How Do You Measure the Impact of a Museum?

For Dirk, impact is simple at its core: “Impact is influence, and it starts with insight,” he says. “Making progress on sustainability starts with knowing where you stand and what you’re already doing. That’s often more than you think. Motivation grows when you see that you’re already doing something right.”

He believes that positive starting point is essential. Many organizations approach sustainability as if they have to start from scratch, when in practice, a great deal is often already happening. “When you recognize that you’re already working on it, it’s easier to take the next step—instead of starting from nothing.”

Bee-Improve’s assessment is a self-assessment: organizations evaluate themselves with guidance from a sustainability advisor. The questions are based on the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. For each theme, the organization’s positive and negative impacts are identified and rated on a five-point scale according to their magnitude.

Importantly, this is not about rankings or benchmarks. “The assessment is about self-reflection—creating an honest and accurate picture—and is not defined by comparison with others,” says Dirk. This is a deliberate choice. “Impact is largely determined by the type of organization. Reducing CO₂, for example, is easier for a transport company than for a museum. A focus on CO₂ therefore does not have the same impact for both types of organization.” According to him, it is not about how you score compared with others, but whether you are willing to take an honest look at your own organization.

Bee‑Improve uses the SDGs as the starting point for the assessment. Although the goals officially run until 2030, they currently remain the most widely used global framework for sustainability. According to Dirk, they provide a shared language that countries, organizations, businesses and communities can use to interpret their impact.

For Bee-Improve, working with Centraal Museum was a special project: after conducting more than 250 assessments for all kinds of organisations, it was the first museum they had evaluated. “That alone made it great fun and very interesting,” says Dirk. “What makes the museum unique is the breadth of its impact, spanning many different areas. From promoting peaceful and inclusive societies to improving energy efficiency. I haven’t seen that very often.”

One notable finding was the museum’s significant positive impact on SDG 11: sustainable cities and communities. This is supported by initiatives including free public access to the museum garden, partnerships that provide free bus transport for primary schools, and the Wijk Centraal programme.

Dirk also highlights the plant-based options in the museum café, which make a positive contribution to SDG 2, and the museum shop’s purchasing policy as a concrete example of how the museum contributes positively to SDG 12: responsible consumption and production.

Especially in a museum, sustainable choices are rarely black and white. One of the biggest tensions to emerge from the assessment lies in the way exhibitions are created. “Constantly changing exhibitions require new materials, placing considerable demands on circularity,” says Dirk. “That is where the greatest negative impact lies: in SDG 12, responsible consumption and production. Much of the material is difficult to recycle because of the way it is currently used.” According to him, the key question is therefore: how do you design exhibitions so that components can be reused?

A second area of tension is mobility. Museums operate internationally: loans, knowledge exchange, research and networking all involve a great deal of travel. “This means a lot of air travel for the museum,” says Dirk. “It’s similar to the world of academia. The irony is that ‘to promote sustainability and share knowledge, some people travel all over the world.’”

The museum’s collection also does its fair share of travelling. But while a physical courier used to accompany every artwork, these days supervision is increasingly handled digitally, with remote condition checks.

According to Dirk, sustainability isn’t about simply doing nothing anymore, but about weighing up your options. “The word balance is incredibly important here. And so is context: why you make a particular choice, in what situation, and with whom.”

One of the questions Dirk is asked most often is just how reliable a self-assessment really is. His answer is striking: organisations tend to underestimate their own impact rather than overestimate it. “What strikes me is that people often assess their own impact very cautiously,” he says. “We find that we actually have to challenge people to accept that their impact is greater, rather than smaller. People rarely exaggerate.” According to him, the same applies to the museum.

That does not mean measuring impact is easy. Quite the opposite. Making visible what you deliberately choose not to do remains particularly difficult. Dirk gives an example: an organisation that does not take part in Black Friday may prevent negative impact, but how exactly do you calculate those savings? “What, then, is the impact of not running that campaign? How do you quantify it?” he wonders. That is precisely what makes thinking about sustainability so complex. “Sustainability does not mean doing nothing that harms the environment, but rather: how do we weigh the trade-offs?”