PI: Kenneth Shull (Northwestern University) co-PIs: Francesca Casadio (Art Institute of Chicago) Oliver Cossairt (Northwestern University) Aggelos Katsaggelos (Northwestern University) Marc Walton (Northwestern University)
Historic art objects provide a collection of materials that have been naturally aged for decades or even centuries. In addition to the intrinsic archival value of these materials, they are also models for understanding property degradation over long periods of time. This project aims to develop computational and experimental tools needed to understand how these changes take place. To accomplish this task a research network has been established between Northwestern University and leaders in cultural heritage science from the Rijksmuseum and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, the National Research Council in Italy, and the Synchrotron Soleil in France. This new infrastructure promises to deliver a significant enhancement of research and education resources (networks, partnership and increased access to facilities and instrumentation) to a diverse group of users. The art objects central to the project provide a series of well-defined case studies for investigating complex materials systems that are both applicable to materials education and push the limits of the existing analytical tools, thus inspiring instrumental innovations across broad sectors of the physical sciences. Further development of these tools will enable art conservators to more effectively make informed decisions about treatments of works of art, and to understand long-term materials degradation more generally. The project will also deliver a significant enhancement of research and education infrastructure by a diverse group of users and will provide meaningful, international research experience to 50 participants, with a strong emphasis on scientists at the beginning of their careers. In addition, the connections between science and art will illustrate the creative aspects of both disciplines to a very broad audience, attracting a more representative cross section of people into science.
The purpose of the proposed program is to probe the properties of heterogeneous material composites at multiple length scales, with a focus on the materials used in creating works of art. The grand challenge is to understand the coupling of material structures from nano- to macro- length scales to the visual appearance, and to use this coupling as a probe of material properties. This coupling will be addressed by incorporating light/matter interactions into computational chemistry approaches, which will also be developed to understand the physical-chemical changes that occur in materials over long periods of time. This information can be used to reconstruct the appearance of an object as originally created, and project the appearance into the future. This methodology is of primary importance to the art conservation community, which has developed advanced research infrastructures in Europe that are rare or nonexistent in the U.S. These European resources are essential for the completion of the project goals, which are to provide a greater understanding of the way in which chemical and physical changes within a material gradually distort its visual perception, and to develop a mechanistic understanding of these alteration pathways. The proposed PIRE project integrates teams from leading cultural heritage science institutes in France, the Netherlands and Italy with their American Counterparts. While the tools will be applicable to modern engineered materials as well, examples from art provide a much broader educational impact. A combination of individual and cohort visits to the three primary international sites will provide students with an international perspective on science and research, while building skills in communicating the role of science in society.
