13 ms·

What Happens If You Break an Artwork?

79 points by prismatic 10y ago

melling 10y ago
On a slight tangent, does flash photography damage paintings? I see always people using flash in museums. I assume it's because they don't know how to turn it off.
- moron4hire 10y ago
  It is because they don't know how to turn it off, but also it does not damage paintings.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    I'm totally theorycrafting, but if sunlight can make things age and fade (ex: books), wouldn't the light from cameras build up to do some amount of damage as well? Or is the wave spectrum of the two substantially different so that this analogy is moot?
    - 4ad 10y ago
      Most museums don't display watercolor paintings and many types of photographs or display them for short periods of time in very dark rooms. Watercolor paintings suffer greatly from light. (As to whether flash is particularly bad, that is debatable...)
      - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
        High-end photoprinters use special paper and ink that is tested for its lightfastness. Turns out that traditional processes like C-Type are less lightfast than high quality digital prints. But slightly more obscure processes like Selenium toning are more lightfast still. Of course if you have a digital source, you can always make a new print. This doesn't sit well with the commercial art world which considers most of the value to be in a unique handmade tangible object imbued with creative manna by the genius of the artist, and not in a reproducible image that anyone can copy.
      - melling 10y ago
        In another post, you said flash does cause damage. "Yes, flash definitely damages paintings."
    - jbob2000 10y ago
      Camera flashes don't produce ultraviolet light, which is the damaging stuff.
  - pvaldes 10y ago
    It depends on the pigments used in the painting. Some are known to be unstable.
- 4ad 10y ago
  Where are you from? Most museums I visited specifically banned flash photography. In fact, most banned all photography. Yes, flash definitely damages paintings.
  - pharrington 10y ago
    Museums that ban photography do so for copyright reasons. The radiant energy of the camera flash is minuscule compared to the energy of the other photons lighting whatever you're looking at. Don't leave canvas paintings out in the sun.
    - 4ad 10y ago
      > Museums that ban photography do so for copyright reasons. Of course, I wasn't implying otherwise.
  - BugsJustFindMe 10y ago
    In fact, most banned all photography. That's almost always because of overprotective display and reproduction rights agreements, not physical protection of the works themselves.
    - 4ad 10y ago
      > That's almost always because of overprotective display and reproduction rights agreements Duh. Of course. Why do you think I would think otherwise? It is, however a very usual practice, which is why I find photography in museums unusual enough to ask for a clarification.
      - itp 10y ago
        That seems like an unnecessarily hostile response. Even if you already knew that, other people reading the conversation might not have known it. There's no call to interpret a declarative statement as a personal attack, or implication that your knowledge was in some fashion lacking.
      - 10y ago
- panic 10y ago
  Here's an article investigating the subject: http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/mhe1000/musphoto/flashphoto2.htm http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/mhe1000/musphoto/flashphoto2.htm tl;dr: "Clearly, flashes from 'smartphones' cannot be regarded as a conservation threat in any properly lit gallery."
  - dwringer 10y ago
    One wonders, though, about the flash units in modern digital mirrorless/SLR's. They can be quite bright, and since the cameras have UV filters on the sensor already (and many people use additional UV filters over the lens) there's a good chance minimizing UV emissions from the flash was not high on their list of priorities.
    - StavrosK 10y ago
      > since the cameras have UV filters on the sensor already there's a good chance minimizing UV emissions from the flash was not high on their list of priorities Oh, on the contrary, we like our batteries to last as much as possible.
BugsJustFindMe 10y ago
What gets me is that in a world where artists often experiment with viewer interactivity, sometimes you just can't tell what in a museum you're supposed to touch and what you're not supposed to touch. There was a huge retrospective exhibition of Yoko Ono's work at Musee d'Art Contemporain in Lyon, France in 2016. Included were a mixture of interactive/participatory elements (ladders you were meant to climb, a room filled with hammers and nails that you were supposed to contribute to by banging a nail into whatever you wanted) and other obviously not interactive elements (videos, paintings, things protected by glass). And I remember, in the same room as the ladders you could climb and combat helmets suspended from the ceiling by ropes that were swinging around because people were walking through them, was a sheet of either canvas or paper mounted on the wall, with another piece of either canvas or paper suspended about an inch in front of it by some string, with some holes cut into the front sheet so that you could just see that there was something drawn or written on the hidden layer. Well, in a room filled with people talking and laughing and climbing ladders and pushing helmets around, I went to peek behind the curtain and lifted up the front layer to take a look at the one behind. A custodian ran at me and told me to step away. I still don't know if I damaged it or participated in it.
