Research on Metal Objects Conservation in MAST: A Strategic Area For Museums in Brazil

The metals are a broad class of materials which diversifies from mixtures with non-metals and metals, resulting in specific alloys with varied composition and properties. They have been, assisting man to overcome various challenges in the last few thousand years. From the production and use of metal artifacts, over time, cultural objects have been generated and joined museum's and private collectors collections. This cultural heritage needs to be maintained and for this to be done in the most appropriate way, it is necessary to develop and test procedures in laboratories. This study aims to address the research developed in recent years on the conservation of metallic cultural property at the Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences. The methodology for the research carried out consisted, in general terms, to create and install a metal objects conservation laboratory at the institution, to identify research priorities, to develop research projects that would enable the production of knowledge on selected topics and to disseminate the results in various media for the interested public. The main results obtained until now were: the conservation laboratory is installed and in full operation, consisting of a singular space in the country; conservation and restoration methodologies of historic scientific instruments and archaeological metal artifacts have been developed and implemented with positive results; the 3D modeling and scanning technology has been developed to support the Bamberg meridian circle restoration studies, overcoming the technical difficulties and enabling the production of a high definition virtual model.

@InProceedings { GSM15,
  author       = "Granato, Marcus and Santos, Guadalupe and Marroquim, Ricardo",
  title        = "Research on Metal Objects Conservation in MAST: A Strategic Area For Museums in Brazil",
  booktitle    = "XVI ENANCIB",
  year         = "2015",
  url          = "http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2015/GSM15"
}