Hosfelt Gallery is a commercial gallery based in San Francisco. Founded in 1996, the gallery is now run by a small team from its current space, a former door factory in San Francisco’s arts district.

The Gallery is counted among GCC’s first wave of Active Members, and the team have already made substantial progress on reducing their CO2e emissions since establishing their 2019 baseline.

In the three years since first calculating the gallery’s carbon footprint, the team has reduced their carbon emissions by an impressive 44%, from 93.77 tons of carbon in 2019 to 52.75 tons in 2022. The gallery is aiming to reduce their footprint by 50% by the end of 2023, a full seven years ahead of the 2030 Paris targets.

Collaborating with others and rethinking habits and ways of working have been critical to the team’s reductions so far. This is in both their public-facing work, like shipping and re-evaluating travel to art fairs, and internally, through initiatives like a staff commuting policy.

Founder Todd Hosfelt has thought extensively about climate impacts related to art fairs. In early 2023, Hosfelt collaborated with the Art Dealers Association of America to create a sustainability roadmap for the ADAA’s annual Art Show.

Todd and the team have drawn on this work in the running of their own gallery. Reducing international travel to fairs has had a huge impact on reducing their emissions over the past two years.

‘We’ve realised that we don’t have to do that much international travel–we can be more strategic and smart about how we travel, when we travel, and combining multiple things within a given trip,’ says Dianne Dec, Partner and COO/CFO at Hosfelt.

For example, the team have established regular virtual studio visits for non-local curators and collectors and have developed their online programming, which reduces international travel while also maintaining connections with their international audiences. When the team do travel to Europe, such as an annual trip to Düsseldorf with collectors, they strategically combine visits to reduce additional travel for the rest of the year.

When it comes to shipping, the gallery team consider environmental impacts at every step, avoiding air freight where possible and thinking carefully about each individual shipment. They also ask shipping companies to provide emissions information with quotes and include shipping-related emissions information on invoices.

‘We think about where each work is coming from, and how we can minimise the shipping–can it travel straight from the artist’s studio, for example, and does that have less of an impact? That’s something we give a lot more conscious thought to now,’ says Dec.

In practice this means thinking about exhibitions 6-8 months out and planning how shipments can be consolidated and where and when pieces need to be shipped. ‘The more planning you do, the more effective you can be,’ says Hosfelt.

When thinking about how to make energy and emissions savings, the gallery team draws on the particular benefits of their location. With skylit galleries in a city with a temperate climate, the team can go entirely without air conditioning or heating systems, and benefit from natural light that reduces the need for electricity. The gallery also takes full advantage of San Francisco’s well-developed infrastructure for recycling and composting.

The gallery’s owners are clear on the importance of culture change and leading by example. Hosfelt and Dec regularly take public transport to work, and have developed a staff policy in which each member of staff gets an extra days’ paid holiday for every thirty days they take public transport to the office. 50% of the gallery staff now use public transport at least three times a week.

‘It’s important to incentivise people, and make climate action seem like a cultural priority,’ says Hosfelt.

Thinking carefully and specifically about reducing emissions over the past three years has meant that climate action is now embedded into the gallery’s operations, clearing the path for the future reductions they need to make to reach their target.

‘We have built-in strategies now–whatever we’re going to do, whether it’s travel or an art fair or a show with an artist, we consider from the very beginning what our carbon footprint will be,’ says Dec.

Hosfelt will continue to advocate for sustainability at art fairs, particularly the ADAA’s Art Show, where he serves on the organising committee, and the gallery team are committed to their annual carbon audits and identifying how they can keep making reductions.

The team are aware of the challenges ahead, but Hosfelt is optimistic that each gallery can play its part.

‘I think it goes back to feeling lonely, or siloed,’ says Hosfelt. ‘I’ve had moments during this whole thing when I’ve felt pretty hopeless–I think we all have. But you have to be optimistic, and you have to know that there’s only so much you can do, and you have to do everything you can–and that does make a difference.’

Our Member Case Study series highlights stories from across our sector that show the climate action that’s taking place every day. We’d like to thank our featured members for generously sharing their successes, their challenges, and their plans for the future.

Are you a GCC member and want to share your story? Get in touch! We’d love to hear from you.