Dec 8 2008
Curators worldwide work hard to preserve and maintain artefacts housed in museums. But although curators expend considerable efforts on paintings, sculpture and fossils, they must also contend with the problem of how to best preserve plastics. Artists have been using synthetic polymers in their work since the mid-20th century; now the EU is supporting a project that aims to improve the preservation of these works of art.
POPART ('Preservation of plastic artefacts in museum collections') was funded EUR 2.1 under the Seventh Framework Programme's Environment Theme. POPART is a consortium of museum researchers, academics and government agencies from eight countries investigating how plastics deteriorate and developing techniques to display and clean items. The project partners are focusing on collections created with synthetic polymers like cellulose acetate and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), as well as three-dimensional objects that are victims of physical degradation.
The objective of the project is to develop a pan-European strategy targeting better conservation and maintenance of plastic objects in museum collections. The partners will pool their resources to assess and establish recommended practices for exhibiting, cleaning and restoring these artefacts. The project involves five key steps: the identification of polymer artefacts; a collection survey; a polymer degradation assessment; conservation; and dissemination. For polymer artefact identification, the researchers will build a reference sample collection of plastic objects representing new and degraded materials located in museums.
No fewer than 100 objects will be assessed, tested and identified by the researchers via calibrated 'near infrared spectroscopy' (NIRS) equipment. In the collection survey, the partners will assess the frequency and type of deterioration of the objects, and rank the level of degradation of the polymer. They will also evaluate the spread of degradation in collections after 10 years of natural ageing, they said.
The researchers commented that the objectives for conservation are the characterisation of degradation products produced by polymer objects during storage and an assessment of risk, as well as the study of some reference polymer degradation using various analyses such as thermal- and chemi-luminescence. POPART will establish the risk associated with cleaning and will disseminate their findings in fact sheets on 'How to clean' for optimum conservation of the objects. Once the project is completed, the researchers will submit their scientific results to various journals and conferences.
The partners said the CORDIS database will also be used to inform the public about POPART, and handouts that give a short overview of the project will be prepared. A series of workshops has already been held this year, and another two are planned for June 2009. The dissemination process will also include the discussion of results with the curators and conservators of four museums. The results obtained in this study will help the curators and conservators improve the state of their plastic objects, the team said. In the event that risk sites are identified, the researchers will work with the people responsible to find solutions.