 All right, I'll give everybody one more minute. It seems like everybody's people are joining on, right? Is their lunch break start if they're on the East Coast? It's like dinner time in the UK, breakfast in the West Coast. I have 12 o'clock on my clock, so we're going to get started here because we have a lot to talk about. So thank you, everyone, for joining us as as more people kind of join on. I'm just going to do a little introduction here. This is the conversations with change makers series strategies for reducing the energy consumption of buildings. This is a series I'm Roxie Sturber. I'm the chair of the sustainability committee. And this is something that we've put together with the committee. My colleague Amy Christ is also here helping field questions. But this is something that we really felt, you know, was missing from the conversation at the moment. There's a lot of conversation around different strategies for reducing energy consumption, which is fantastic. Shout out to Caitlin at Key Culture for putting together an incredible free conference at the end of last year about different strategies for reducing energy consumption and making, you know, cultural institutions more sustainable. We've also done a few ask an expert series ourselves, which you can find on our wiki. So there's and, you know, myriad more people have been talking about this, so I don't want to by any means say that that's an exhaustive list. So it's a really exciting conversation. It's really, you know, changing things up. But we really wanted to highlight that there are colleagues in the field who have been doing this for many, many years and are doing it really well. This is these strategies are not, you know, kind of treading in new territory. There are lots of wonderful colleagues who have already been implementing them. And so we really thought it would be useful to have some conversations around that and kind of demystify some of these strategies and help all of you who are interested in helping to implement them, you know, kind of figure out who to talk to and where to go. So that's sort of the background. Housekeeping, please enter any questions that you have. We do want this to be to a degree interactive. There are a lot of you in attendance. So we can't unfortunately like unmute and all talk. But if you could throw on any questions in the Q and A and feel free to comment on questions or, you know, vote things up if you really want those questions answered and we'll do our best to address those. Also captioning is enabled and we're recording this event. So just a heads up on all of that. A little bit of preview for what's coming next for this series. We have events in March and April planned. We don't have all the speakers confirmed yet but March event will be with colleagues in the UK. This is obviously in collaboration with ICOM too. I should say Lorraine Finch has been a collaborator on this project. So that will be featured in March and then in April we'll be talking to some private conservators. So there's a real interest I think from all of you who work in private conservation studios to be thinking about what you can do to be more sustainable. So we'll be talking about that in April. So stay tuned for all of that. And this is really intended to lead up to the annual meeting in Jacksonville in May. So all right, without further ado, let me introduce everyone. As I said, I'm Roxy. I'm the chair of the AIC Sustainability Committee, Amy who's joining me as our resource officer and our wonderful guest, Nancy Ravenel who works at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont and Patricia Silence or Patty Silence as she likes to be referred who is at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Virginia. So do a little brief introduction. Patty began her career at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation as an exhibits conservator in 1999 following her work as a textile conservator at the textile conservation lab in Lowell, Massachusetts and in objects conservation technician at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. Now Patty is the director of conservation operations at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Her department consists of 45 specialist conservators, technicians and aides who work in nine media specific and analytical labs including preventative conservation. Patty works closely with a wide variety of CWF colleagues on construction projects, environmental control systems, fire protection, lighting and integrated pest management. She sounds busy to me. So thanks for making the time, Patty. And she also works with collection colleagues all over the world to practice and promote preventative conservation. Patty is an active professional associate of AIC and currently works with materials working group. And she's also the founding chair of the Green Task Force in 2008 which is now the AIC Sustainability Committee. So we are very indebted to her here on the committee. Nancy Ravenel received her MS in art conservation from the Winterthur Museum slash University of Delaware program as an objects major. She hates to admit it but this is her 25th year at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont where she is currently the director of conservation. For 17 of those years, she shared an office with Rick Kirchner who appears to be in the audience. Thanks for joining us, Rick. And who is the first conservator hired by the museum and instituted many of the energy saving policies that she's gonna describe here. So we are indebted to him as well. She learned a lot through osmosis. Her office neighbors include the museum director of preservation and landscape, buildings preservation team and facilities technician and that proximity has been really helpful for building relationships and sharing observations. So that's something we're gonna get into today. We hope talking about sort of how to build a team at your institution to really promote these values and these policies and put all of this into action. So once again, thank you all for joining us and thank you both for being willing to share some of your experience with both of your incredibly busy schedules, I'm sure. So I think most of us are probably familiar with your respective institutions. I