Tutor: David Saunders
Platform: Zoom
This seminar is the first in a series of 3 stand-alone presentations by David Sunders on Aspects of the museum environment: past and future
As cultural heritage organisations face the challenges of ensuring future sustainability while preserving and displaying collections, this series of seminars presents 360 degree perspectives on the development of policy and practice in three areas of preventive conservation: lighting; pollutants; and climate. Each seminar traces the history and development of best practice and guidelines in the protection of collections from these agents of deterioration and looks at how these have been modified over the past decades to balance access and preservation, before exploring how considerations of sustainability and climate action are changing current and future assumptions and practice.
Topics covered in this seminar will include: historical approaches to lighting; damage caused by light and ultraviolet; defining and ranking vulnerability; the development of lighting guidelines; measuring light; risk-based approaches to decision making; lighting and sustainability; and future trends in museum lighting.
This will be a 55-min presentation with a 15min discussion.
David Saunders is an independent consultant. He was Head of Conservation and Scientific Research at the British Museum until 2015 and before that Principal Scientist at the National Gallery, London. He is the author of the very recent and comprehensive volume Museum Lighting – A Guide for Conservators and Curators.