Refocusing on the museum environment
World’s Columbian Exposition: Liberal Arts Building, Chicago, United States, 1893.,
originally uploaded by Brooklyn Museum.
After some initial research and the making of a bibliography, I went on a bit of a tangent in my reading. There are a number of discussions about buildings and how they should be built to be more energy efficient. There are also general discussions about sustainability and climate change. Being the daughter of an architect and the sister of a LEED certified architect, I was immediately drawn to the architecture discussions and enjoyed reading them. Unfortunately, these articles weren’t covering shutting-down HVAC systems and I realized I should be more focused on: environmental parameters, effects of the environment on collections, then buildings.
The most innovative article I read this weekend was in the book Cultural Heritage Conservation and Environmental Impact Assessment: by non-destructive testing and micro-analysis, edited by Rene Van Grieken and Koen Janssens. The article is “Effects of the cultural environment” by Peter Brimblecombe. Brimblecombe seperates processes of deterioration, then the environmental factors that cause this deterioration.
Instead of thinking Light = Photo-degradation. Light being the environmental factor that causes the damage, photo-degradation being the damage.
He lists Photo-degradation = light, chemicals, humidity. Photo-degradation is the damage, light, chemicals, and humidity are the environmental factors that cause the damage
Then he offers a damage function. Photo-degradation’s damage function is a dose law, meaning the deterioration is more gradual and proportional to the dose (concentration and exposure time).
I appreciate the way he has switched to put the damage first, since the damage is what we want to solve. It is also helpful to have damage functions, the other main function is cyclic - eg. the number of freeze-thaw cycles before damage will occur, the number of times a book can be opened and closed before damage will occur. Dose and cyclic functions can be limited by limiting access to a collection, therefore lowering the dose or cycles, but this would be understandably unpopular.
So, I press on with other readings, next on the list is Energy Conservation and Climate Control in Museums. And one reading over the weekend led me to the National Museum Directors Conference in 2008 on the topic of Reviewing environmental conditions, which seems perfect.