In 2022 a famous 18th-century painting traveled over 5,000 miles by plane in a double-crate system carefully crafted by Getty Museum preparators.
Often referred to as The Blue Boy, the painting, A Portrait of a Young Gentleman by Thomas Gainsborough, was on display at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens for 100 years before making the long trek to the National Gallery in London for a four-month exhibition.
The Blue Boy’s advanced crate was designed to mitigate potential extremes in shock, vibration, temperature, and relative humidity. Sensors installed at the back of the frame and on the inner and outer crates collected data on the work’s transit environment, all of which was tracked by the Managing Collection Environments (MCE) team at the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI).
The resulting data showed a stable environment during the painting’s journey and was added to MCE’s expansive database to help inform professionals about potential risks during an object’s loan process.
The Blue Boy required such careful handling and tracking because extremes in shock, vibration, temperature, and relative humidity can cause artworks to break, decay, or fade. Since the 1970s, museum professionals have adhered to a strict set of climate control guidelines: art objects must be kept at a temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit (plus or minus four degrees) with a relative humidity of 50 percent (plus or minus three percent), to be precise. But this limited range requires large amounts of energy, is expensive, and can be extremely difficult to sustain. As climate change continues to put pressure on how institutions operate, museum professionals around the world are facing the new climate reality with urgency and proposing mitigation solutions.
The GCI launched the MCE initiative 10 years ago to develop strategies for the sustainable exhibition, transit, and storage of art objects. Through research and fieldwork, MCE investigates how artworks respond to temperature, relative humidity, vibration, and lighting. The goal: to use evidence—both in terms of data and experience—to reassess a long-established set of narrow climate control parameters that are energy intensive and may not be needed for object preservation. Scientists and conservators at Getty and beyond are getting creative to find more energy-efficient methods to preserve collections.
“While the heritage conservation field is generally risk averse, new guidelines created over the past decade suggest that wider environmental ranges may be appropriate for many types of objects,” says Vincent Laudato Beltran, associate scientist at the GCI.
Measuring Object Change
One way to monitor how an artwork is responding to its environment is through acoustic emission monitoring. This highly sensitive technique helps trace physical changes to objects by measuring the energy materials release during brittle cracking events, to essentially “listen” to how objects respond to their environments. The technique allows professionals to detect changes at a micro level before any damage is visible, acting as an early warning system.
The MCE group is currently working with the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne to investigate how a 16th-century Flemish altarpiece depicting the Passion of Christ responds when exposed to changing temperature and relative humidity conditions.
Data compiled from acoustic emission monitoring suggest that strict indoor climate control strategies in place over the past several decades could be adjusted. If environmental conditions were relaxed, institutions could dramatically lessen energy consumption from HVAC systems and increase possibilities for exhibiting and loaning objects.
In most cases, very strict control of temperature and humidity fluctuations in museums is dictated by the desire to avoid climate-induced physical damage to art objects. The MCE team is using innovative micromechanical methods to characterize historic materials, and in this way support research conducted on artificially aged ones. Systematic research shows that risks of physical alteration—even at moderate variations of temperature and relative humidity—remain low. With that in mind, more flexible environmental conditions can be allowed without compromising the safety of art objects.
The Case for Art in Transit
For decades, couriers were required to physically accompany artworks traveling on loan to other institutions. It is now becoming increasingly clear that new transportation practices must be developed to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint.
During the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Art Institute of Chicago loaned the Mary Cassatt painting After the Bullfight to the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. Rather than traveling the 885 miles with a courier, the work journeyed alone by truck and plane in a modular, reusable crate with advanced live trackers that monitored its environmental conditions virtually.
The work’s environment had to maintain a temperature between 60 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity of between 40 and 60 percent, and the team was able to track fluctuations in environmental conditions in real time. This information will help experts decide if they need to revise their policies for shipping objects, as well as assess the financial impact of their current processes and examine new technology and innovations in logistics.
“The more data institutions collect when art is in transit, the better we can understand the magnitude of risk during this period,” adds Beltran. “This may lead to a reassessment of current loan agreement parameters and potentially broaden access to objects across the museum field.”
Supporting Conservation Practice
Building on its research and fieldwork, MCE continues to disseminate key findings to help professionals approach new challenges in collection environments. This includes expert meetings, specialized workshops, and multidisciplinary courses that combine virtual and in-person components with extended mentoring.
A forthcoming example is a four-day workshop called Changing Climate Management Strategies: Sustainable Collection Environments and Monitoring Object Response, organized by MCE and the NGV. To be held at the NGV in Melbourne in August 2023, this workshop will address obstacles in developing and implementing more adaptive environmental management strategies in museums and will target heritage professionals from diverse backgrounds working in Australasia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia to support the regional heritage community. MCE is also looking to develop additional sustainability workshops in other geographic regions, including Europe and Los Angeles.
Stay tuned for additional MCE research, fieldwork, workshops, and courses related to sustainable environmental management, art in transit, museum lighting, and more.
