The 7th Seminar on Research and Management regarding the Conservation Environment for Cultural Properties – Sustainable Environmental Management in Consideration of Global Warming –

Workshop venue

　This seminar was jointly held by the National Center for the Promotion of Cultural Properties and Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties with the aim of gaining a common understanding of the specialized survey and evaluation methods used for the conservation environment for cultural properties, as well as of the materials and tools used in improving storage environments or providing safe storage.

　The 7th meeting, titled “Sustainable Environmental Management in Consideration of Global Warming” was held on March 1, 2024, in a conference room of the National Center for the Promotion of Cultural Properties. Dr. MIZUTANI Etsuko, a researcher with the Cultural Heritage Disaster Risk Management Center, joined in an international workshop, “Changing Climate Management Strategies Workshop” held in Melbourne, Australia, in August 2023. She shared the contents of the workshop, identified issues in this seminar, and held discussions. She talked about the outlook of the workshop, held in response to the global climate change crisis, which has increased the worldwide need to conserve and utilize cultural heritage in more sustainable ways. Lectures, practical training, and discussions were held on the issues and solutions to be implemented in museums around the world. In particular, in a lecture on the historical background of management of the conservation environment for cultural heritage, changes to the guidelines for the temperature and humidity of conservation environment were shown as essential for promoting sustainable management strategies in the future. At the same time, a lecture was held on risk assessment and monitoring methods for cultural heritage, and on the last day, there were reports and discussions about individual cases; thus, it was a very dense workshop.

　While participating in the workshop, Dr. MIZUTANI presented the participants with an issue concerning the impact of global warming on the conservation environment, and raised the subject of management of the conservation environment, and how to proceed with management strategies in Japan. There were five curators in charge of conservation or experts in conservation science at the venue in person, and 12 such persons participated in the seminar online, and these participants posed various questions related to the fundamentals of the conservation environment.

　This seminar was a good opportunity to learn about overseas trends in environmental management for the sustainable preservation of cultural properties, and to reconsider how to deal with global warming and management of the conservation environment in Japan.

Workshop on the HERIe Digital Preventive Conservation Platform

Home page of HERIe website

Professor Łukasz Bratasz giving a lecture

Lecture by Dr. Michal Lukomski

Scene from the workshop

　A workshop on “Sustainable Risk Management for Collection in Museum, Utilization of HERIe Digital Preventive Conservation Platform” was held jointly by the Department of Conservation of the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the Tokyo University of the Arts, the Cultural Heritage Disaster Risk Management Center, and Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties (TOBUNKEN), on December 17, 2023.

　The HERIe Digital Preventive Conservation Platform (https://herie.pl/Home/Info) is designed to support the collaboration between museum curators and conservation professionals when assessing the conservation conditions and safety of collections for display. It is a decision-making support platform that provides a quantitative assessment of risks to collections. At the moment, it includes modules that address environmental degradation factors such as air pollutants, lighting, inappropriate temperature, and relative humidity, and modules that allow estimation of fire hazards. The platform is being developed by several institutions with financial support from the European Commission and the Getty Conservation Institute.

　The purpose of this workshop was to give museum conservators and restoration professionals experience with the use of the data of their own museums on the platform. It was a very good opportunity to invite teachers from overseas who are among the developers of this platform to hear directly about its effectiveness and how to use it, and to try it out in a classroom. As an introduction, Prof. Łukasz Bratasz of the Polish Academy of Sciences introduced the platform and explained the concept and structure, and introduced the topic of pollutants and chemical degradation in museums and galleries. Next, Dr. Michał Łukomski of the Getty Conservation Institute talked about modelling mechanical damage and using the tool to assess museum climates. Prof. Boris Pretzel (Invited Professor of Conservation Science at Tokyo University of the Arts) introduced the topic of the light degradation tool and the presentations finished with Prof. Bratasz explaining the tool for fire risk assessment. Other tools, such as the showcase tool, were also introduced and demonstrated during the day, giving all delegates a good introduction of the kind of information each tool can provide.

　Many of the participants commented that they had deepened their understanding of the platform, with remarks such as that they wanted to return to the museum and use it because they learned about a very useful tool, and that they wanted to use it to assess light damage when they brought their collection to the restoration studio.

　Since this platform is provided free of charge, we hope that it will be widely used both by those who participated, and those who could not participate in the workshop.