Studies in Conservation is expanding. This is the first of six issues to be published in 2014, each one containing at least the same number of pages as each of the four issues published in earlier years. In addition, IIC is actively seeking sponsorship for themed issues as well, so that we could increase the number of papers in some issues, to do justice to the papers submitted in a particular subject area. The plan is that each year's volume of Studies in Conservation from 2014 should include up to three themed issues, while the other issues will include all recently edited papers that cover the vast number of other topics making up practice and research in the wide field of ‘historic and artistic works’ (as it is styled in IIC's very name) or in ‘cultural heritage’, to use a current expression.
Meanwhile, online versions of the papers in the line-up for publication can be seen, read, and cited as FastTrack papers. It might not at first be obvious to readers, but Studies in Conservation online will be delivered through a new and improved platform. The same procedure for member access through the IIC website will be maintained. The new platform will offer direct links to PDFs, full-text article content, figures, and references, along with any supplementary material. All will be available from the table of contents pages and search results, so that users do not have to click through several pages to find what they are seeking. Abstract previews will also be visible in search results and on table of contents pages, so that users can easily see if an article is of interest. It should be very easy to browse and search at a subject, journal, issue, or article level, while users will also be able to perform advanced searches, and to filter and/or save their results, or set up alerts for saved searches.
The first theme selected for 2014 is ‘paint’, with an emphasis on ‘paintings’, in 59(1). This is my own area of research, so I am not unaware of the view sometimes expressed by those who specialize in different materials, that the subject has been discussed in publications over many years, and frequently. To counter this, I would point out that paint is applied to a vast range of objects, from those in collections of the fine arts and decorative arts, to many in ethnographic and historical collections, not to mention social history museums. Before photography developed into a convenient field tool, paint had been used to document and record scientific discoveries and explorations in the nineteenth century. Often, paint was used to convey a political message in the twentieth century. For all such artifacts, the condition and indeed survival of the paint is influenced by its substrate, as well as by its life history. Paint itself is a composite material, made from solid components — colored pigments and also extenders and fillers that affect its properties and performance — and an organic binder. When this is applied to a substrate, conserved over centuries in some cases, and often treated with a variety of materials chemically distinct from the original paint, the result is a complex, composite object. Methods of examination and analysis, and treatment methods for one type of painted surface, may well be relevant and applicable to many other painted composite objects, albeit from different cultures or periods, or resident now in very different collections.
Issue 59(1) therefore includes two papers on the examination and documentation of two-dimensional painted artifacts: on the construction of test panels for spectral imaging, and on the benefits of emission radiography compared to conventional X-radiography, including some articulation of what X-radiography offers as an examination technique. Both represent a contemporary and praiseworthy desire to acquire useful information on condition, construction, and materials, while limiting or making unnecessary the removal of original materials for analysis. The other three papers are concerned with the response of relatively young paint films to their environment, as they age beyond the period of use originally intended by their manufacturer, and enter that long phase of a museum object's life called ‘natural ageing’. Some relatively young oil-based paints develop unintended water sensitivity, while acrylic paints can exude surfactants. One paper addresses each of these issues. Both these situations create additional conservation concerns, and the treatment —even if the treatment decision is for non-intervention — of young paint films has profound effects on future ageing processes, and on the possible treatments that may be carried out safely later in the life of the paint surface. The final paper discusses new thinking in the theory of solvent action on paint films of different chemical types. All should give new insights relevant to the daily work of many conservation professionals.
Later in 2014, IIC is producing 59(4) as a themed issue on ‘environmental standards’. This issue will include both position papers on the topic, and several FastTrack Studies in Conservation papers which represent contemporary research into the response of materials to their environment, and/or techniques which can be used to monitor this. Every conservation professional knows how difficult it is to state objectively which items in a collection are unusually sensitive to environmental change, and which have a more typical response for their material and construction type, so this is an area of much-needed research. These papers will be published in advance of planned sessions and debates on environmental standards and the advice that the conservation profession is called upon to give, when the traditional requirements of strict environmental control are seen to clash with the need to reduce energy consumption to meet green objectives, and also to reduce energy costs to a realistic level. The two major international congresses in the 2014 conservation calendar, the triennial congress of the ICOM Committee for Conservation (15–19 September in Melbourne, Australia) and IIC's own biennial congress (22–26 September in Hong Kong) have together scheduled sessions for debate on environmental standards. The themed issue 59(4) will set the scene for these.
The preprints for the IIC congress in Hong Kong, on the theme An Unbroken History: Conserving East Asian Works of Art and Heritage will in effect form another themed issue, online, on that subject — the 2014 supplement to Studies in Conservation. This will be IIC's first dual-language publication in English and Chinese, and it will include the synopses of the 50 papers and 40 posters by now selected for presentation in Hong Kong. Delegates to the congress will receive a printed copy, while post-congress the printed publication will be available through Archetype, through [email protected], and online like all other supplements to Studies.
The final themed issue of Studies in Conservation during 2014 will be on ‘technical art history’. Editor-in-Chief Chandra Reedy and I already know that we have several FastTrack papers on this subject, ready for publication. We are planning that themed issues will predominantly coalesce around topics that can be identified from accepted papers, with the occasional one including invited contributions, to bring a contemporary issue into sharper focus.
And the themes for 2015? That, dear readers, is dependent on the research and treatment and conservation surveys you may be working on right now, and on the papers you may already be planning and writing in response to all the current challenging issues in cultural heritage and its conservation, which make up your professional lives.