The Conservation and Restoration Department has had a Preventative Conservation section with two staff members since 2014, after a similarly named special unit was established in 2009. The SPSG thus joined many palace administrations and museums in pursuing an approach that responsibly joins interdisciplinary conservation activities to continually monitor and evaluate object exposure and to establish mandatory specifications. Preventative Conservation oversees all of the SPSG palaces and collections regarding issues of climate control, light protection, object and surface protection, integrated pest management, and pollutants.
The SPSG collections contain numerous works of national and international significance. Valuable individual objects are often preserved in their authentic settings or displayed in historical spaces. Museum contextualization and tourists’ interests collide with the conservator’s concern for protecting the works of art.
This area of conflicting interests defines the goals of preventative efforts, which are intended to design the surroundings of art and cultural works in a way that reduces deterioration caused by aging and use, as well as any need for interventions on the objects and interior décor. Preventative Conservation bundles numerous indirect measures aimed at permanently preserving the cultural assets, whether they are on display in the palaces, in storage, in workshops or in exhibitions.
The Preventative Conservation staff introduces conservation measures into the daily routines of the palaces and collections, determines the inventory’s compatibility with museum and non-museum uses, and puts good conservation standards into practice in special exhibitions. The primary objective is to minimize damage factors by carefully overseeing the surrounding conditions through, for instance, environmental measurements or pest monitoring.
