Predicting damage to museum objects

This paper presents a damage assessment method of indoor climate – temperature and relative humidity measured or simulated over time – on four museum objects for four degradation processes. The objects included are paper, panel paintings, furniture and wooden sculptures. The four degradation processes are biological degradation, chemical degradation, mechanical degradation by gradients in the materials and mechanical damage by changes over time due to different methods of construction. The result is a 4-by-4 matrix that shows degradation risks in an easy to interpret color for each combination of object and degradation process.