Sustainability

For almost four decades, TEFAF has been steward for 7,000 years of art history, gathering and inspiring a cross-cultural community of collectors, museums, academics and art lovers. With our position in the art community, comes a huge responsibility and unwavering commitment to systematically reducing the devastating impact of climate change on our planet for future generations.

As we know, structural change requires immediate collective action and, in early 2022, TEFAF proudly joined the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) a London-based non-profit organization made up of galleries and art professionals from around the world. Their aim, and ours, is to help reduce the art community's impact on the climate and to develop a meaningful and industry-specific response to the growing climate crisis. We have since worked with the GCC to develop and launch the Art Fair Toolkit for Environmental Responsibility, alongside specific initiatives like the “Train to Maastricht” campaign in 2024.

Each one of us has a critical part to play. With the cooperation of our global suppliers, vendors, partner institutions and clients, TEFAF has implemented sustainability strategies which aim to reduce our immediate day-to-day operational impact and overall climate footprint. TEFAF’s strategies have already reduced our energy consumption at TEFAF Maastricht by more than 43% since 2019, and there are working plans for the recycling and reuse of hard and soft building materials and packaging, catering, staff travel, and the overhauling of logistical practices (including stand build, shipping and emissions), among others. Supplementary information on this plan will be updated on this page soon.