| Seminar
Series in Conservation Science |
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Conceived as a means to cross-pollinate and educate museum professionals and scientists to each other’s challenges and resources, in its 2004-2005 season the Seminar Series has met with tremendous success. Active participation of professionals and experts from Chicago-area museums, academia, and private practice has encouraged insightful, unconventional methods in approaching conservation science. This outside the box approach, along with the participation of distinguished speakers who are leaders in their fields, have stimulated lively discussions, information sharing and the growth of new collaborations. Three seminars have taken place, in the academic year 2004-2005. |
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| Analytical
Methods for Metallic Artifacts |
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A broad representation of the university and museum communities was present in an audience that included researchers from local institutions such as Argonne National Laboratory, the Field Museum, the Oriental Institute, and the McCrone Research Institute, as well as scholars from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Over 100 people attended Dr. Lechtman’s lecture that was open to entire university community of faculty and students.
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| Color
Science and Imaging in the Museum and Engineering Fields |
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Agenda
of the day Third Seminar – |
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| Archeometallurgy
in Perspective: The Interpretation of Ancient Chinese Bronzes at the Crossroads Between Art History and Technology |
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The
first seminar, held on January 18, 2005, at Northwestern University,
included lectures by Brian Newbury of the Materials Science and Engineering
Department at Lehigh University; Vinayak Dravid, Professor of Materials
Science and Engineering at Northwestern University; and Heather Lechtman,
Professor of Archeology and Ancient Technology and Director of the
Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology at M.I.T.
Each lecturer explored the latest analytical tools used for characterizing
metallic artifacts. Each talk lasted approximately 50 minutes with
ample time for discussion and questions from the audience of experts.
Particularly of value was the complementary approach that each of the
speakers brought to the topic under discussion: Brian Newbury, reported
on an in depth research project to study the astrolabe collection of
the Adler Planetarium and History of Astronomy Museum in Chicago, carried
out at the APS synchrotron at Argonne National Laboratories. This research
into metallurgy and metal forming techniques of historical objects
bears close similarity with what we are currently doing with our project
on the ancient Chinese Bronze collection at the Art Institute and discussion
of experimental approaches and data interpretation were most useful
to inform the continuation of our own project. Vinayak Dravid’s
account of the most advanced techniques in microscopy, with particular
attention to potential applications to arts and archaeology was eye-opening
and generated ample discussion focused on furthering the understanding
of how these innovative techniques can be put to use in enhancing our
knowledge and preservation of works of art. Heather Lechtman’s
plenary lecture highlighted the close relationship between art-historical
and anthropological issues with scientific research on the fabrication
of different bronze alloys. Her approach of trying to relate the comparative
mechanical and physical properties of the alloys, as well as the extractive
metallurgical regimes that produced them, to explain changes in their
utilization over time by different cultures, was the perfect climax
for a series that aims at highlighting synergies between art-making,
art interpretation and scientific research. 
The
second seminar, held at the Art Institute on March 17, 2005, featured
Roy Berns, R. S. Hunter Professor in Color Science, Appearance, and
Technology at the Center for Imaging Science at the Munsell Color Science
Laboratory at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Professor Berns
discussed how specialized color science and digital imaging techniques
can be applied to the study of works of art to simulate their original
appearance. Undesirable chemical change, such as fading, discoloration,
and color alteration, takes place during the history of the objects,
and Professor Berns, using examples from masterpieces such as Georges
Seurat’s
Sunday on La Grande Jatte and Vincent Van Gogh’s Daubigny’s
Garden, shared his methods for replicating the original look of works
of art.
The
third seminar, held at the Art Institute of Chicago on June 2nd, 2005,
had a very dense program featuring a prestigious list of guest
speakers, leading authorities in the field of study of bronze metallurgy
and ancient Chinese bronzes. Jay Xu (Pritzker Curator of Asian Art, The
Art Institute of Chicago) illustrated in his lecture the wealth of information
that the naked eye of a connoisseur can infer about casting technology
with no other tool but the knowledge base accumulated over many years
of scholarship and visits to archaeological digs. In his talk, Dr. Xu
compared bronze fabrication techniques in the Zhongyuan (Central Plain
of China) and at Sanxingdui to show how a fundamentally similar technology
was applied in drastically different ways to create bronze objects. Dr.
Xu skillfully demonstrated how this phenomenon was due to a combination
of factors: demands imposed by the objects to be fabricated, availability
of raw materials and preferences of different workshops. Marcus Young,
doctoral student at NU, discussed high-energy synchrotron x-ray diffraction,
fluorescence, and imaging experiments performed at the Advanced Photon
Source on three ancient Chinese bronzes from the Art Institute of Chicago
with the goal of non-destructively studying their microstructure. A bronze
dagger-axe (Ge, 3rd/2nd century B.C.) with a silver-inlaid sheath studied
under both diffraction and imaging conditions, was determined to have
been cast as a single object, answering longstanding scholars’ questions
on whether the ceremonial object concealed an interior blade. Bronze
fragments from a early Western Zhou dynasty vessel (Hu, 11th/10th century
B.C.), provided spatially-resolved diffraction information on the depth
and composition of the surface corrosion layer and the composition and
grain size of the underlying bronze core. The latter study, offering
an unique opportunity to cross-reference and confirm SR non-destructive
X-ray diffraction data with results obtained with conventional, invasive
methods of analysis, paves the way to using transmission SR-XRD to investigate
whole Museum and Archaeological objects. In particular, the possibility
to perform depth profiling of corrosion products with 20 mm resolution,
and assessing the presence and condition of the metallic core, in non-destructive
mode with rapid collection times would allow probing of a statistically
representative set of areas in each object and constitutes a great advantage
of SR-based techniques. Dr. David Scott, (Professor in Art History and
Archaeology, and Chair of the UCLA/Getty Program in Archaeological and
Ethnographic Conservation ) closed the morning session with a discussion
of examples of the corrosion of ancient bronzes which result in the formation
of patinas whose preservation is a critical aspect of their authenticity
and history. The problems of instability associated with bronze disease
and attempts to arrest destructive corrosion was also described. Examples
of ancient bronzes from Chinese, Egyptian and Roman cultures were used
to illustrate the themes of patina and preservation, providing the audience
with a thorough visual compendium of the most notable bronze corrosion
phenomena. Dr. Scott also entertained the audience with a