AIC's 53rd Annual Meeting

The light sensitivity of works on paper is an important issue for any paper-based collection with regular exhibition cycles. The main concern is to protect the media from light-induced color changes, and MFT is a proven in-situ method for predicting these changes. As a substrate, however, white paper and especially rag paper is generally considered to be quite stable, with the exception of wood-containing and colored paper, which are considered light-sensitive according to the lighting guidelines. However, within the broadly defined class of white papers – which have been the most widespread worldwide since their emergence – there are also lignin-free white papers that are affected by moderate exposure to light. Our research group – three conservation scientists and five paper conservators collaborating from a print and drawing collection, a conservation science research laboratory, and two universities – studied typical light sensitivities related to compositions of paper and the ability of MFT to predict light-induced change in a broad range of the most typical white paper compositions.

We prepared nine sets of 37 papers divided into four compositional groups that represent papers across time. Three sets were aged in UV-filtered museum and commercial gallery exhibition-simulated settings (LED, mixed fluorescent/daylight, up to ca. 2.5 Mlxh), four underwent cyclic light-dark aging with or without pre-aging, and two sets were micro-faded by two commercially available MFT devices, one with a xenon source, the other a LED source. Using this test setup, we evaluated the influence of paper components on the color development of the papers during these different natural and accelerated aging conditions and compared them with the MFT results. The color change data of all exposures are given in Blue Wool Scale (BWS) by comparison to co-exposed Blue Wool Standards. 

Most white papers in exhibition simulation fell into the relatively stable BWS 2.5–4, but aged rag papers and papers containing ligneous and OBA papers ranged at BWS 1.–2.5. The predominant color change tended to be fading, but highly optically brightened (OBA) papers of low quality darkened. Groundwood and other high-lignin papers changed to yellowing after initial fading. Iron-contaminated papers without a significant alkaline reserve also tendentially darkened. Previous light-dark aging cycles had an effect on the type of color changes caused by light. Both MFT types and the cyclic light-dark aging predicted the papers’ sensitivity adequately compared to the simulated exhibition exposures and identified the most light-sensitive gelatin-sized rag papers and lignin-containing papers. However, predicting the color change of OBA-containing papers proved to be much less reliable. The color change of the papers that were exposed to LED in the exhibition-simulation was better reproduced by LED-MFT than by xenon-MFT or cyclic light-dark aging.  

We hope that the research results of the recently completed project will provide a clearer idea of the role of white paper in predicting the light sensitivity of artworks on paper using MFT. 

Our collaborative project was funded by the Germany Research Foundation 2021–2024.