Plastics in Peril conference videos go live!
What if a storage container could tell you when a museum object needed treatment? Why are so many toys sacrificed in the name of conservation? Should we clean plastics like we clean paintings? Is sustainable cold storage a pipe dream? How can we get the most from collections that are doomed from the start? These questions and many others were…
The Science of Art: object-focused research in our museums
Can you hear when a pigment has been ground to the right particle size? How do we know which plastics in a museum are going to self-destruct? Why is conservation documentation like a pile of dirty laundry? Can you make a priceless book full of moving paper parts and almost 500 years old accessible to all? Did the Pacific island…
Chalk and skis: conserving Scott and Shackleton’s cartoon penguins
Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton are often compared, but not many people ever ask “Which of them was better at drawing cartoon penguins?”. Even so, at the Polar Museum we can answer this question, because we have a collection of blackboards with chalk drawings by famous Arctic and Antarctic explorers, including these two great men. Both Scott and Shackleton…
