*Overview*

One of the key points of tension in building a more sustainable institution is that between the duty of care museums have towards artworks, artefacts, and belongings in their collections, and the energy and materials required to preserve those collections. Building on the work of groups such as Ki Culture, Gallery Climate Coalition, and STiCH to encourage more passive environmental controls and the use of sustainable, non-toxic materials in museum storage, this project understands art objects (in the words of curator and historian Marina Valle Noronha), as “temporal entities” that will inevitably degrade and decay over time.

Objects as Temporal Entities comprises a series of documents, guides, art objects, and a solar-powered archive designed to investigate, trouble, and provide guidance on the storage and breakdown of materials in collection. A set of acquisitions contract riders, an acquisitions protocol, and a flowchart are designed to help artists, museums, and collectors open discussions on low- and no-intervention conservation of artworks. The riders are supported by The Fiction of Permanence, a series of materials guides, each a short handbook dedicated to a single material and artwork case study, designed to illustrate what happens as different substances degrade over time. Potatotemporal, an artwork, provides a collection of potato-like objects in various media, some artificially aged and others degrading naturally, to visually demonstrate the impact of time, temperature, and humidity on different materials. Archivetemporal, a solar-powered archive and website, gathers the strands of the project, documenting our research and outcomes.

The components of the project are held together by the object of the potato. A humble vegetable which clones itself and rots in a spectacularly odorous manner, the potato has been used both visually and metaphorically throughout the project to explore time, materials, and human/ more-than-human interaction. Developed by the Centre for Sustainable Curating with members of the Synthetic Collective at LUMA Arles as a part of the Sustainable Institution (TSI) residency, Objects as Temporary Entities is intended to be both useful and thought-provoking. Grounded in deep research and creative engagement, the project aims to help artists and collectors factor in the long and short lives and afterlives of artworks and objects through the lens of health and climate impacts.