IIC and ICOM-CC 2014 Declaration on environmental guidelines

Abstract

The 2014 ICOM-CC and IIC Conferences both included plenary sessions on environmental conditions, resulting in the IIC/ICOM-CC 2014 Declaration on Environmental Guidelines. This paper reflects on the achievements of the Declaration, issues that arose during its writing, and what it does and does not seek to address.

Keywords:

• Preventive conservation
• Environmental standards
• Temperature
• Relative humidity

The conservation profession has come together and agreed a position on environmental guidelines as follows:

Sustainability and management

The issue of museum sustainability is much broader than the discussion of environmental standards, and needs to be a key underlying criterion for future principles.

Museums and collecting institutions should seek to reduce their carbon footprint and environmental impact to mitigate climate change, by reducing their energy use and examining alternative renewable energy sources.

Care of collections should be achieved in a way that does not assume air conditioning (HVAC). Passive methods, simple technology that is easy to maintain, air circulation, and lower energy solutions should be considered.

Risk management should be embedded in museum management processes.

Museum environment

It is acknowledged that the issue of collection and material environmental requirements is complex, and conservators/conservation scientists should actively seek to explain and unpack these complexities.

Guidelines for environmental conditions for permanent display and storage should be achievable for the local climate.

Loans

There needs to be transparency about actual environmental conditions achieved in museums to ensure that realistic requirements are made for loan conditions.

Noting that most museums in the world have no climate control systems in their exhibition and storage spaces, we acknowledge the need for a document that will influence decision makers that the environmental conditions for international loans may not be appropriate for the permanent display and storage of collections in all museums.

There needs to be flexibility in the provision of environmental conditions for loans from museums which have climatic conditions different from the set-points in the guidelines. This may be achieved with alternative strategies such as micro-climates.

Existing guidelines

The existing interim guidelines agreed by AIC, AICCM, the Bizot group etc. (see below) should be guidelines not interim guidelines. It is noted that these guidelines are intended for international loan exhibitions.

Bizot Interim guidelines for hygroscopic materials

For many classes of object[s] containing hygroscopic material (such as canvas paintings, textiles, ethnographic objects, or animal glue) a stable RH is required in the range of 40–60% and a stable temperature in the range 16–25°C with fluctuations of no more than ±10% RH per 24 hours within this range.

More sensitive objects will require specific and tighter RH control, depending on the materials, condition, and history of the work of art. A conservator's evaluation is essential in establishing the appropriate environmental conditions for works of art requested for loan.

The AICCM recommended Interim Temperature and RH Guidelines for acceptable storage and display conditions of general collection material are:

Temperature — between 15 and 5°C with allowable fluctuations of ±4°C per 24 hr.

Relative Humidity — between 45 and 55% with an allowable fluctuation of ±5% per 24 hr. Where storage and display environments experience seasonal drift, RH change to be managed gradually across a wider range limited to 40–60%. Temperature and RH parameters for preservation of cultural materials will differ according to their material, construction, and condition, but stable conditions maintained within the parameters above are generally acceptable for most objects.

AIC Interim Guidelines endorsed by the Association of Art Museum Directors:

For the majority of cultural materials, a set-point in the range of 45–55% RH with an allowable drift of ±5%, yielding a total annual range of 40% minimum to 60% maximum, and a temperature range of 59–77°F (15–25°C), is acceptable.

Fluctuations must be minimised

Some cultural materials require different environmental conditions for their preservation.

Loan requirements for all objects should be determined in consultation with conservation professionals.

The IIC/ICOM-CC 2014 Declaration on Environmental Guidelines — What was achieved?

Studies in Conservation Volume 59 No 4 was a themed edition focusing on Environmental Standards and Monitoring. It was particularly planned for publication in July 2014 to provide updated background information and maximise the opportunity that the two back-to-back international conservation conferences in 2014 provided for advancing the debate on appropriate environmental conditions for international loan exhibitions and permanent display and storage and energy saving (ICOM-CC Melbourne September 15–19 and IIC Hong Kong September 22–26).

This was recognised early in the conference planning stages by the IIC/ICOM-CC Working Group on environmental conditions. As a result, through approaches by the Working Group to the organising committees of both conferences, it proved possible to include in both programmes a plenary session where the issues arising in the debate could be discussed. The Working Group recognised that the best way to structure such a session was to create and present a declaration for the conference delegates to respond to. This declaration would be prepared in draft form, and circulated to delegates prior to the plenary sessions. The declaration would be presented in the sessions along with commentary from a panel of experts, and opportunities for response would then be provided both directly in the sessions and by email. In addition a comments box would be provided in Hong Kong. The responses received both directly and indirectly would then be considered and incorporated in the development of the final form of the declaration, which would be jointly published on the IIC and ICOM-CC websites.

