AIC's 45th Annual Meeting

The push for more sustainable climate management strategies has challenged the conservation field to review its environmental standards and guidelines for collections. While some members of the conservation field are working under new specifications that allow a broader climatic range, there is nonetheless lingering uncertainty within the profession about the consequences to collections from adopting a more liberal approach to exhibition and storage environments. A major impediment to a wider acceptance of broader environmental parameters is the recognition that the field currently has an incomplete understanding of the chemical and mechanical reactions of some hygroscopic materials to relative humidity and temperature levels outside a narrow range.

Invaluable data can be obtained from examining objects rather than just materials, which when combined with scientific data, can identify more precisely under which conditions irreversible damage occurs as a result of climatic fluctuations. This poster will highlight a pilot study developed for the Managing Collection Environments Initiative at the Getty Conservation Institute. The study monitors the condition of a small collection of wooden objects under controlled humidity variations. The objects are of different age, construction, thickness and have different finishes, to represent some of the variety found in museum collections. As the objects adapt to different relative humidity levels, the change in their condition is monitored and documented. The methods used range in sensitivity from precise observation and conventional photography to acoustic emission (AE).  All techniques will be described in more detail in the poster.

The observations and scientific data resulting from the pilot study is interpreted using statistical data of variable quality and credibility. The techniques for quantifying damage are assessed and the poster explores how they can be used in a larger series of prospective cross-sectional studies, employing methods found in epidemiology. Applied to cultural heritage, an epidemiological approach can identify how a physical condition or environmentally-driven adverse effect is distributed in museum collections.

This pilot study is part of the Managing Collection Environments Initiative (MCE), a multiyear initiative at the Getty Conservation Institute that addresses a number of compelling research questions and practical issues pertaining to the control and management of collection environments in museums.