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  You reminded me of this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3604278.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3604278.stm
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    Geez. I'm trying to be understanding, but if your work was mistaken for garbage... It's like someone tossing my code because it looked like the output of /dev/random...
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - mcguire 10y ago
      Let's just say that comments are important when you write Perl.
markbnj 10y ago
I suppose if you're going to make an artwork look like a bench and not surround it with protection, then you'd best make it function as a bench too.
- nkrisc 10y ago
  Yes, I would have thought that would be entirely predictable. I love art but seriously some art museums are UX nightmares. Looks like a bench, something present in nearly every museum ever but this one is actually art and you can't sit on it.
  - cbhl 10y ago
    The SFMOMA actually has a bench that is also art that is fine for sitting on, but has a nearby sign warning people to not stand on it.
- hbosch 10y ago
  Assuming the artwork did look like a bench, I would like to know what the artist thought of the incident. I imagine if you make a bench out of chicken-wire and styrofoam, it would be very entertaining to hear that someone sat on it and broke it. (I skimmed the article she wrote on the experience, however, and it seems like the resemblance to an actual bench was "vague" at best, so I assume it wasn't just some silly fake bench at all.) One of the more beautiful mishaps in the OP's article is at the end, telling of a child who accidentally broke a sculpture an artist had spent over 2 years crafting and subsequently dedicated to her daughter. I imagine what the artist would think, making her perfect sculpture only to have it eventually come out broken – a fate not dissimilar from raising a child, such as her daughter whom the sculpture was dedicated to. Also, to be broken by another child in such a context would be delightfully sad. The fact that she renamed the sculpture "Broken" afterward is small, depressing turn of course.
Pica_soO 10y ago
My uncle works in art-work transportation, and some of the pieces are basically not transportable, but are travelling from museum to museum anyway. He remembers a charcoled doorframe, that had to be transported although it basically could come apart any second once moved. They have vibration reducing special boxes, with the same climate protection as humidors have it. Also there are titanic insurance fees at work, to move art. And sometimes, somebody in some state run museum, is forced to take the cheapest option available. One of those haulers venturing into art, transported a artwork by a Chinese artists (do not know the name), basically very long paperrolls with Chinese letters on them to be hung from a halls ceiling. Those rolls they come in cardboard boxes, sealed with tape- and the poor fellow, takes a cutter, and systematically, cuts through the tape that seals all the boxes. Each box a artwork, insured for 25.000€ - sliced.
- rabboRubble 10y ago
  So like how was he supposed to open the boxes if not by cutting the tape? Or were the boxes intended to never be opened?
  - strictnein 10y ago
    Cut the sides, peel off the tape? Or maybe he used a box cutter with a long blade? Either way, it's not his fault
    - pavel_lishin 10y ago
      > Either way, it's not his fault I don't know about that. If you take a job transporting art, it's your job to understand what you're transporting. And at no point are you supposed to open boxes like that, anyway, no matter what you're transporting - when I unloaded the truck at a department store, they drilled into us that that's a very good way to slice through a rack of t-shirts or pants or whatnot.
      - rabboRubble 10y ago
        If the tape on the boxes was not meant to be cut open under any circumstance, and the tape was not a part of the art itself, doesn't the blame fall upon the person who put the tape on in the first place?
cosinetau 10y ago
Move fast and break shit!
- nkrisc 10y ago
  Children have been doing that for ages.
nsxwolf 10y ago
That traveling gaming museum that used to show up at E3... one year I was looking at a table covered in handhelds, and I saw a Sega Nomad in its box. I'd never seen one in person, so I opened the box and took it out. I was promptly yelled at "Hey! We'd like to keep that in the box!" Well why didn't you just bring the empty box then?
- StavrosK 10y ago
  Because... they wanted to keep the Nomad in the box.
  - nsxwolf 10y ago
    Odd to put it on a table with many other handhelds you were encouraged to pick up and look at.
elastic_church 10y ago
Clicked the link on my iphone, turns out I had artsys app installed and got deep linked into it, then was greeted with a login screen, no way to skip and not the article. Hunted and pecked for it on my home screen, and uninstalled it

