Lecture 45 - Michal Łukomski

Michal Łukomski, Getty Museum

Overview

Responsible management of indoor environments in museums is currently in the spotlight of cultural heritage institutions worldwide. There is general consensus in the museum community that reducing energy consumption has economic, ecological, and ethical benefits.

Since the safety of collection is the foremost priority, new climate control strategy should be scrutinized by response of objects. Recently, the GCI developed methodology employing Acoustic Emission monitoring which allows the progress of micro-fractures in objects to be directly recorded. As a consequence, AE can be used to detect physical changes in objects induced by exposure to their real-world environments and, hence, can support the assessment of adopted strategies for the museum indoor climate management.

About the speaker

Michał Łukomski is head of Preventive Conservation Research at the Getty Conservation Institute. He received his PhD in physics from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, in 2003 and completed his postdoctorate fellowship at the University of Windsor in Canada. For the last several years, he has worked on describing quantitatively the response of hygroscopic materials relevant to collections of fine and decorative art, in particular wood, textiles, animal glue, gesso and paints to variations of climate conditions, using several scientific methods. His current area of research focuses on the mechanical characterization of historic materials, as well as nondestructive monitoring of damage development in art objects.