Light and Climate: Regulatory Requirements and Practice of Cultural Valuables Preservation

Abstract

The article presents the set of data related to development of museum illumination control standards. The main goal of the review is to demonstrate the balance between illumination adjustment as a means to improve preservation of museum exhibits and adjustment as a means to improve presentation of exhibits to visitors. Such review became necessary due to intensification of activities for development of museum illumination regulations since 2018. As part of these activities, the specialists of two leading organisations – light engineers of the Russian Lighting Research Institute named after S.I. Vavilov (VNISI) and the museum and restoration community of the State Research Institute for Restoration – fulfilled a contract for analysis of museum practice in the sphere of museum illumination. The results of the studies under the contract were reviewed and approved during an extended meeting of the museum illumination commission of the Scientific and Technical Council of the Lighting Industry in the Russian Federation (STC “Svetotekhnika”) with participation of representatives of the museum community. The results of this work were also discussed at a meeting of the scientific council of GosNIIR. In 2020, specialists of VNISI developed four regulations of LED illumination for museums after fulfilling the contract. The article presents a brief description of the potential of these documents for improvement of development of LED museum illumination. It demonstrates limited applicability of the developed standards to actual needs of museums and the mistakes made by the developers, which pose risks for preservation of museum exhibits if these standards are used in practice. The author proposes the ways of further development and improvement of the regulatory framework of museum illumination. These ways and the programme of regulation development were discussed and approved at the meeting of the scientific council of GosNIIR.