AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

The need to transport a valuable work of art or cultural heritage object continues to strike fear into the hearts of many conservators. This fear is often fanned by the one or other anecdote about a “major disaster” which occurred during a museum loan. The lack of experimental data on what objects can take in terms of vibration and/or shock, and the lack of a proper background in mechanical properties of materials and mechanics in the conservation profession are also major contributors to this fear, a fear of the unknown as it were.

While such testing is lacking, there is actually a large source of data which can place the fear of transport in context or even allay that fear, and can also be used to assist in providing guidelines for transport decision-making. This source of data is all of the loan transport documentation stored in the registration systems of museums and other institutions themselves.

The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) therefore conducted a two-year project to investigate the statistics of loan transport, in particular, how often damage occurred. Fourteen museums on four continents were found which were willing to participate anonymously in the study. The author spent approximately one week at each of the museums going through their transport documentation starting from the most recent completed loan, and then going back chronologically until he ran out of time. The study thus covered a period between roughly 2015 and 2022. The author looked for the following information,

* type of objects loaned
* where they went
* how they were transported
* how they were packaged
* whether there were “changes” based on courier reports.

The information was carefully documented for analysis. Any “changes” noted in the courier reports were color-coded based on how serious the changes were considered to be, and then discussed with the museum staff (conservators and registrars) at the end of the week. All of the information was then anonymized so that no one could even indirectly know which museums participated in the study.

At the time of the writing of this abstract, the data from over 500 loans and 3600 objects had already been analyzed. Changes were reported for 177 of the 3600 objects, which actually is over 7200 movements to and from the loaning museum with some objects having multiple destinations. of those changes, 136 occurred during transport and the rest during exhibition. Only 14 (fourteen) of the changes during transport were considered to be serious Most of the reported changes, whether serious or not, were ultimately caused by poor handling and human error, and not by vibrations or shock transport vibrations and shock in and of themselves.

The results of this statistical study show the number of “serious” changes to objects in transport is quite low compared to the number of object movements. As is well known, statistical studies can be interpreted in a number of ways, valid or not. However, studies such as this containing a large amount of data provide a solid basis and food for thought when considering the future of loan transport.

One can consider the following thoughts:

- The statistics show that the probability that something “serious” will happen to an object under current ways of transporting objects is low. This should allay fears caused by “what-aboutism”, the citation of a single “disaster” as the reason for limiting loan transports, and/or trying to develop expensive high-tech solutions for vibration and shock mitigation. The exception is not the rule.

- on the other hand, the statistics do not necessarily give museum administrators carte blanche to consider cost-saving measures such as the increased use of virtual couriers. While vibrations and shock per se are not the main cause of changes in object condition, the human factor appears to be the cause of most changes reported during loan transport.

- In the past, this author has suggested the development of a “vibration-dosimeter” to determine how often an object is exposed to a vibration (and/or shock) environment. In fact, the transport documentation which museums have is, in fact, a form of dosimeter. If one goes all the way back through the records, one can determine which objects have been loaned more frequently and whether they incurred changes in the past. By looking at their own records, conservators and museum staff therefore do not have to work in the dark when dealing with transport loans.

- and as a final afterthought, this study also begs the question as to whether museums should even be organizing so many special (blockbuster) exhibitions with the concomitant number of loans.