Spectroscopic study on accelerated ageing of materials used in contemporary art

Pictorial films in contemporary art represent a material matrix that can be really complex: for their works contemporary artists use fairly new material –from XIX and XX centuries- that derive from industrial productions and whose conservation characteristics are unknown. Artists often combine pigments and binders with other materials that do not belong to traditional chemical classes used in artistic field. In addiction, contemporary art can be subjected to less monitored or more aggressive environmental conditions, for example like in street art. The aim of this study, part of a PhD project, is the characterization of pictorial films in synthetic organic pigments and acrylic binder in terms of stability and degradation products through accelerated ageing. For this reason, different accelerated ageing processes are used to consider influence of multiple factors – UV radiation, solar light, thermic stress- in monitoring of temperature and Relative Humidity. The characterization of ageing is based on several spectroscopic techniques.