This process was implemented in both Melbourne and Hong Kong. In Melbourne the panel was chaired by Vinod Daniel, ICOM-CC Directory Board member, and consisted of Sarah Staniforth, President of IIC; Julian Bickersteth, Vice-President of IIC and coordinator of the IIC/ICOM-CC Working Group on environmental conditions; Lisa Pilosi, Chair of ICOM-CC; Luiz Souza, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. In Hong Kong, the panel was chaired by Sarah Staniforth, President of IIC, and comprised Jo Kirby Atkinson, Secretary-General, IIC; Julian Bickersteth, Vice-President, IIC; Vinod Daniel, Directory Board member ICOM-CC; Dr Lynne DiStefano, Adjunct Professor of the Architectural Conservation Programmes, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong; Dr Jirong Song, Deputy Director of Palace Museum, Beijing and Director of the Conservation Department; Jerry Podany, President-Emeritus, IIC; Richard Wesley, Director of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum; and Dr Junchang Yang, Director of Shaanxi Provincial Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage.

The resulting declaration is attached at the end of this paper, and the debate which took place in Hong Kong is detailed in the paper in this edition of Studies in Conservation by Jo Kirby Atkinson (Atkinson, 2015).

This paper discusses the issues arising from the writing of the Declaration, and the dialogue which was generated by its creation.

In particular, it examines the following key points:

• Achievement of the Declaration

• Loans versus permanent display and storage

• Evidence-based decision making

• Existing Guidelines

Achievement of the declaration

Declarations at the conclusion of conferences can be cynically viewed as merely feel-good documents which allow delegates to leave feeling they have achieved something during the past few days of professional and social sessions. There are happily many examples of conference declarations where this has not been the case, and the declarations have become key reference points in the development of issues and indeed professions. Time will tell with the IIC/ICOM-CC Declaration on Environmental Guidelines. There is no doubt however that by combining the support of delegates at two major conferences and covering an area where the museum world is seeking guidance and leadership from the conservation profession, the Declaration has a chance of being seen as a useful milestone in the resolution of appropriate environmental conditions for collections, during international loan exhibitions and on permanent display and storage.

In this context, it is worth looking at the key points it makes, as follows:

• Sustainability and management: Decisions about appropriate environments for collections need to be made in the context of the broader debate on sustainability. Issues of climate change and energy use cannot be ignored when providing professional advice on collection environments.

• Museum environment: The complexity of providing appropriate environmental advice for collection care is acknowledged, particularly when moving away from the one-size-fits-all 20°C (70°F)/50% relative humidity (RH) rule. The dilemma facing conservators who are being pulled both ways is examined in Bickersteth (2014), Atkinson (2014) and Staniforth (2014). What the Declaration identifies is that conservators have not been good at unpacking and communicating these issues to the wider museum audience as they have been too caught up with internal debate. The Declaration seeks to move the discussion forward by getting conservators to focus on communicating the issues that need to be addressed, whilst acknowledging that they have not been fully resolved within the profession.

• Loans versus permanent display and storage: The Declaration seeks to clarify that there needs to be a clear division between the environmental requirements for those artworks and objects being considered for loan and those being held in permanent collections. The former are likely to be moving from one environment to another and are therefore more vulnerable to damage through change of environment. Conversely objects being displayed or stored in the owning institution, which the institution has been able to monitor and observe over a period of time, and in a space in which the institution has direct control over the climate, can be approached in a different manner with far more knowledge and taking into account the local climate. This issue is discussed in more detail below.

• Existing guidelines: The Declaration noted that interim guidelines had been issued by, amongst other groups, the Bizot Group, AIC (the American Institute for Conservation and AICCM (The Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material). The conclusion of the debate was that making these ‘interim’ was unhelpful and that word should be removed, given that these guidelines were considered by all three bodies to be their current recommendation.

Written comments

At both conferences the chance to comment by note or email was provided, and in an attempt to give a full picture of the issues surrounding the discussion, all those received are recorded in the Appendix. These comments were all reviewed and considered by the Working Group, the conclusion being reached that the comments were generally supportive, and whilst valuable, required a level of detail in the Declaration which was not thought appropriate.

Loans versus permanent display and storage

As discussed above, the separation of environmental guidelines for loans and for permanent collections is an important component of the Declaration. This is an issue that has not been clearly delineated in the past, and it is vital that the consideration of the two be decoupled, leaving guidelines for these two different circumstances to be separately determined. The guidelines for loans enable museums to move objects between museums in different parts of the world minimising periods of acclimatisation, whilst guidelines for permanent display and storage are aimed at providing environmental conditions closer to the local climate to reduce energy use.

From the conference discussions and subsequent comments the following points can be made:

• Loaning guidelines are broadly tailored to the climates that prevail in those parts of the world that contain the major lending and borrowing institutions, so particular consideration of the local climate should be taken when loans are made to institutions in areas of the world where art loans are less common.

