The Art of Science

Getty scientist Davide Gulotta begins his work with a block of stone extracted from a limestone quarry.

Using a fine chisel, he cuts out a small fragment and embeds it in resin. Then he smooths the rock with polishing paper until its surface is even and shiny—almost like a mirror. Now it’s ready to be examined under a microscope. The magnified image reveals what looks like a mosaic of tightly packed crystals.

This is the first step in a long research journey. Gulotta’s goal is to understand how such stones respond to weathering—wind, rain, and temperature fluctuations—and produce findings that will ultimately contribute to the preservation of built heritage made of stone (imagine a Gothic cathedral).

His work represents one of many projects taking place in the Science Department of the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI). Across two floors of state-of-the-art laboratories, just beneath the footsteps of visitors, science is happening at the Getty Center campus.

The GCI’s labs were purpose-built to move the field of heritage conservation forward. What does that look like? Peer through the windows that line the labs’ corridors, and you’ll see researchers at work: analyzing how art objects respond to physical stress, developing repairs for scratches on transparent items, and studying natural processes to protect ancient buildings, among other projects.

With backgrounds in chemistry, biology, physics, engineering, architecture, and conservation, these experts tackle a broad range of conservation issues, generating knowledge that supports the preservation of cultural heritage worldwide.

Conservation science has evolved significantly since the GCI’s labs were first established in the late 1980s, in a world quite unlike the one we live in today. The digital revolution was in its early stages, and we were only beginning to understand the full impact of climate change. How research is conducted has also been transformed: instruments have shrunk in size, while the scale of work has increased.

To strengthen its research capabilities, the GCI recently undertook a major renovation of its 16,050-square-foot science areas. Changes included reorganizing equipment and desks and upgrading the sections where scientists conduct research and experiments. The improved spaces were designed with flexibility and energy efficiency to accommodate future technological advances, so that the GCI can continue to serve the global conservation field—even as new challenges arise. And the renewed labs now allow its scientists to work in ways that were not fully possible before.

How science protects art

Like a doctor monitoring a patient, chemist Ashley A. Freeman monitors the health of artworks by listening to their internal sounds. Using a technique called acoustic emission monitoring, she places sensors on objects to detect cracks forming inside them—damage invisible to the naked eye. This is just one aspect of her work in the Managing Collection Environments (MCE) Initiative.

“Just like hair behaves differently in humidity, objects react to moisture in the air. Like a human body dehydrates in heat, materials also physically change,” Freeman explains. “We study these effects, along with lighting and transportation, to understand how the environment affects art collections.”

In other words, her research focuses on preventing damage in the first place.

Freeman brings a unique perspective to this interdisciplinary field. She holds a BA in chemistry (with a minor in studio art), master’s degrees in chemistry and conservation science, a PhD in engineering, and a certificate in fresco restoration. Her merging of art and science began in her undergraduate years, when she incorporated her own paintings from art class into her chemistry research. Today, she creates mock-ups—replicas of artworks used for testing and experimentation—for her conservation studies.

To analyze her mock-ups, as well as historic materials, Freeman uses instruments like the scanning electron microscope (SEM) to create detailed, high-resolution images, and nanoindentation to test how tiny samples respond to physical forces. In some cases, she uses environmental chambers—large walk-in spaces where she can expose matter to extreme temperatures and humidity. This helps scientists understand how different substances, from wood to paint to plastic, respond to environmental stress.

Three new environmental chambers were installed in the labs. Now, the Preventive Conservation research area, where Freeman works, has its own dedicated environmental chamber to support its increasingly critical efforts.

To share MCE’s research findings, Freeman facilitates training sessions with professionals in the conservation field. She is currently developing a workshop, to be held this summer at the Getty Center, addressing how to implement more environmentally sustainable strategies in museums. MCE’s research has shown that many artworks are more resilient than previously thought, suggesting that museums might be able to reduce their energy use while still protecting their collections.

The new labs include two wide-open spaces suitable for hosting similar trainings in the future.

“There is a huge amount of research that the GCI can do to move the field forward within this concept of preventive conservation and how to respond to the climate change crisis,” says Tom Learner, chemist and head of the Science Department. “The previous lab spaces were restricting the work that we could do in this area. Now we are fully equipped to continue to grow and share all this timely research.”

From research to results

Not all who work in the labs are chemists or physicists. The labs also support the work of specialized conservators whose research requires access to scientific equipment. Anna Laganà is a trained conservator of modern and contemporary art, and she works within the Treatment Studies research area. For the past 20 years, she has been investigating strategies for treating and storing heritage objects made of plastics.

Laganà is currently leading the GCI’s research into plastics preservation. One of her foci is on the repairing of plastics, particularly transparent materials like poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)—commonly known as acrylic or Plexiglas—which is prized for its pristine look.

Due to its versatility and absolute clarity, PMMA is used to make a variety of objects in many fields, including art and design. When these objects are scratched, chipped, or otherwise damaged, their appearance and transparency can be dramatically affected. Laganà’s work focuses on developing treatment solutions for different types of damage and recovering the objects’ transparency.