should say we kind of paired these two institutions together because they are larger sort of campus wide multi-building institutions, but I think it would be great if you could each describe your campus, the types of buildings and the collections. I'm gonna ping pong back and forth but we'll start with you for this one, Patty, if you could give us a little overview of the Colonial Williamsburg. So Colonial Williamsburg is on 300 plus acres. We have over 600 structures. The ones that I'm involved with also include over 200 period rooms, as you might call them. We've got 70,000 decorative and folk art collections, 60 million architectural or I'm sorry, archeological pieces, 19,000 architectural fragments. And so it's big, it's broad, but we also have collections of animals and plants and those kinds of things that come with being a living history museum. Each of our buildings has a range of types of HVAC or not systems anywhere from chillers and boilers and big powerful air handlers to home type heat pumps. We only have one exhibit building that is not air conditioned though, that we invite the public into. And we're in Virginia, as Roxy said. Yes, I'm also really keen to kind of get into the climate differences between the institution that you're talking about. Yeah, that's not having air conditioning in Virginia. That must be an interesting challenge. But Nancy, could you give us a little bit of a description of the Shelburne Museum? Sure, so Patty just mentioned, they've got 600 buildings or so at Colonial Williamsburg. We're about a 10th of that size with what our head of preservation and landscape ship Stuelin likes to say, we've got 66 roofs at Shelburne Museum. I don't know, Amy, if you wanna put up the slide just to show people a little bit from above. And this is an image that Rick Kirschner put together just to show the variety of kinds of systems that we are using. So the buildings at Shelburne Museum are a combination of historic structures that were moved to campus and purpose-built structures which range from barns to full HVAC systems to things like a locomotive. And the oval-shaped thing there in black is the steamship Ticonderoga, which they don't have any HVAC systems, but they do have collections items or items that are not necessarily accessioned objects that we wanna make sure they stay in decent condition. The collections themselves are wide-ranging from impressionist paintings to American paintings dating from the late 1700s to two years ago. We've got decorative arts and folk art and textiles and tools and horse-drawn vehicles and taxidermy. We currently have an IMLS-funded inventory of the museum's pharmaceutical collection underway. And I would say that some of the structures as at Colonial Williamsburg, some of our structures are accessioned collections objects as well. So I think that's, yeah, I think just to say a little bit about the systems like Colonial Williamsburg, we've got full HVAC systems to home-sized systems in here. And we use a fair amount of what Rick referred to as practical climate control, where the temperature in the buildings is controlled actually by the humidity level rather than comfort level and thermostat. So I think that's- That's actually a really great transition. So I think Kelly in her webinar with us, her Ask an Expert webinar when she was at the IPI came on and sort of laid out six different energy-saving strategies. And I'm guessing that not everyone, everyone should watch that webinar, but I'm guessing probably everybody doesn't have them off the top of their head. But I would love it if you guys could talk a little bit about maybe starting a new Nancy since you were just kind of talking about this a little bit, what some of your different strategies are in the different buildings. I know with the exhaustive campuses that you're dealing with, you probably won't be able to name them all, but just maybe a few highlights of interesting strategies that you've taken on just to name a couple that we have talked about for those who aren't so familiar. Seasonal drift, if you do have an HVAC system, microclimates, shutdowns, these different sort of strategies that some of them make our hearts stop a little bit more as people who work in museums with myself and then others are like, oh yeah, we've been doing that forever. So I'm just kind of curious, what sorts of strategies you've been implementing at your institutions? Well, certainly seasonal drift and having seasonal set points is one that we use. And given that we have so many different structures, one thing that we make great use of is making sure that the collections in a specific structure are appropriate to that structure. So many, because the museum opened to the public or began in 1947 and hadn't had climate control, really, I mean, when Rick started in his 1992 paper that he published in JAIC, he makes mention that some of the buildings had ranges in relative humidity from 15% to 95%. So those collections are sort of proofed. They've kind of experienced the worst than they can experience. And so his strategy was really to take off the top and lower edges and bring the relative humidity band that things experience into a much narrower area. Certainly adding passive measures into structures, making sure that the drainage around the building and then the is appropriate and that the basements can be as dry as we can keep them adding insulation where we can and where it's appropriate. Yeah, all of them. All of the above. Patty, would you like to? I would say, so we have everything from these very, very old buildings that don't have any insulation. And we wanna keep them, the structure is as important or more important than the collections that are inside because we do exactly what Nancy said. We wouldn't, we don't have hardly any, the only building we have textiles in is one that is interpreted in the 1940s, 50, or yeah, 40s and 50s that the Rockefellers lived in. But otherwise original textiles just aren't in our historic area. But we too are taking the edges off. We're open, all of our sites are open to the public all year round. So not heating or going to 50 degrees, we probably look at comfort more than I would like. But so in the winter, we've had actually in-person meetings with all of