James Druzik

• Retired at The J. Paul Getty Trust

Environmental standards for cultural heritage collections have become one of heritage conservation's most discussed and controversial topics in recent years. Although not universally accepted , there has been growing agreement that museum collections can sustain greater variations in relative humidity and temperature than previously recommended. Ho...

This experimental program, implemented by the Managing Collection Environment Initiative at the Getty Conservation Institute, has provided data about the response of historic objects to changes in relative humidity (RH). Alongside other less sensitive documentation techniques (visual observation, physical measurements, photography, and 3D scanning)...

The microfade tester is used to assess fading rates of fugitive colors of collection items. The paper presents the research considerations to design a simple, less expensive and portable contact microfade tester that could serve as a screening tool for conservators. Hardware design for such an instrument is presented that includes variations in lig...

Description for identifying museum quality products in LED lighting.

Two investigations of the validity of microfading spectroscopy to predict the fading behavior of a diversity of colorants at lower light levels is discussed. The specific research question being: what is the probability that a particular sample being tested with micro-fading will alter significantly differently from the same luxhours light exposure...

Lighting policies as part of a preventive strategy for feather collections in museums often do not consider the different colorant systems found in the feathers. Ornithological research about plumage coloration, while targeting an understanding of signaling in bird behavior, provides valuable information about different colorant systems and their r...

no one can dispute that the physical and ambient environments in which cultural heritage collections reside have a significant impact on their long-term preservation. throughout the twentieth century, the emerging conservation science and conservation/ restoration professions tried to establish what exactly constitutes a safe environment. Scientifi...

Microfading ; is a powerful tool for assessing the risk of light damage in collections. It is an accelerated light exposure method for rapidly and nondestructively estimating the fading rates of colorants on real objects that relies on measuring the early response of a submillimetre spot of colorant exposed to megalux levels of light. While the mai...

A wide-ranging sample set consisting of dry pigments, dyed textiles, organic and aniline-based dyes, gouaches and watercolors, fluorescent inks, and natural history specimens was exposed to light in air (20.9% oxygen) and near-anoxic environments. After a light dosage of approximately 17.5 Mlux-hours under controlled temperature and humidity condit...

For more than 30 years, Dan Flavin (1933- 1996) worked with commercially available fluorescent light, in a limited range of colors and fixture length. Despite the regularity of his medium, his palette can expand dramati- cally, with subtle variations and combinations of color appearing across the walls, floor, and ceiling of a given artwork’s setti...

A strategy is reported to optimize lighting to reduce photochemical degradation of works of art and archival documents. The strategy revolves around improving luminous efficiency of the spectral profile to exclude light which doesn't contribute to brightness or color perception, while also trying to maintain color rendering. The work focuses on Old...

Among the greatest long terms stresses that an art or archival object can experience is the accumulating damage that results from the illumination needed to view the object. Objects such as the Mona Lisa that can never be taken off of display experience the greatest photochem. stress. Some objects will effectively cease to be viewable after a few g...

In April 2009, the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN) convened a meeting in Amsterdam to discuss the status of microfading research. It was clear that while approximately 12 of the 14 microfaders worldwide were built using the Whitmore design, considerable innovation had also taken place. In the absence of round robin testing at the...

The Oriel Microfading Tester was developed by Paul Whitmore at Carnegie Mellon University in the period 1994 to 1996 and has since been implemented in more than a dozen institutions worldwide. The technique, using an intense light source, employs a user-selected time interval to automatically collect a series of reflectance spectra, and derive from...

This paper describes the development and application of a spectral imaging system based on the prism-grating-prism (PGP) line-scan concept. The system is validated against an integrating sphere spectrometer using 22 pigments. Measurements were made on several Old Master drawings and one nineteenth-century watercolour. Results are reported for a wat...

The ancient Maya combined skills in organic chemistry and mineralogy to create an important technology - the first permanent organic pigment. The unique color and stability of Maya Blue can be explained by a new model where indigo dye fills the grooves present at the surface of palygorskite clay, forming a hydrogen bonded organic/inorganic complex....

An extensive study on the effects of cleaning acrylic emulsion paint films with aqueous systems and organic solvents has been made. In particular, the relationship between changes in the paint’s properties and the removal/extraction of surfactant from the surface or bulk of the films has been examined. The methodology involved several analytical an...

When conservators of art on paper in the USA find it necessary to carry out a bleaching procedure the method most frequently chosen is aqueous light bleaching. Experiments and practical experience with this technique have shown that when applied to modern rag papers it is effective and the results are aesthetically pleasing. The long term efficacy...

This series presents current research being conducted under the auspices of the Getty Conservation Institute.Nontoxic approaches to insect control provide safety to both the artifact and the museum professional.

The immediate and long-term effects of aqueously light bleaching both unsized and gelatin-sized cotton cellulose papers in either calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH)2, or magnesium bicarbonate, Mg(HCO3)2, solutions were investigated. After samples were treated by washing, bleaching, or control bathing in the dark, one-half of each was artificially aged, and...

“The wear of iron teeth of time...” “nothing is eternal” “everything ends up in ashes” Such poetic locutions have been with us since Biblical and Homeric times. Lately it has become fashionable to clad this commonplace insight in more scientific garb such as the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Art has as many meanings as contexts in which it operates. It can mean surface decoration or the integral sum of parts and whole which a historian analyzes as structure using visual, musical, theatrical or other criteria. Art serves as decoration, but also serves to signal or sign a particular meaning. Art often confers an elite social status on it...

