ArtGuardian® - High-Tech Protects Art Fraunhofer Technology for Preventive Conservation Will Soon Be Introduced to the Market

Dortmund/ Leipzig /

A visit to the museum is like a trip to another world. The exhibits can take us on excursions into past times – starting from million year old skeletons of extinct animals and plants, to relicts of lost civilizations up to artworks of artists from various epochs – or they transfer us into futurist worlds. Unfortunately, exhibitions always pose a risk to the pieces presented. Especially the transport, but also storage as well as the display itself, can affect the substance – if the conditions are not optimum.
ArtGuardian®, a high-tech system of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft for the protection of artworks and cultural assets, helps to solve this problem. It enables a continuous, tamper-proof monitoring of the microclimatic conditions to which the piece of art is exposed to – during the time of exhibition, transport and storage – no matter where in the world it is located.

For this purpose, three components from different disciplines have been combined: Autonomous ArtGuardian-Sensors measure the temperature, relative air humidity, intensity of lighting and motion directly at the artwork and send the values to the ArtGuardian-Software. Via this IT platform, the owner of the work of art receives access to a complete documentation of the load spectrum as well as to all available services. Furthermore, a forecast assistant evaluates the measured data on the basis of the integrated ArtGuardian-Rules for preventive conservation and warns against potential risks.
However, this is just the beginning, as the components can perform much more. Not only that the measured values sent to the platform are tamper-proof, the sensors themselves cannot be tricked: Each attempt to remove the sensor from the artwork as well as undesired movements trigger an alarm. Apart from showing the values, the ArtGuardian-Software also warns the owner, when measurements leave a certain range of values and also gives recommendations for action. This makes ArtGuardian to a guardian angel for artworks to both professionals and private lovers of art.

While museum experts and gallerists put emphasis on continuous, tamper-proof monitoring, the ArtGuardian-Rules offer the private user access to knowhow in the area of preventive conservation, customized to his specific needs. This enables him to protect his art treasures by ensuring optimum conditions, even without having an extensive knowledge of conservation science.

The permission to access the measured values as well as the person to be contacted in case of an alert can be configured by the owner.
ArtGuardian® will be presented at MUTEC 2012 (22 to 24 November in Leipzig) to the specialist public for the first time. Fraunhofer scientists will show the system in hall 2, stand H30 (Fraunhofer joint stand).
Commercialization will start in the first quarter of 2013.

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