Sustainable Alternatives in Cultural Heritage Conservation

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) is an international organisation created in 1946, a non-governmental organisation that maintains a formal relationship with UNESCO and has consultative status within the United Nations Economic and Social Council. It is the largest international organisation of museums and museum professionals, and its purpose is to research, perpetuate, and transmit to society the world’s cultural and natural heritage, present and future, tangible and intangible. As an experts’ forum, it makes recommendations on cultural heritage issues, approves the museum definition, promotes capacity building and advances knowledge. ICOM is the voice of professionals in the field and raises public cultural awareness through global networks and cooperation programmes. After adopting the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, in 2018 ICOM created the Working Group on Sustainability, and at the end of 2023 presented the new International Committee on Museums and Sustainable Development: ICOM SUSTAIN, whose purpose, organisation and board of directors were defined in the beginning of 2024. We at ICOM are convinced of the strategic role that museums can play as credible institutions for promoting social change and of the need to address today’s climate emergency in a holistic way.

European Cultural Heritage (CH) is a crucial resource that must be maintained, preserved and made accessible, to counteract degradation enhanced by unfavourable environmental conditions and climate changes. Some of the conservation methodologies available nowadays lack sustainability and cost-effectiveness, and are typically based on energy-consuming processes or non-environmentally friendly materials. This contribution will report on the main results so-far achieved in the EU-funded project GREen ENdeavor in Art ResToration (GREENART), coordinated by the Center for Colloid and Surface Science of the University of Florence (CSGI). Coping with the imperatives of the EU Green Deal, the project proposes new solutions based on green and sustainable materials and methods, to preserve, conserve and restore CH. In particular, several innovative materials have been developed and tested:
1) Protective coatings based on green materials from waste and plant proteins, with self-healing and reversibility characteristics, possibly functionalised with organic/inorganic nanoparticles to impart VOC capture, anti-corrosion and barrier behaviours.
2) Foams and packaging materials made with biodegradable/compostable polymers from renewable sources (polyurethanes and natural fibres) to control temperature and relative humidity.
3) Consolidants based on natural polymers from renewable sources, to mechanically strengthen weak artefacts.
4) Gels and cleaning fluids inspired by the most advanced systems currently available to conservators, which will be improved according to green metrics and circular economy requirements.
5) Green tech solutions for monitoring CH assets non-invasively against pollutants and environmental oscillations. Life Cycle Assessment and modelling favour the “safe-by-design” creation of affordable solutions safe for craftspeople, operators and the environment, and minimise energy-consumption in monitoring museum environments.

Such a holistic approach is granted by GREENART through a multidisciplinary partnership that brings together hard and soft sciences and engineering, and includes academic centres, innovative industries and SMEs, conservation institutions and professionals, museums whose collections hold absolute masterpieces in need of conservation, public entities and policy makers. Innovative materials and products have been assessed at the lab scale on representative mock-ups of artworks (remedial conservation), or in simulated museum/archive environments (preventive conservation). The project intends to transfer the most promising systems to field assessment on actual artefacts and museums/archives, in cooperation with conservator partners. By covering these topics, we provide an overview of the most advanced green materials for art conservation that can be useful to end-users in this field.

This presentation will outline the varied social and environmental consequences of our dependency on plastics in the preservation and presentation of cultural heritage, prompting the question: do greener pathways exist within our field? After establishing the urgency to reduce our consumption of plastics in the museum sector, Kim Kraczon will provide strategies to mitigate the socio-environmental burden of these petrochemical-derived materials by drawing on international research projects and case studies that address the use of alternative materials and bioplastics in exhibition-making, art production and collections care. Often, solutions that seemingly lead to a greener pathway can reverberate unexpectedly, urging a broader reevaluation of “museum standard” practices in conservation.

Juan Antonio Herráez
M.ª Auxiliadora Llamas Márquez
Silvia Noguer
Mireia Mestre