our staff saying, it's not going to be warmer than 67 in your building and dress accordingly. And that has helped us with the low RH issues that heat offers. But in the summer, it's pretty much, we actually are heating to 72 in a lot of these structures that have the, they chill to dehumidify and then reheat. We recognize that we're probably heating more than we want in the summer. And yet, that is energy use, but it's keeping the RH down. And mold is not a sustainable activity in our building. So we see very flat line RH all summer long. And then in the winter, it pretty much bounces wherever the heck it wants to in the historic area. We operate our modern buildings. We have several buildings that are post 1986 that have these very sophisticated chillers, boilers, the whole nine yards. And that's where we have employed shutdowns. And in our collections building, actually in the collections store, it's in a hyper-insulated zone in the middle of the building surrounded by offices and conservation labs. And that's where we've been able to shut down the HVAC 14 hours a day. And the first year that we did that, which might have been 15 years ago, we saved $16,000 just on that one building. So shutdowns have really been our, well, and in that building, the chillers, the boilers for three other very, very large buildings are incorporated. So we don't shut everything down. This is just air handlers. So... That's fantastic. Sorry, I'm like 15 years you've been doing this. That's amazing. Yeah. The other strategy though that I wanted to bring up is it's really important to support your facilities, people in keeping all of the equipment super well-tuned. And so that I think that saves as much as anything to really keep an eye on how things are running and not be economical in the way the building runs. So, yeah. So it sounds like these different strategies are tailored very carefully to the different spaces, which is fantastic. I'm curious what sort of prompted these conversations to begin with. Nancy, you sort of mentioned this going back to maybe like the 90s, but I'd love to hear a little bit about, I think of this as, I don't know, I've been in the field maybe 10 years. It's sort of like a new conversation, but it obviously isn't. And this conversation has been going on. It's maybe started as like advocating for more HVAC, more stable conditions. And now we're sort of saying like, oh wait, the climate crisis is upon us. So I'm just very curious, how you two see this conversation, where it started, how it's evolved. And if you could speak to that a little bit, if there are sort of lessons in that for us. Let's start with you, Nancy. So for us, I think, actually, I think I've seen conversations around energy usage and the cost of energy usage in our archives dating back to the 1960s. And Vermont, I don't know of Vermonter who isn't focused on energy costs, frankly. And I think there's a wide range of heating and cooling options that are employed domestically in the state. Every, you know, people still peat their homes with wood up here or pellet stoves. And so again, but it was really influenced by fiscal constraints and concerns over how much all this energy is costing. And the correspondence that I saw in the 1960s is that the museum was building a new building and they had calculated how much water usage and energy usage was going to be. This would create and they just, the town said, no, that's not sustainable. And so they had to come up with other ways of heating and controlling light in that building. So, and when Rick Kushner started, you know, still the museum was concerned about how much it all costs. And so obviously you'll see in his writing that there is a lot of focus on costs. I think now the conversation is pivoted to, you know, how we're seeing issues related to climate change that our summers are much warmer than they were when Rick and Ernie Conrad and the other folks who were involved in designing our systems were putting them together. And so we are challenged with our systems operating in a new climate environment. And so that's where we're shifting to. I think the only thing to add is that the museum also added two solar fields. And so electrical use is predominantly covered by those solar fields. And so that's changed the conversation slightly but I think we're still awfully concerned about our energy usage and how we run the systems. That's, yeah, I think, well, Penny, what's your answer to that? Yeah, all the same. I mean, energy use really does reflect in the bills that we have to pay. I will say that we, CW is big enough that they really pride themselves on doing what's best for the collection. And so I am afraid that some of the arguments for super tight and in the 1980s, we put in systems that right now, I regret. I don't think anybody questions that they should be that kind of a system but we are coming on to, they are aging out. And so every conversation on replacing them does revolve around, not too big, not too small, just right, and then how do we maximize it? And our conversations about what's best for the collection have had to shift to say, no, no, no, you're not doing a poor job if this isn't a super tight system. And to our guys credit in the facilities department and our engineering people, they take it very seriously. And so it's been an education process to say, just, it's okay, we can relax a bit, it doesn't need to be so tight. And we have a lot of experience with witnessing damage and or with not witnessing damage, we have our extremes, we know what we can tolerate and what we can't. But the money's important, the collection care is important, but also just being able to keep, not make things so complicated that it requires all these specialists as well because that's a fiscal issue as well. That's actually a perfect transition. So I think you really hit the nail on the head when you sort of addressed that the 1980s and that you regret that. I would love to hear more about why and also where you go when you assess your risk. Like this is the thing that for me as a younger conservator, I guess I'm like kind of meat career now, but I kind of think to myself, I don't have the institutional knowledge of decades. I don't, I get nervous that if I say, let's loosen these