Environmental research for art conservation and assessment of indoor conditions surrounding cultural objects

This paper describes the results and conclusions of research directed towar ds the development and evaluation of a chemical sensor which would provide information on the quality of indoor environments surrounding cultural obje cts. In our case these objects were paintings housed in major European gall eries and the main objective is their preservation through an improved unde rstanding of their microenvironment. The concept was to prepare and expose test tempera paintings which would behave as dosimeters and integrate the e nvironmental response at these locations. Artificial ageing of similar samp les was performed to provide a means of calibrating the test paintings. Sam ples from the test paintings were compared with artificially aged samples a nd this enabled the sites to be ranked in terms of their suitability for ex posure of cultural objects. Additionally, novel methodology involving piezoelectric sensors was designe d for monitoring the relative humidity and temperature of the microenvironm ent of paintings. Dielectric techniques were also used for measuring the ef fect of relative humidity fluctuations on artists' materials and novel non- invasive dielectric techniques in the microwave region were used for the de termination of their moisture content.