The storage and logistics company Crozier and the Independent Art Fair have partnered to offer shipping subsidies for a group of Los Angeles galleries participating in the fair’s upcoming edition, set to run March 5 to 8 at Spring Studios in New York. The move is part of a long-term sustainability initiative for Crozier, a sponsor of Independent: in return for a 25 percent discount on shipping rates, the L.A.-based exhibitors will send works to and from Independent in one chunk, with the aim to reduce waste associated with numerous shipments of work common at international art fairs.
The fair’s L.A. participants, who will also get a month of free storage in Crozier’s East Coast facilities after the fair concludes, are Various Small Fires (VSF), Parrasch Heijnen, Night Gallery, David Kordansky, the Landing, Parker Gallery, and Morán Morán, as well as one artist, Nevine Mahmoud, who is showing work at the fair without a Los Angeles gallery.
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“One of the hardest parts about being a gallerist is looking after things you haven’t sold and getting them back cost efficiently,” Tom Hale, Crozier’s senior vice president and general manager for North America, told ARTnews of the impetus behind the special offer for L.A. enterprises. “It takes so much energy to erect these art fairs,” Hale continued, adding that consolidated shipping is just one way to mitigate all the resources and materials that go into such events.
The collaboration was established following ongoing conversations between the two organizations about the ecosystem of sustainability in the art world and the urgent need to address the climate crisis. Independent founder and CEO Elizabeth Dee told ARTnews that this effort “streamlined toward the galleries” is just “the first chapter of a long, unfolding partnership.”
Crozier, which has worked with many of the galleries exhibiting with Independent, selected L.A. as the city for this particular offer. Dee said that in recent years the fair has had a “growing number of galleries, from very emerging to very established” coming from Los Angeles.
Independent and Crozier will also organize sustainability-minded programs for galleries and collectors throughout spring 2020, with topics ranging from environmentally conscious materials to modes of consolidated shipping. Additionally, Crozier will fund a talk at the fair titled “The Future of Sustainability in the Art World,” and it will be available as a podcast after the event.
Hale said that Crozier is doubling down on new ways to reduce its carbon footprint in shipping art around the world and that the partnership with Independent represents an opportunity to connect “two poles of the U.S. art market and to be able to provide galleries with something that’s cost effective.”