parameters, where do I start looking? Are you recording everything? Like sort of how are you, how are you going about having the chutzpah to kind of say, okay, actually we can relax. We don't need to be quite so careful. I'll start with you Patty, since you- It does take time. I mean, it does, there are benefits to agent experience where you kind of know this guy will not fall. And I think being taught as conservators that any damage is bad, you really have to start thinking about change will occur to this object over time. How do we extend that length of time? How do we use it though for what it's for, which is education and experience and understanding our culture and cultures. So, I think changing some of those conversations about we're not looking at 700 years. We might be looking at three and what's total damage? I mean, these are conversations we have. Light is the one, it's not environment. And I think if you really stop and you can witness in your lifetime that damage from light, but you might not from environment. Dirt and light are probably more damaging to collections than the environment, generally, right? You've got these rare extraordinary things and those are the ones you look out for and you learn what they are. And I think looking at images from the past is really helpful in assessing what kind of damage or what kind of change has happened over the years. I think for me, that's been the most that has put my mind to ease most. Where I get a little nervous is when something new has been acquired and the curator wants to put it in one of the historic houses, which has that wide range. And I don't really know how that object will respond to that environment. And I just watch it really carefully. And if something needs to move, it needs to move. That and the recently conserved. If something gets glued up, a wooden thing gets glued up, that's what's gonna pop. And in fact, in my treatment work, I often make my material choices based on the environment but that also comes with several decades of putting objects in, treated objects into environments that are not what we typically think of to put them into and knowing how those materials will respond. So do you treat those two examples that you gave maybe a recently conserved object or a recently acquired object? Do you treat those differently? Do you have a more sort of regimented monitoring program or do you tend to put them in different environments? I mean, it sounds like you're putting them into the environment, they're gonna go in and then reacting accordingly. But I'd love to hear a little bit more about that. Nancy, you brought that up. I think that that's it. Is that I'm just monitoring it a little bit more carefully and make a point to go check on that thing when I do my rounds collecting data. Cool, super. And so, I mean, you two are a font of knowledge about this and sounds like you've learned from really great colleagues as well. But I'm curious if you involved any outside experts in terms of doing energy audits, like is that something that's routinely done? There's some wonderful colleagues in the field who I know are experts in this that I've often bought to call on. So I'm curious if that's part of the implementation of these strategies. I think it's really helpful. Outsiders are always listened to a little bit better than insiders and that it brings you these ideas and these thoughts. So getting NEH or IMLS grants is a really great way to get those people in and that's what we've done. We've also cooperated with IPI on some of their work with libraries. We had a library that met the requirements for one of their projects. And so they came and advised Kelly and Chris and Jeremy all came and worked with us on that. I won cautionary tale. At one point we had an administrator who brought in an energy saving company. And I can say with confidence that they did more harm than good. They decreed that certain sites should have shutdowns and started just doing things without talking with us, without understanding what conservation and even without consulting facilities, management's expertise. And that was not a good project. You really want somebody that is going to listen to you and be open. Yeah, and I see that Rick Kirschner in the chat made mention of efficiency Vermont and they have been really helpful to Shelburne Museum not only to provide the financial incentives but also advice. Right now we're in conversations with them again about the best ways or suggesting how we might do a better job of tracking our energy usage in various buildings. They've been a wonderful, wonderful resource for us to draw on. The difference is that it's a conversation, it's not them coming in and making changes. Right, that makes a lot of sense, yeah. And is there, I guess this is probably a question that is going to be dependent on different spaces but I'm wondering if there's sort of one go-to strategy that you like over the others that you're sort of like very happy with the fiscal reduction, with the way that the collections respond. I mean, again, this is going to be tailored probably. So maybe this is a bit of a useless question but I'm just curious if there are some that are sort of your go-to strategy for your particular institutions. I would say the one thing that comes to, when you put it that way, if you want three arguments for what we want with light reduction, motion detectors, occupancy sensors or drapes over objects or whatever, but less light on an object is good for the object, less light in the room is good for the light bulbs to last longer and less light in the building uses less energy. And so, that's a super easy example. That's very interesting, yeah. Yeah, but in HVAC, it's way more complicated. Yeah. Did you have anything else Nancy that you wanted to add? I think that, again, being that we're semi-seasonal, we went year round in just several buildings, only the buildings that really can be open and humidified in the winter. We did that several years ago, but by and large, the museum is closed for between mid-October to mid-May. I personally really love that the buildings are given the opportunity when they can to go cold because that also helps us with our integrated pest management. But it does seem to, we seem to have less pest