper used to print a full color book.

While saving trees comes first to mind when thinking about recycling paper, there are other factors to be considered: energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste generation (including the sludge from de-inking), and utilization of valuable human labor. Economists suggest that the higher price of recycled paper is evidence that more of the world's scarce resources are being consumed. Others counter that the full environmental impacts aren't figured into paper prices, i.e. the current market price does not reflect all the long term costs.

Already, over 50% of all paper made in the USA is recovered for recycling. But contrary to popular belief, the key environmental benefit lies not in saving trees, which are truly a renewable resource. Rather, reduction in the amount of solid waste destined for landfills and conservation of energy used in obtaining paper fiber matter more.

Interestingly, whereas virgin paper manufacturing depends primarily on greenhouse gas neutral hydro and biofuel (wood-waste) energy sources, the collection, transportation, cleansing, and processing of recycled paper relies heavily on fossil fuel consumption leading to increased greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, there is far more solid waste generated by recycling (ink, fillers, degraded fibers, and contaminants) than the virgin process, which utilizes 100% of the entire tree and reuses 95% of the pulping chemicals.

While adding recycled fiber to low grade paper products makes economic and environmental good sense, it would be a mistake to assume that higher levels of PCW to every product will necessarily benefit the environment. In fact, the National Energy Education Development Project (www.need.org) found there are no savings in net energy consumption for recycled vs. virgin paper.

In particular, high-quality coated white paper suffers a steep diminishing marginal return from employing recycled fiber, to the point where using virgin fiber is indeed the more environmentally friendly choice. Good policy lies in protecting our old growth forests and avoiding clear cutting of trees. In forests where we do take selective cuts, we must plant new seedlings for all the trees harvested and let the sun, rain, & soil do their job. But how can we assure this happens?

The Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) was created in 1993 to promote the responsible management of the world's forests. Products carrying the FSC label are independently certified to assure consumers that they come from forests that are managed to meet the social, economic and ecological needs of present and future generations. To assure the chain-of-custody of FSC fiber in books from forest to store, loggers, paper makers, and printers are required to undergo a rigorous certification process. A similar organization, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) also provides certification of responsible logging practices.

Customers of Four Colour Print Group will be happy to know that both our printing partners in China and Korea are among a select few who have been FSC certified, and the Sappi paper we use when printing books in the USA is SFI certified. The supply of FSC/SFI paper (including softcover artboard and hardcover caseboard) is growing quickly, and available at only slightly higher prices. For illustrated book publishers wishing to demonstrate concern for the environment (while keeping print costs low), please specify FSC/SFI certified paper. Your printer will provide the appropriate logo for you to proudly display on your book cover.

The museum has not gone the FSC route yet on any of its printed products, but it's certainly something we have been considering, and while we have not found an affordable recycled sheet that matches the color reproduction quality of a virgin sheet, we're trying to move in that direction as well. We do print our newsletter and many of our other materials on Mohawk Via, which is produced using windpower, something Mohawk is very proud of, and we have a meeting today with our local Mohawk sales rep, at which we may learn more.

Happy Earth Day

No, we didn't forget about Earth Day. We were just trying to track down some information, so here it is.

What are we, at the museum, doing in the Green world?

First and foremost, the major expansion and renovation project that we call Phase II and that will result in new gallery and storage spaces plus much, much more (the reason, also, that we don't have our own gallery space at the moment and are pursuing all this GMOA on the Move programming) will be LEED certified at the silver level at very least. We're shooting for gold, but we're very confident of silver. What does that mean? LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is a green building rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a non-profit trade organization that promotes sustainability in how buildings are designed, built and operated. Different levels of certification come from receiving points in categories like "sustainable sites," "water efficiency," "materials and resources," "energy and atmosphere" and the like. So what are some specifics? We'll have an efficient site plan that includes stormwater management and strong water efficiency measures, for one thing, and we plan to recycle all construction waste that results. We'll have further details for you once construction begins in earnest, but know that the LEED certification is important to us.

What else are we doing? We're including a sculpture garden as part of Phase II that will encourage time spent outdoors and we're moving toward an entirely paperless system in our public relations department. Please let us know if you have any great tips for continuing to be better about this kind of thing and use our resources wisely.