The Renaissance Society is honored to have been selected to receive an award through the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative, a grantmaking program established by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in collaboration with Environment & Culture Partners to catalyze climate action in the visual arts.
The grant supports A Sustainable Future for the Renaissance Society: Assessing Energy and Building Performance at Historic Cobb Hall, a scoping study that will investigate HVAC system performance, building envelope integrity, and humidity control in our gallery space.
Funds will be used to engage Grumman|Butkus Associates (GBA), a Chicago-area mechanical engineering firm with extensive experience conducting energy and systems studies at the University of Chicago, to complete an Environmental Systems Review and Analysis and a Building Enclosure Review and Analysis. Together, these tracks will produce implementation-ready technical documents and provide the Renaissance Society and the University of Chicago Facilities team with a clear roadmap for capital investment.
This project will help reduce energy use and operating costs while directly expanding the gallery’s curatorial possibilities. Stabilizing temperature and humidity will enable the Ren to present a broader range of works, including those on paper, time-based media, and other materially sensitive objects that current conditions preclude. The assessment will also establish a data-backed baseline for measuring future improvements and position the Ren to pursue additional funding.
“The Frankenthaler Climate Initiative grant allows us to align our curatorial vision with environmental responsibility. As an institution dedicated to providing artists with a platform for experimentation, we have a responsibility to model sustainable practices in how we collaborate with artists to produce and present their work. This support enables us to develop a meaningful, long-term climate action plan while continuing to champion artists’ ambitious ideas.” — Myriam Ben Salah, Executive Director and Chief Curator
A Sustainable Future for the Renaissance Society is made possible by the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.
About the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative
The Frankenthaler Climate Initiative is the first nationwide program to support energy efficiency and clean energy use for the visual arts and the largest private national grantmaking program to address climate action through cultural institutions. The ongoing initiative provides critical support to visual arts organizations in the United States seeking to assess their impact on the environment and to lower ongoing energy costs. The Foundation has conferred more than $21.8 million since its launch in 2021, with 401 unique grants given for energy efficiency and clean energy projects at 295 institutions across 42 states and Puerto Rico.
Building on the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation’s commitment to social impact philanthropy and to catalyzing positive change on critical issues in the arts, the Foundation leads FCI in association with Environment & Culture Partners, a nonprofit that creates relationships and leads collaborations that engage the cultural sector in broader climate action; and Green Design Collaborative (GDC), an environmental design consultancy that optimizes building projects through expert collaboration to create a cost-effective, low-carbon future.