activity when we've had hard winters. Unfortunately, we're having fewer and fewer of those, but I think that has been my favorite way of reducing costs and having a benefit for the collection. Yeah, that's a very good point. How integrated all of these things are never ceases to amaze me. And that actually goes back to another question that I wanted to ask, which is how does this intersect with other forms of sustainability initiatives that you might have going on? Nancy, you mentioned the solar panel fields and yeah, and the pest management. So I'm curious if maybe starting with you since you had mentioned that, we could talk a little bit about water usage and all of these other, I know this is really focused on energy, but it does seem like it's impossible to really to just talk about one without talking about the others. So if you could both speak to that, that would be really neat. Well, I think so other initiatives we have on going at the museum are wastewater runoff. We do have some ground source heat pumps that are used in some of our buildings and we have runoff retention ponds that kind of look like our features on the landscape, but they actually have a purpose for our operation. That's the only thing that comes to mind quickly. When you mentioned the solar panels, I think when we spoke before you had said that that was a company that had come to you. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, so in fact, the solar panels that are on the museum's land, we had 50 acres that we weren't really using. It was a field that is not, it's across some railroad tracks from the museum proper and a company off and on over the years, the museum had considered solar, but a company came to us and effectively we're leasing the land. So it's getting some benefit from something we weren't really using. And we get a portion, we get the credits from a portion of the energy that's generated from that solar field and we will have the option of buying those panels at some point at a reduced cost. So again, it's being creative with what assets you have. But again, I don't know if we would have done that if the company hadn't come to us. I guess one thing that comes to mind for me, we have started putting film on our windows, even on historic glass. And it not only is UV blocking, it's almost clear. It's clear enough that our historic appearance is not affected, but it blocks IR as well. And so in the summertime that I don't have a way of measuring it, the savings, we had, but that was an easy thing for us. Virginia doesn't tend to have the state support that Vermont offers for energy savings for various reasons. And so, we have to really look hard at payback period and all of that with this kind of stuff. But this film, window film has actually turned out to be a real boon. And we definitely see less heat buildup in these spaces and our summers are getting even longer. That's really interesting, yeah. The creek that runs through Colonial Williamsburg is Chill Water Runoff, and that is well water. So it's also incorporated as a feature, but I think that's something that we're gonna be curbing over the next few years, because it does require a lot of, when these things are put in, water was cheap and abundant in Virginia. And it still is in comparison to the rest of the country, but it's just not the right thing to do. Right. We had one follow-up question in the chat here about which window films you're using to reduce IR. Do you happen to know the name off the top of your head? I don't. And there was a lot in the Western Concert W, the Western Concert W, what was it? Now, Michael Hain. W-A-A-C. The Western Region WAC. Okay, there it is. There were some good articles written about window films several years back. And, you know, and they talked about gray scale and it's very particular to each. I know Winniter was able to put on a film that was gray because DuPont did it. You know, we have to make it look like it's not there. So, you know, there's more to it than just, you know, one brand's the best. It's more shopping for what you require and what meets your needs. But, all right. Yeah, I think that that is it. The balance of the aesthetic with the benefit to the collection, I think we, because our, by and large, our historic buildings are not historic interiors, they're gallery spaces. We've been able to use tinted interior storms a lot. So, you know, the view from the outside is that the windows look dark and that's just fine, but increasingly our public is wanting to have the windows opened up and so that they can see out and get a sense of where they are in the landscape. And so that's a challenge that I'm also thinking about right now. Yeah, we got a question. I'm gonna kind of turn to the questions because the Q and A is popping off now. So, thank you all for throwing questions in the chat. And this is something that I actually had on our list of things to talk about. So, one of the issues that comes up again and again with discussing environmental controls is the issue of loans and the problem getting loans if you don't sort of prove your environmental controls are extremely, extremely tight. Oftentimes, as institutions, we require tighter controls for loaned objects than we have, than we maintain in our own institution. So, a question for you both is, you know, how do you handle loans? Do you only, you know, ask for loans in areas that do have tight controls or, you know, is this something that you've been able to negotiate with lenders? I think this is gonna be a bigger conversation for our entire field, but I'm curious how, with the experience that you both have, how you've handled that. Now, let's start with you, Patty. So, typically, if we're borrowing something, it's going into our museum building. And, you know, that is, it's, you know, it was built with lots of insulation. It was built with hardly any windows. It's a, it's still a monster, but it is very, it's efficient in that category of building. And, you know, so that's where our, generally, where loans go. When we are lending, you know, I see, I see a lot of facility reports that I can tell have just been written with what they want you to hear. And, you know, you, you know, when you, when you look at the charts, it's different, but, you