Museum

DaVinci, Caravaggio, VanGogh and Monet are just a few of the artists whose works attract thousands of visitors every year. However these paintings often suffer from damage due to aging and exposure to the elements. What once was a masterpiece on a church ceiling or wall often requires a highly skilled restoration team to return it to its original form – a process which is being aided by researchers at McGill University in Quebec, who have used a technique called "photoacoustic infrared spectroscopy" to identify the composition of pigments used in art works.  Read More

Valuable paintings that are shipped or loaned to museums or other destinations around the world will soon have unusual traveling companions for their long journeys – sensors that can detect the buildup of pollutants within their specially-designed shipping crates. Occasionally, adhesives and other chemicals within the crates can breakdown and the fumes can damage the works of art. But the new sensors, developed by scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg, Germany, will detect these dangerous substances and help avoid the treasures being damaged.  Read More

As art museums go, the Micropolitan Museum has a very small collection. Literally. Presented by the Institute for the Promotion of the Less than One Millimetre, the Micropolitan Museum of Microscopic Art Forms is an online “portrait” collection of mini- and micro-organisms photographed through a microscope. Inside the virtual museum’s halls you can find a zooplankton family portrait next to the glowing image of a mother copepod posing with her children (Okay, her children are actually egg packages). Down the hall, a postmodern bloom of diatoms shares exhibit space with a Rubenesque polysiphonia cystocarps.  Read More