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316 Results for "art conservation"
Mass spectrometry spots forged poems
Although mass spectrometry has been used in forensic investigations of modern inks, Burgess suggests that conservators have been wary of subjecting historical manuscripts to potentially destructive techniques, such as one that involves firing charged solvent droplets at a page to free ionized sample molecules.
by Mark Peplow, special to C&EN | July 26, 2018
Conservators consult Forbes Pigment Collection to solve artwork mysteries
Edward Waldo Forbes, who was the second director of the Fogg Art Museum (now the Fogg Museum, which is part of the Harvard Art Museums), began gathering the pigments around 1910 as part of an effort to start an art conservation department at the museum. It was the first department dedicated to the science of art in the U.S.
by Bethany Halford | June 04, 2018
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Chemical analysis of bones fills gaps in history
Christine France of the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute uses stable isotope ratio analysis to help anthropologists answer questions about possible 18th-century pirates and more. Sign up for C&EN’s newsletter at bit.ly/chemnewsletter. Subscribe to Stereo Chemistry now on iTunes, Google Play, or TuneIn.
by Kerri Jansen | May 17, 2018
Trace proteins on texts and clothes offer insight into the past
He thinks the EVA films represent a novel approach to analyzing artifacts, but suspects the use of water to moisten the films would give many conservators pause. For example, old parchment, which is made from animal collagen, can turn to gelatin when wet, he says. “It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does happen, it’s positively terrifying.”
by Bethany Halford | April 09, 2018
Oldest message in a bottle discovered, and an ancient medical text revealed
The effort is a multidisciplinary collaboration among scientists, librarians, conservators, and scholars, says Uwe Bergmann, who is leading the X-ray imaging effort at SLAC. While Bergmann will help bring the old text to light, its meaning will be comprehensible only to the team’s Syriac specialists.
by Corinna Wu | April 09, 2018
Method identifies subtypes of yellow pigment in Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’
The findings will allow conservators to identify regions of the painting at higher risk of degradation and will also aid art historians with digital reconstructions of the original colors used by Van Gogh, the researchers note. /articles/96/i11/Method-identifies-subtypes-yellow-pigment.html 20180312 Pigment distribution points to light-sensitive regions of painting at higher risk of degradation Concentrates 96 11 /magazine/96/09611.html Method identifies subtypes of yellow pigment in Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ Art & artifacts, analytical chemistry, imaging, painting, X-ray powder diffraction con scitech Celia Henry Arnaud analytical-chemistry X-ray mapping depicts the distribution of chrome yellow (left) in the portion of Van Gogh’s "Sunflowers" shown (right).
by Celia Henry Arnaud | March 12, 2018
A whiff of plastic art reveals degradation
—A whiff of plastic art reveals degradation “Chemists use volatile organic compound analysis to assess how polymer-based art and artifacts are holding up” Art can be timeless, but no piece of art can resist time’s ravages: Stone crumbles, paint cracks, and plastics break down, chemical bond by chemical bond. Polymer decomposition can be invisible to the naked eye, so conservators who work with plastic pieces don’t always know how much an object has degraded until it’s too late to do anything to protect it. Chemists have now developed a noninvasive method to measure just how much particular polymers have degraded.
by Bethany Halford | March 12, 2018
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How science may help us smell the past
For example, some odors are signs of decay in historical artifacts that conservators could then try to slow or reverse. And given the symbiotic relationship between olfaction and emotion, decoding what people might have smelled gives researchers a better idea of how they felt and what they thought.
by Carrie Arnold, special to C&EN | November 21, 2017
Where science meets snacks
This gastronomic endeavor expands prior work done byLen Fisher, a physicist, author, and Ig Nobel laureate, who applied mathematics to the art of biscuit and pastry dunking. It all boils down to capillary action as liquid is wicked into the cookie’s pores. In a 1999 Nature commentary, Fisher describes his use of the Washburn equation—“derived in 1921 to describe capillary flow in porous materials”—to determine the optimal dunking time for a biscuit in coffee or tea (DOI: 10.1038/17203).
by Emma Hiolski | October 23, 2017
Perspectives: A new world for pharma contractors
I found myself wondering how I, a longtime trade magazine editor with a liberal arts background, ended up in this particular hot seat. The simple answer is that I had recently switched careers and was testifying as the president of the Pharma & Biopharma Outsourcing Association (PBOA), an organization I helped start in order to represent the interests of the firms I’d covered—contract manufacturers of pharmaceutical products.
by Gil Roth | October 09, 2017