Air pollution has been known to cause damage to museum objects for at least one hundred years. However, until recently, little was known about the indoor concentrations of photochemical oxidants in the museum environment or the potential risks they might pose to museum collections. For this reason we began, in the early 1980's, to measure the indoo...

Different facets of a broadly based environmental research program conducted at the Getty Conservation Institute are described and briefly discussed. Current research includes indoor and outdoor pollution studies of museum microenvironments and biodeterioration, and research on seismic isolation and mitigation. Future trends of the GCI's environmen...

the purpose of this meeting is to present new and current research which: shares an empirical methodology of observation and measurement; concerns interdisciplinary studies of art, archaeology, architecture, ancient technology, and conservation; and uses the knowledge, methods and tools of materials science and engineering. Druzik introduced the sy...

Dynamic studies permit the observation of microscopical changes of materials over time as various factors alter an object. Using this methodology, processes important in art conservation and archaeology such as the wetting and drying of consolidated and unconsolidated building materials or the corrosion of metals from air pollutants can be studied...

Eleven museums, art galleries, historical houses and a museum library were monitored for 38 days during the summers of 1984 and 1985 to determine whether high outdoor ozone concentrations are transferred to the indoor atmosphere of museums. Museums having conventional air conditioning systems show peak indoor ozone concentrations about 30–40% of th...

Triphenylmethane compounds were exposed in the dark to ozone in air (10 ppm for 4 days), and the exposed samples were analyzed by mass spectrometry. There was no evidence for reaction between ozone and triphenylmethane and between ozone and the triphenylcarbinol pararosaniline base. In contrast, the triphenylmethane cationic dye Basic Violet 14 yie...

In 1984, The Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) embarked on a program of museum environmental research covering air pollution generated outdoors and indoors, and microenviron-mental studies. These three branches are further divided into surveys of pollutant concentrations in buildings containing cultural and natural history collections, assessment...

The organic colorant curcumin [1,7-bis(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)-1,6-heptadiene-3,5-dione] was exposed to ozone in purified air in the dark, and the exposed samples were analyzed by mass spectrometry. The major reaction products included vanillin (4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde) and vanillic acid (4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzoic acid). These products...

The 18O /16O ratios of cellulose and the D/H ratios of cellulose nitrate were determined for linen, a textile produced from the fibers of the flax plant Linum usitatissimum, and for maize ( Zea mays) from a variety of geographic locations in Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. The regression lines of δD values on δ 18O values had...

Air pollution has been suspected as a possible cause of damage to museum collections for at least one hundred years. As early as 1888, concern over pollution in the London atmosphere led to a systematic investigation of whether or not direct exposure to the combustion exhaust from a burning gas jet would cause artists' pigments to fade. Since that...

Indigo, dibromoindigo, and colorants containing thioindigo and tetrachlorothioindigo were exposed in the dark to dry, purified air containing ozone (10 ppm) for 4 days, and the exposed samples were analyzed by mass spectrometry. Under the conditions employed, indigo and dibromoindigo were entirely consumed, and the major reaction products were isat...

Over a 35-day period a testing methodology was employed to assess the biodeterioration susceptibility of thin films of 15 stone consolidants that had been or are being used in the stone conservation field. The program utilized inoculation of mixed fungal cultures onto thin films of the consolidants alone, without added substrates. A visual scoring...

The colorants alizarin and Alizarin Crimson (a calcium- aluminum lake pigment) and their simple structural homologue anthraquinone were deposited on silica gel, cellulose, and Teflon substrates and exposed in the dark to ozone in purified air (~0.4 ppm O_3 for 95 days and ~10 ppm O_3 for 18-80 h). Exposed and control samples were analyzed by mass s...

This report details the results of an ozone exposure experiment performed on a large number of traditional natural organic colorants applied to watercolor paper with no binder. These colorants were exposed in an environmental chamber to an atmosphere containing 0.397 ± .007 parts per million (ppm) ozone at 72°F and 50% RH in the absence of light fo...

Experiments conducted in the early 1980's on a very small selection of modern artists' pigments showed that several pigments will fade dramatically if exposed to ozone at the levels found in Los Angeles photochemical smog. The objective of this research project is to provide a comprehensive assessment of the full scope of this fading hazard to work...

Recently, it has been shown that several artists' pigments will fade in the absence of light if exposed to atmospheric ozone at the levels found in Los Angeles photochemical smog. In the present study, a large number of artists' organic watercolors have been examined to further assess the scope of this fading hazard to works of art. Twenty-seven or...

The chemistry of the various stains and images on the Shroud of Turin is presented. The chemical conclusions were drawn from all the data and observations, both physical and chemical, collected by direct investigation of the Shroud in 1978. The conclusions are that the body image is made up of yellowed surface fibrils of the linen that are at more...

Seventeen artists' watercolor pigment samples and two Japanese woodblock prints were exposed to 0.40 ppm ozone in a controlled test chamber for three months. It was found that several artists' pigments when applied on paper will fade in the absence of light if exposed to an atmosphere containing ozone at the concentrations found in photochemical sm...

Digital Image Processing is a computer-assisted technique which can help the conservator interpret the visual information contained in the many photographic images produced when documenting a work's condition. In this paper some of these techniques are utilized to assist in evaluating the radiography of a complex 17th century panel painting.

Studies carried out in this laboratory have shown that many artists organic colorants fade substantially when exposed to ozone in the dark. These studies typically involved pigment exposure for 12 weeks to purified air containing 0.3-0.4 ppm of ozone at ambient temperature and humidity. These laboratory conditions are equivalent to about six years...