Mauray Toutloff, Conservator, Museum of Anthropology, UBC
Mauray Toutloff is a conservator at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. After studying biology, she trained in fine arts and art history at First Nations University in Saskatchewan. In the pursuit of combining her two interests, art and science, she completed the Master of Art Conservation at Queens University. Today, she leverages this unique background to focus on sustainability in museum conservation.
Mauray’s awareness of environmental issues was founded in her undergraduate field work on diminishing biodiversity and wildlife habitats on the prairies. The current disasters stemming from climate change drive her commitment to combatting the negative impacts of human actions on the planet. Since becoming a Sustainability Coordinator in 2021, she has taken significant steps to integrate sustainability into her work.
In 2023, Mauray received a grant from the Green Labs fund to support a project involving a foam shredding appliance. This initiative was designed to repurpose unusable museum foam off-cuts, into re-usable and safe supports for museum collections. Although the original machine had some design challenges, a subsequent cohort or Mechanical Engineering Capstone students, successfully solved the problems. Now, Mauray and her team are exploring innovative ways to utilize this high-quality foam for art transport and storage.
Through her role as a Sustainability Coordinator, Mauray has found a supportive community of individuals committed to similar missions. She actively participates in events that allow her to learn about others' projects and share ideas. Her initiatives have led to the establishment of the MOA Sustainability Committee in Spring 2025, alongside Mitiana Arbon, the Curator of the Pacific. This committee received additional funding to hire a student tasked with evaluating the museum's waste materials. Mauray hopes this project will encourage collaboration among diverse departments within the faculty of arts to pool resources and reduce the amount of materials being thrown away.
She has also connected with professionals like Preethi Bokka from UBC Engineering Outreach to discuss sustainability programming and has been inspired by Reini Kappelhoff from UBC’s Life Sciences Institute, who has made significant strides in promoting sustainable practices and proper waste disposal at the Life Science Institute. She is also grateful to Karen Reid from Michael Smith Laboratories for a tour of the EMMTERA lab recycling partnership.
Mauray believes it is crucial to share and exchange information both within her workplace and with other institutions. She is part of SAGE (Sustainable Arts Green Ecosystems), a network of Art Institutions in Vancouver that facilitates collaboration, and the sharing of ideas aimed at minimizing landfill contributions. Recently, her team at MOA creatively repurposed thousands of expired COVID swabs, using them for delicate cleaning tasks in museum collections.
Toutloff firmly believes that sustainability is integral to addressing broader social and environmental issues. She emphasizes the need for a cultural shift in how society views resources, stating, “Overconsumption is peaking now. We need to be more aware of where materials originate and the energy that goes into production. We also need to have a better idea of where all materials end up after they are “recycled” or thrown away. Sometimes the answer is not what we assume”