• Lending organisations tend to over-specify environmental requirements (i.e. make them tighter than are often being attained when objects are displayed or stored at the lending body) so as to provide a buffer for their protection during the inevitable environmental and physical stresses of the loan. This is an issue which causes considerable angst within the profession, with borrowing bodies being asked to meet environmental conditions that are clearly not being achieved at the loaning institution.

• A potential way forward with this issue is for both the lending and borrowing institution to exchange evidence of environmental conditions during the planning stage for a loan. This is likely to increase the safety of objects and potentially remove the need to install temporary conditioning systems for objects that do not need them. This is in line with how the Declaration views the Guidelines, namely as a starting point for the conversation between loaning and borrowing bodies, with the required conditions taking into account the actual conditions and the history of the object.

Evidence-based decision making

A key driver for the Declaration for both IIC and ICOM-CC was to show leadership on the issue, and in doing so to actively acknowledge that the conservation profession has not come to a totally unified view on what are appropriate environmental conditions for all artworks and objects. Whilst initially this was seen as a hindrance to promulgating environmental guidelines, the Declaration has taken the view that these are complex issues and rather than trying to fully solve them within the profession we need to bring the wider museum profession into the discussion. Museum professionals are all going to have to think more carefully and individually about conditions they are specifying for storage, display and loans, why they are being specified, and that these three sets of conditions may not always be the same.

As has been stated on a number of occasions (e.g. by Jim Reilly at the Image Permanence Institute (2012): ‘It's time to put a stake in the heart of the zombie of 20/50’) the flat line standard remained not because it was an optimum standard for all materials but because it was easy to remember, and required no in-depth consideration of the needs of the material being displayed or stored. Moving to variable guidelines requires more thinking and evidence-based decision making is time consuming, so there is inevitable resistance to it given the pressure under which many museum departments are having to perform. The use of experimental rather than experiential data for aiding in the making of decisions on appropriate conditions has been criticised as too limiting and artificial, but given the lack of in-depth experiential data for many material types, such information inevitably is of more use than no data. Certainly, providing blanket slightly broader bands of environmental conditions without the necessary consideration of the objects themselves or the conditions and climate of the borrowing body does not serve well either very sensitive material or the climatically insensitive material that often forms a large part of exhibitions.

More broadly the Declaration, in acknowledging that the conservation profession has not reached a fully unified position, seeks to recognise and respect that the diverse views are all driven by a unifying aim, namely to limit wherever possible the damage that inappropriate environmental conditions can cause. Conservators are all trying to preserve the artworks and objects in their care for as long as possible, and the fact that they are not all in agreement about how this is best achieved should not be a cause for hand-wringing but rather for encouraging further discussion and research.

Existing guidelines

Three sets of Guidelines were cited in the Appendix to the Declaration, from the Bizot Group, AIC, and AICCM.

Inevitably the process of including these has led to scrutiny of their content, with the following comments made:

• It is not clear whether the Guidelines refer to loans or permanent collections. Bizot and AIC (AIC 2013) refer to loans in their final paragraphs, without clarifying if the guidelines refer to loans throughout whilst AICCM refers specifically to storage and display but not loans.

• The AICCM and AIC Guidelines’ references to ‘seasonal drift’ and ‘total annual range’ require clarification.

• The Bizot guidelines state that the RH is required to be in the range of 40–60% with fluctuations of no more than ±10% in 24 hours. This could be interpreted as ±10% outside this range, i.e. 30–70%. It appears however this is not the case, namely that the guidelines intend 40–60%, and that it should read with fluctuations of no more than 10% in 24 hours. The Tate website in discussing the Bizot Guidelines has clarified this as follows:

• RH: the range of 40–60%, 50% ± 10% with a maximum cumulative fluctuation of 10% in any 24-hour period. A further discussion of this issue is well articulated in the online dialogue between Ashley-Smith and Burmester (2013).

Conclusion

The IIC/ICOM-CC Declaration on Environmental Guidelines arose from the wish by both professional conservation organisations to show leadership on an issue which has caused some division within the profession and accordingly some confusion in the wider museum sector. It seeks to provide a level of clarity about the issues which has not previously existed, whilst also acknowledging that much more work continues to be required. In particular it emphasises the need for decoupling the requirements for loan items from those for permanent collections, and the onus on institutions now to take an evidence-based decision-making process to set appropriate conditions for their collections.

It is however a work in progress. The next stage is to unpack the various statements in the Declaration and develop detailed responses to the issues they raise. IIC looks forward to continuing to be part of the process which leads this discussion.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgement is made in the writing of this paper to all those who took the time to submit comments at the two conferences, and in particular to the comments on the draft Declaration made by Joe Padfield (National Gallery London), David Saunders (British Museum), and Paula Dredge (Art Gallery of NSW, Australia).