Today, 26% of all museums have no environmental controls and fail to protect their collections from the damaging effects of temperature, humidity and light. Fifty-nine percent of museums have had collections already damaged by light – 59%! (1) But the museum’s Hippocratic Oath is: “You shall do no harm to the artifacts in your care.” The new trend is for museums to stop all harm.

Collection values are escalating. With e-Bay®, telephone bidding at auctions and popular appraisal TV shows, duplicates and replacements are more difficult to afford. Plus, artifact donors are starting to insist on good preservation practices as a pre-condition to their gifts. Therefore, the key is to create exhibits that preserve artifacts.

Time Ties That Bind

Museums publicize exhibit opening dates. The mayor, senator, donors and even foreign diplomats are coming. Nothing can change that date. But the typical schedule slips. Lighting is one of the last things installed. It becomes a crisis.

Hurrying lighting with the wrong kind of products can contribute to damage. Artifacts fade, yellow, discolor and literally break apart under conventional lighting. Therefore, you need a responsive supplier with the right kind of lighting before your time crunch.

I’m the president of NoUVIR Research. We manufacture the finest fiber optic lighting. I want you to know up front that I have dedicated my life to the science of saving artifacts.

But there is more to light than superior technology. Museums need service. When that schedule bind happens I often hear, “Ah..er...um, pullease, can you fax a quote by tonight?” Or, “If I give you a credit card number, can you deliver the lighting systems by Friday? Overnight?” The answer is ‘yes,’ even for customized orders. Service is vital, because if poor planning forces you to install department store track lights to meet a schedule, you just broke the museum’s oath.

Environmental Controls

There are two distinct elements in photochemical damage: “photo” (photons spinning through space at 186,000 miles per second) and “chemical” (pollutants altering the molecules of materials being illuminated). Current data published by the National Park Service states a gasket-sealed display case exchanges its entire volume with the gallery every 72 hours (4), and that air includes everything from saliva to perfume.

For decades, controlling exhibit environments included the whole building. Big bucks are spent on fancy HVAC systems that repeatedly scrub, humidify and condition a gallery’s air. Then all cases are fitted with trays of silica gel.

But microclimate control is now coming into its own. It’s getting affordable. Shop around. For example, the AIR-SAFE® system (5) costs about $500. It needs no power as it uses barometric pressure changes to circulate case air in and out of a plastic bag through screw-in cartridges of microparticle filters, various chemical filters and silica gel. Thus, the case cleans its internal air over and over again, so it is cleaner than a hospital operating room.

Plug And Play

And that leads to “plug and play” exhibit cases. Museums are starting to want lighting and environmental controls factory installed. This is really new. And you can tell how nice it is for a museum to install artifacts, light and immediately open to the public.