Plastics dominate the collections of contemporary art. Interestingly, before centuries had passed, these objects began to be closely watched by conservators, due to the extremely rapid degradation processes. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is one of the plastics most used by artists – it constitutes approx. 13% of contemporary collections. At the same time, PVC, together with cellulose acetate and cellulose nitrate, is a component of 40% of objects, the state of preservation of which leaves much to be desired.
The project PVCare – Preventive Conservation Strategies for Poly (vinyl chloride) Objects – focuses on the problem of the lack of a developed prevention strategy for conservation of objects and design icons made of PVC. While the degradation of polyvinyl chloride is addressed in polymer engineering, much of the research is only applicable to industrial processes and relevant conditions. In the project, we will focus on factors important from the point of view of preservation: loss of color, surface stickiness and cracking under the influence of storage conditions.
The goal of the project is:
Recognition of the link between chemical degradation and mechanical damage, which will allow the development of preventive conservation guidelines for modern heritage and art collections made from poly(vinyl chloride) – PVC
Implementation stages:
1. Analysis of real heritage collections using non-destructive techniques to determine material composition of objects as well as to quantify the extent of damage by measuring color, quantifying surface deposits of additives and by measuring the extent of cracking in historical objects.
2. Extensive analyses of more than 70 samples from real PVC objects in order to obtain compositional data, and then subjecting them to accelerated degradation under various conditions to assess the rate of degradation.
3. Quantitative assessment of damage to the samples from point 2 and the development of models describing the relationship between the composition of the sample, environmental conditions and degradation rate.
4. Development of preventive conservation scenarios allowing to reduce the rate of degradation through an appropriate combination of environmental parameters.
Project partners:
The project is funded through the OPUS-LAP 20 programme in collaboration between NCN (National Science Center, Poland, project no. 2020/39/I/HS2/00911) and ARRS (Slovenian Research Agency, project no. N1-0241). People and institutions involved are:
– Jagiellonian University, Poland (Krzysztof Ryszard Kruczała),
– Jerzy Haber Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland (Łukasz Bratasz),
– Heritage Science Laboratory Ljubljana at UL Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology (Matija Strlič, Irena Kralj Cigić),
In collaboration with:
– CRICOTEKA – the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor, Krakow,
– Muzej za arhitekturo in oblikovanje, Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana,
– Centre Pompidou, Paris.