Component Five: Georgia O'Keeffe Museum – Demonstration Project
By winter 2007, accelerated light exposure experiments conducted side-be-side in two exposure booths—one equipped with UV-filtered MR-16 lamps and the second one fitted with the third version of the UTEP thin-film filters—were demonstrating that many colorants were indeed fading at slower rates, at equal lux levels, under the UTEP filters. These encouraging results (along with a field trial that showed that colorful artifacts, not just Old Master drawings, also looked good in filtered light) led to the next logical step, application to a museum or gallery with a diverse collection.

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum accepted our offer to be the first demonstration project using the new filter designs. This museum was selected because it was small enough, while simultaneously diverse enough in the range of its collections, to match the scale of the project. However, one additional value the GCI could provide was to carry out extensive microfading assessment on O'Keeffe's studio materials that have survived, and on a few selected watercolors. This would provide the nexus for reviewing their entire exhibition light and loan policies. A successful demonstration at O'Keeffe would be followed by installation in the gallery spaces at the Getty Research Institute and Getty Museum.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Oriental Poppies, 1927, oil on canvas. Dale Kronkright, Conservator, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (left) and Carl Dirk from UTEP (right) examine the painting Oriental Poppies at the O'Keeffe Museum, on loan to the museum from the Fredrick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Photo: Jim Druzik.	A selection of pastels from Georgia O'Keeffes workbox, including commercially available pastels (top), and pastels made by the artist (bottom). Photo: Jim Druzik, reproduced with permission of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.

Last updated: July 2008