AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

Reverse protection in painting on canvas has a great application in the field of conservation. In recent decades, its qualities have been analyzed as a simple way to mitigate the negative effect of vibrations, relative humidity and temperature fluctuations, dust accumulation, and the action of polluting gases, light, and certain biological agents, mostly. The list of products that can be used as a backing has evolved according to advances in the matter. Currently, as part of the results of the Sustainability Tools in Cultural Heritage (STiCH) project, the impact of the carbon footprint of the production of materials has become another criterion for selecting backing material.

Intending to contrast the results of the theoretical studies with their application in real practice, we carried out a first field study where we compared bibliographic sources of different types with conservation interventions carried out by different professionals. As a result, we identified certain discrepancies in the use of materials that made us interested in the topic from the perspective of the conservator-restorer himself.

For my doctoral thesis, which we are carrying out with a contract from the Ministry of Universities of Spain (FPU20/00384), we designed an online survey with 19 questions in English and Spanish through Microsoft Forms. The first three were directly related to the criteria that we were subsequently going to use to interpret the data: the sector (public, private or both), the country of work and the years of experience. Next, 16 questions were presented about the concept they have of the backings, the role they played within their usual intervention proposals, the materials they used and the positive or negative experiences they had had with them, among other points of interest.

Since its publication, in March 2022, until its closure in September of the same year, we have obtained a total of 126 responses from 23 different countries. Spain represents 51.9% of the responses, followed by the USA with 12.0% and Canada with 5.26%. 46.8% of the total responses are from the public sector, 45.2% from the private sector and 7.9% come from both areas. Professionals with a career spanning between 20 and 30 years of experience represent 31.0% of the total responses and are followed by those with a career spanning between 5 and 10 years with 24.6%.

In the first place, the general results show the lack of a precise definition of the concept of backing as a treatment to prevent pictorial support. The main difference between the three employment sectors is the reason for their placement. Among the different generations, the use of a wide variety of materials stands out, which decreases with years of experience. The most significant contrasts between countries are the type of backing, the nature of the products used and the way they are placed.