Spring to fall, 2026

Shifting: Towards Sustainability

Pavilion and online

 
 
Shifting is a new initiative at The Goldfarb Gallery focused on sustainability. In reckoning with the scale of the climate change crisis, it can be difficult to envision our potential to make meaningful change. The hope for this project is to not get stuck in feeling powerless and, instead, make shifts, creating pathways to climate action. As Rebecca Solnit writes in the anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, “it is not too late, because the emergency is not over. The outcome is not decided.”

This series consists of two branches. The first is a series of public programs centered on ecology, resilience, and art focused on curators, writers, and artists doing generative work and discussing pathways to climate action. The second is the development of a living document centered on operating at The Goldfarb Gallery, providing guidance for sustainable practices.

In conversation with the program series, we’ve been developing a sustainability guidance document with the support of Dayna Obbema and Alexa Steiner from Rute Collaborative, a Vancouver-based consultancy that supports museums and cultural organizations. Ian Garrett, who is Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York and Graduate Program Director for Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies as well as Director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, has continued to support us in this project. Their experience and knowledge have enriched this project beyond what we anticipated. This fall, we look forward to sharing some of our findings with our community, partners, artists, faculty, staff, and students.