It’s one thing to find solutions for plastics made of solid colors, but how do you make broken pieces clear again? This is the kind of challenge that befuddles many conservators. Laganà’s treatment studies draw insights from the conservation of materials with more established research, such as glass. She also investigates the use of new technologies like laser scanning and 3D printing to re-create missing pieces.

Laganà recently used Gino Marotta’s Giraffa Artificiale (1973), an approximately nine-foot-tall transparent pink PMMA sculpture (in the collection of Milan’s Museo del Novecento) that had been in storage for 20 years due to severe damage, as a case study. She successfully applied her repair techniques and published her results to help other conservators, and the artwork was recently able to be exhibited at Milan’s Natural History Museum.

All of Laganà’s work, like that of many in the Science Department, involves mock-up preparation. She creates close reproductions of the objects she aims to repair, which requires deep understanding of their material properties. The labs’ Treatment Studies area is now equipped with a new, built-in fume extraction system, which vacuums harmful particles from the air. This upgrade allows Laganà and others to work more safely with solvents and chemicals. Before, they only had access to a portable filter system.

Her redesigned workspace is bright and practical, with wheeled, open tables for treating objects and performing precise work, and ample drawers for storing tools and showcasing mock-ups and study objects.

However, her work isn’t geared toward treating any particular collection or object—its purpose is to produce research to benefit the field of conservation as a whole. She fills in gaps in conservation science the way she fills in gaps in artworks. When she conducted research for her master’s thesis on plastics more than 20 years ago, she found relatively little literature on the conservation of plastics compared to other substances.

“The conservation of these materials felt like a blank page waiting to be written. So, it’s very exciting to develop treatment solutions,” Laganà says. “I absolutely like challenges—the more difficult, the more excited I get.”

Building for the future

Some of the GCI’s scientists, like Gulotta, look beyond museum artworks to incorporate heritage buildings and sites. They study construction materials to understand how built heritage reacts to the natural world around it.

Gulotta’s background is as an architect, with a specialization in conservation science and built heritage preservation. Much of his research focuses on the conservation of traditional construction materials, such as stone—one of the oldest and most widely used—as well as mortars and plasters. For Gulotta and his colleagues, conserving these materials also means learning from nature to find sustainable approaches to conservation.

“There are insights from natural processes and traditional practices that can inform us, if we have enough scientific understanding—which is sometimes the missing piece,” he says.

Built heritage is especially vulnerable to climate change. Through the GCI’s Built Heritage Research Initiative, Gulotta is working to understand the issue of salt damage in stone, which is causing the extensive weathering of buildings and sites worldwide. As environmental conditions change, so will the impact of salt damage. Because of stone’s porous nature, it absorbs salt dissolved in contaminated groundwater, humid air, and even pollutants in the atmosphere. Gulotta worked with an international network of research institutions to develop innovative methods for predicting the response of heritage stone to salt damage.

To understand how materials weather over time, Gulotta uses an “accelerated aging” approach in the lab. He places samples in simulated weather situations—like temperature cycles or solar radiation—for controlled periods of time to see how they would react in similar outdoor environments. Like Freeman, he makes use of environmental chambers that allow him to store and cure materials at precise temperature and humidity.

A significant portion of the labs was redesigned to assist the GCI’s expanding built heritage research, which requires spaces that can be dusty and noisy as the team often has to cut into or crush rock and mortars. There is now a dedicated area for this “dirty” work, as well as improved acoustics to reduce noise from the louder instruments.

These enhancements will allow Gulotta to better understand challenges building materials might face in the real world—although he notes that anticipating their extent and impacts is extremely complex.

“Climate change is not just rising temperatures; it’s also a complete change of environmental factors on a global scale, and that affects everything,” he says. “Research on changing weather patterns has made us more aware of the increased frequency and magnitude of extreme events, so that’s why we do all this work in developing new methods for understanding and monitoring damage and mitigating the effects.”

Addressing these complex problems requires collective effort, but Gulotta is optimistic about what the GCI can achieve through collaboration—both internally and with external partners—thanks to its reputation as a center of excellence within the heritage science field. While training and working as a conservation scientist in Italy, he used the GCI’s vast catalog of research to inform his work. It was through his early efforts in conservation that he first learned of Getty.

One feature of the new labs that involves the entire Science Department is an open plan connecting all lab spaces, which will encourage collaboration among the diverse, international staff. Moreover, the labs now include 10 workstations to make room for the postdoctoral fellows, guest scholars, interns, and visiting scientists that the GCI regularly hosts.

“We can only respond to the needs of our field, and therefore have a real impact, if there’s mutual knowledge exchange and effective communication between research and practice,” Gulotta says. “I’m extremely excited about the layout of the new lab, because it’s been rebuilt to reflect the way we work. The space is so much more permeable and flexible now, which will have an impact on the way we design and conduct our research, and I think we will work better because of it.”