Speaker
Ms
Branka Katušin-Ražem
(Ruđer Bošković Institute, Croatia)
Description
Cultural heritage artefacts of organic origins are susceptible to
deterioration by the action of insects, moulds, fungi and bacteria.
The infestation of museum store rooms, collections and sacral places
is a serious permanent worldwide problem to the safekeeping of such
objects.
Protecting cultural heritage objects against biodeterioration becomes
especially urgent when provoked by sudden changes of their stable
and optimum storage conditions, caused either by natural catastrophes
(floods, earthquakes, tempests, etc.) or by human activities (wars,
riots, street unrest, etc.). The emergency recovery of many objects
in the course of a rescue operations can bring infested and non-infested
objects into contact, engendering an abrupt development of pests and
endangerment of whole collections.
The commonly used methods for suppressing massive biocontamination
(capable of fast processing of large numbers of objects), are
treatment with poisonous gasses and treatment with ionizing radiation.
While the use of ethylene oxide gas is now severely restricted,
irradiation has proven an effective physical, noncontact method of
preservation, applicable to massive treatment of cultural heritage
objects.
In its $\sim 50$ years of application to cultural heritage
preservation, the irradiation method has most often been used for
disinsection, i.e., eradication of insect pests from objects. In the
course of safekeeping, massive treatments of entire museum collections
during regular and/or urgent maintenance and clean-up procedures
provide examples of especially appropriate applications of irradiation
method.
Likewise, in cases of simultaneous endangerment of many objects by
mold, literally for entire collections caught up in catastrophes, the
irradiation method has proven to be the method of choice.
Professional literature presents some especially successful cases of
massive decontamination by irradiation and it will be briefly
presented in the lecture.
Croatian experience in the field gained at the irradiation facility of
the Radiation Chemistry and Dosimetry Laboratory of the Ruđer Bošković
Institute in Zagreb during the past 25 years will be illustrated by
two groups of examples of successful application of irradiation to the
protection of large numbers of cultural heritage objects endangered by
massive biocontamination: a) Massive radiation desinsection in the
process of maintenance of museum collection and interventive treatment
of an entire polychromic altar; b) Radiation treatment in the massive
process of rescuing and protecting art objects endangered during
the war in Croatia (1991–1995).
In co-operation with the Croatian Conservation Institute, one third of
evacuated objects, mostly polychromic wooden sculptures, parts of
altars and other wooden pieces, comprising almost 1500 complete
altars, were irradiated for disinsection, or disinfection by the RBI
facility. Besides halting degradation, irradiation was used as the
first step of conservation to enable safe object storage without
the risk of cross-contamination before final conservation and
restoration.
| Country/Organization invited to participate | Croatia |
|---|
Primary author
Ms
Branka Katušin-Ražem
(Ruđer Bošković Institute, Croatia)
Co-authors
Ms
Branka Mihaljević
(Ruđer Bošković Institute, Croatia)
Mr
Mario Braun
(Croatian Conservation Institute, Croatia)