know, so we do consider whether something is tested or not. I can say we hardly ever refuse a loan even with that because we also include that argument. What's in it for us? You know, is it good for us to be seen at this museum? Is it good for us to share with others? Is it good for our collection to get out there and dance in front of other people? And, you know, we generally will take those risks and don't consider them to be significant. It's been years since we've even done a microclimate. And our curators do not like the idea of glazing paintings, which I think, you know, that serves a lot to help an object in a new and different environment. Yeah. And I mean, for us, we also have a specific building where loans typically go into, specifically from institutions. That building was designed, I think, in 2010 and opened to the public in 2013. And so the gallery spaces are stacked on top of each other and then the rest of the building does not have the same level of climate control as the gallery spaces. We, and as Patty said, similarly, I will look at what kind of environment the requested object is currently and then see how that lines up with the requester. And oftentimes if it's coming from a storage area, you know, that does not have that high level of climate control, then it can basically just go about anywhere. That is really neat and really opens up, I feel like it kind of opens up a lot of opportunity in a lot of ways for showing collections. I'm curious, if those loan requirements weren't in place, do you think, and maybe this is a bit of a hypothetical that's unfair to ask, but do you think that there would be more of a desire to put objects in less carefully controlled environments? If that was sort of more of an option? Either of you have thoughts on that? I think it's like the buildings. You have to look at each loan, each environment, each object and, you know, and decide. And you have to just include, you know, the whole package with that. That's a very sensible answer. Nancy, did you have anything to add to that? I think it's an interesting conversation, specifically when so many institutions who have historic or period rooms are looking at contemporary interventions into those spaces and working with artists, contemporary artists, who are placing their items into a space that doesn't have the typical environment that I think leads to increased conversation. I've never seen that an artist has turned away because an environment is not like a museum, but, you know, we do have the conversation about that. And, you know, it also leads to what kind of care, those kinds of questions that, you know, what they like to see and when, how much can they tolerate in terms of, you know, a variance? That makes sense. All right, I'm going to turn to a couple more questions. We have one from James who says, I'm a facilities manager with a background in Children's Museums. The first year with managing a 30,000 square foot collection has been interesting. That's awesome. What authorities could bring our collections folks to help them be more open to more tolerance on temperature and humidity? I spend a fortune keeping things at 70 degrees and 50% RH in Virginia year round. That's a super great question. I think AIC probably has a big role to play in this, which is part of why we want to have this conversation. So yes, either of you have thoughts for James on other authorities that could speak to that yourselves, perhaps. I am not sure where we are right now with the AIC Wiki on environmental recommendations. I mean, there is ASHRAE, you know, that does say these things, you know, that depending on what you've got, this is the kind of building you might want. If you already have equipment, though, that was designed to do that, just opening up your set points will not, you know, just getting, you know, your internal authorities to approve widening set points doesn't set change, doesn't save you energy necessarily. It can make the equipment go kind of bonkers and waste energy. So you have to approach it in an experimental fashion and just check out what you're doing as you're doing it and see what happens. You know, we've just found that in some cases it bounces all over the place because the equipment was designed for temperature control, not for RH control. And the programming, as you probably know, is really complicated. So you have to have, those are the, I would start probably with some engineers to look at what happens, you know, what do you see as being the way to broaden this with the large building like that? That's probably where I would start is with a contractor or an engineer that understands programming of the equipment. And including your collections folks in those conversations too, so that there's transparency and understanding on all levels. You know, I think that is an ongoing challenge. There's a constant need for education for all staff members about these sort of wider bands and whether or not they're appropriate for a given collection. Yeah, those are great points, thank you. We've also got another point in the chat that the IPI, the Image Permanence Institute, I think that's right, in Rochester, New York has good resources on reducing energy usage. So yes, we would definitely encourage folks to look at their resources, they're amazing. Oh, and Amy kindly put that right in the chat. Thank you, Amy. And we sort of touched on this, so I'm gonna go to Monica's question. Could you talk a bit more about controlling only the humidity? How has your facilities department been able to do so in newer buildings designed with tall ceilings and so many glass windows? Do either of you have any? We don't do that in newer buildings. Do you Nancy? No, most of our newer buildings have no windows or we've done what we can to block out all the way. You know, we do have though in one building, the one that doesn't have air conditioning and it was vacant all through COVID, we set up just regular oscillating fans throughout the buildings that were plugged in to humidestats. Whenever the humidity was over 50%, I think it's what we, 45 or 50, the fans go on and move the air. And that really helped. We had one significant mold outbreak and then we implemented that and that's just empirical. We'd love more work on mold. Yeah, and I agree. I'd love to see more work on mold and just the moving air around. And we've got a small collection of horse drawn vehicles in a barn that has no insulation, no other means of controlling the environment. It's, you know, there's some, a small difference between the outside environment and what's inside the barn, but Rick did put some fans in there and those aren't connected to any kind of humidestat. We just turn them on when the building lights go on and turn them off at night. Some there are days when the fans are going even though we're not open to the public. So we are exposing our, because the lights and the fans are on the same circuits, we're exposing those collection pieces to light that they wouldn't get normally. But, you know, when you're weighing the potential of fading versus the potential of mold growth, I'll take the fading over the mold for that particular collection. And it's amazing. We really don't see mold in that building even though the relative humidity in that building can be over 90% in summertime. So I would love to see more work on the effect of ventilation. We, in Rick's paper that he did for the Getty Conservation Institute, it's still up on their thing. I think it's 2000 and, oh goodness, 2007. It's part of their experts round table. He actually goes into some detail about the storage area that is heat and ventilation to control the relative humidity and how that operates. And so that's louvers, opening and closing. We do have some oscillating fans in that space just to encourage air movement. And then we've, because of climate change, we've had to add some of room size dehumidifier that's plumb to the outside and, you know, goes on and off because it's got a humid estate in there. And that really, it's amazing how that one room size dehumidifier is takes off the very highs that we have in that space. That's fascinating. I love, I'm a fan of a fan. So in my own house, so intrigued by that concept of increasing ventilation. We have a comment from an engineer in attendance. So thank you, Nicola. She says, engineer here. We have reduced our energy consumption dramatically without changing set points. Understanding the control algorithms is very useful to Patty's point. If you can find a contractor who will help you with this, it can also be valuable. Engineers like to talk in jargon. So don't be afraid to challenge this and ask for clear explanations. I can appreciate that. So yeah, thank you for chiming in to help with that previous question. We've got another anonymous attendee who is asking, what would you advise smaller museums to do if they're struggling to meet recommended RH bands but are nervous to stop trying? It would be great if the larger organizations could publish their experience in trying wider RH targets. I think there are some publications on this for sure out there, but is there any, are there any particular ones that you would point this attendee to or any particular bits of wisdom that you could share on that point? We perhaps need to put together a group of publications that would talk about this. That might be something that we could do as the committee to kind of share a little bit. But I think personally, I hope that smaller institutions will be able to benefit from some of these conversations. And I know some colleagues who work more in the regional sphere and talk to a lot of smaller museums have reported that there's a lot of stress and anxiety that goes into meeting these really, really tight set points and as we're having this conversation and others, I think it's quite clear that as Patty mentioned earlier, perhaps light is an important thing to target as well. And that might be more feasible. So one of the things that's helped me in that just in talking to my engineers and facilities managers about, they were worried about humidifying more in the winter. And I've really gotten them to be okay with, in some cases, we don't even turn on our humidifiers except for maybe one month in the winter. It takes so long to dry a structure out. And so we kind of stay at that 55 all summer long, really flat. And then it takes, we kind of wait until we see that it's starting to bump into the 30s. And then we might start, two weeks later turn on the humidifier, but we're turning our humidifying boilers, the steam boilers off completely in buildings for the summer, because I realized that it was trying to tweak it. It might go down to 45. And it was, why are we running this whole boiler just in case we need that little tiny bit? Telling them, it's okay to dip down to 35. And it'll come right back. I mean, we still outside in Virginia, we still see 100% humidity daily. There is no two ways about it. But, and we're not getting that cold hardly. So... That's great advice. Thank you for sharing that. And Leanne says, thank you, Patty, for mentioning the relevance of what the equipment was made to handle. That's important for me too. I didn't realize thinking about that is such an essential bit of this. We have another question from an anonymous attendee regarding new buildings. Have either of you been involved in discussions when buildings were being planned? What should be considered in regards to collection spaces and galleries and energy consumptions other than no, or energy consumption, excuse me, other than no windows? If we were starting from scratch, what would we say? I've been involved with several new buildings. And first of all, that's a really great thing in our field to be invited. And the biggest thing that I feel I can do for my colleagues, including like my vice president, is I am not afraid to ask the dumbest questions at the meetings, please explain this to me. I don't understand. And you will realize that three quarters of the room doesn't understand and they're very happy for you to be that person that will bridge that divide. So it is about learning the language of the people that you're working with. But also the engineers that are coming in from outside and working with you to design this, they hear a number and they're gonna give it to you. They are not looking at ranges, flexi, bands. They are coming in assuming that you're asking for a number and that's what you want. And so it's a conversation that has to continue. You might say, what if I told you that 40 degrees was okay, but I don't want it 40 degrees all the time. I kind of need that little extra oomph every so often. So we average through the year. Those kinds of conversations give them a better vision of what you're looking for rather than, they would love it if you just say 50 and 72 and they'll do their darnedest to give it to you. And you wanna say, does that cost 10 or does that cost six? And how do we get closer to the six and still stay within? But... Fantastic. Well, we're getting close on time here. So I'm just gonna throw a few more questions at you. A lot of these comments are really helpful. Folks writing in from Arizona, laughing about 100% humidity. We have a question from a museum conservator in Northern Norway. What can I do if our ventilation system is being replaced and will be turned off in the galleries? Oops, sorry, that just moved for a month. Do we need to put in place dehumidifiers or is this an opportunity for a shutdown experiment, I suppose? Yeah, so maybe just monitoring quite closely and watching it. Sounds like, so you could read a little bit about shutdowns, perhaps, not to answer the question, but sorry if either of you had anything else to add, please pop there. Our best shutdown experiments are always when we lose power and we've lost power for a week and we've learned that we can hold our RH in our storage spaces for a week in the winter without any energy input at all. All of those things are the things that you show to your facilities guys to say this is okay. And in fact, if one piece of equipment breaks, we no longer leave the air handlers running to move the air because that just blows everything right out of the water. Everybody knows, you shut the building, you keep it closed and don't let anybody in or out and you turn everything off. So shutdown experiments, I'm really glad you brought that up. Yeah, so we should all be thinking about sort of making good use of other life events like having to shut things down, but that's great. Do humidifiers, especially if they're not plumbed, as Nancy said, to plumbing to go out or to a drain or to outside can cause more harm than good because they often fail and overfill. Okay, that's good to know. So be aware. Touching on the topics of fans, I'm a facilities person at a relatively modern museum in the upper Midwest with rooms that are overly large and high-ceiling for our current use plan. Do you have any advice on reducing ceiling height or modifying overly large spaces with installed fans to reduce energy needs? Does anyone, I don't know that either of your spaces would really have spoken to that, but yeah. I mean, I don't think that we've done any sort of real study on the fans in the round barn, but certainly I don't know how tall that structure is, but it's several stories high. It's a very large space. And I know Rick worked with an engineer to calculate how much air movement was necessary to do the installation and then tested it out. Yeah, we find that de-stratifying air in tall spaces is very useful. You just, you want it to be homogenized and we use the stack effect to its advantage and then we try to reduce it when it's not an advantage. So you do wanna, I think that fans are great. Super, all right. We've got about, I think time for one or two more. We have a question which I think is very interesting from Eric. Have you tried to measure dimensional changes or material movement on complex objects or are you relying on visual observations to indicate whether there's change in objects? How do both of you approach this? I know you both have insanely large collections for the number of personnel. So what would be your advice for Eric on that front? We're using visual, I mean, we're measuring cracks. But, and that's mostly because of the facilities that we have, we have used crack monitors and things to see things move, but we're not doing any controlled experiments or any of that within our labs. Big undertaking. Nancy, did you have anything further to add? Okay, great. There's been some really good papers written on that though that I've seen where people are doing that. All right, so there are a couple other things. Lorraine is chiming in at the AIC PMG on Friday, the meeting, which I think you can still join virtually. There's gonna be a presentation on building an environmentally sensitive SF MoMA, which is a prerecorded presentation. So that should have some discussions of reducing energy in a new building and how energy could be saved. So yes, please tune in. We're presenting a couple of us. Lorraine and I are both presenting on sustainability there too. I think one last question to wrap it up and then we'll be right at time. What is your advice for people who are wanting to starting to implement these changes? Are there, is there any kind of one bit of wisdom or sort of guidance that you would give to end on? Let's start with you, Nancy. I think get to know your facilities people, get to know them as people and understand where their challenges are before you get into a conversation about making any changes. I think that's the most important thing. That's a great bit of advice. Patty, do you have anything to add? I think Nancy hit it right on. If you look at the IPI resources, one of the first things they do is list who should be present. And you want, you also want an administrator to the money person, the guy that pays the bills to be there so that they understand what you're after. And all the deciders should be there and speaking with one voice by the end of your conversations. Fantastic. All right. Well, that's a great bit of advice. I need to take that to heart. I think there's still a lot of stuff in the chat. So feel free to peruse everyone, but I think we will wrap it up since it has definitely been an hour and we don't want to take any more of our generous speaker's time. So thank you all for attending. Thanks for the wonderful questions. We will keep this conversation going in a lot of different forms and those of you who are in attendance today, please do attend the other events as well and keep those fantastic questions coming. So thanks again, Nancy and Patty, for your time. And thanks to AIC for hosting this. So, right? Take care, everyone. Thank you.