79 points by prismatic 10y ago

On a slight tangent, does flash photography damage paintings? I see always people using flash in museums. I assume it's because they don't know how to turn it off.

moron4hire 10y ago
It is because they don't know how to turn it off, but also it does not damage paintings.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  I'm totally theorycrafting, but if sunlight can make things age and fade (ex: books), wouldn't the light from cameras build up to do some amount of damage as well? Or is the wave spectrum of the two substantially different so that this analogy is moot?
  - 4ad 10y ago
    Most museums don't display watercolor paintings and many types of photographs or display them for short periods of time in very dark rooms. Watercolor paintings suffer greatly from light. (As to whether flash is particularly bad, that is debatable...)
    - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
      High-end photoprinters use special paper and ink that is tested for its lightfastness. Turns out that traditional processes like C-Type are less lightfast than high quality digital prints. But slightly more obscure processes like Selenium toning are more lightfast still. Of course if you have a digital source, you can always make a new print. This doesn't sit well with the commercial art world which considers most of the value to be in a unique handmade tangible object imbued with creative manna by the genius of the artist, and not in a reproducible image that anyone can copy.
    - melling 10y ago
      In another post, you said flash does cause damage. "Yes, flash definitely damages paintings."
  - jbob2000 10y ago
    Camera flashes don't produce ultraviolet light, which is the damaging stuff.
- pvaldes 10y ago
  It depends on the pigments used in the painting. Some are known to be unstable.
4ad 10y ago
Where are you from? Most museums I visited specifically banned flash photography. In fact, most banned all photography. Yes, flash definitely damages paintings.
- pharrington 10y ago
  Museums that ban photography do so for copyright reasons. The radiant energy of the camera flash is minuscule compared to the energy of the other photons lighting whatever you're looking at. Don't leave canvas paintings out in the sun.
  - 4ad 10y ago
    > Museums that ban photography do so for copyright reasons. Of course, I wasn't implying otherwise.
- BugsJustFindMe 10y ago
  In fact, most banned all photography. That's almost always because of overprotective display and reproduction rights agreements, not physical protection of the works themselves.
  - 4ad 10y ago
    > That's almost always because of overprotective display and reproduction rights agreements Duh. Of course. Why do you think I would think otherwise? It is, however a very usual practice, which is why I find photography in museums unusual enough to ask for a clarification.
    - itp 10y ago
      That seems like an unnecessarily hostile response. Even if you already knew that, other people reading the conversation might not have known it. There's no call to interpret a declarative statement as a personal attack, or implication that your knowledge was in some fashion lacking.
    - 10y ago
panic 10y ago
Here's an article investigating the subject: http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/mhe1000/musphoto/flashphoto2.htm http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/mhe1000/musphoto/flashphoto2.htm tl;dr: "Clearly, flashes from 'smartphones' cannot be regarded as a conservation threat in any properly lit gallery."
- dwringer 10y ago
  One wonders, though, about the flash units in modern digital mirrorless/SLR's. They can be quite bright, and since the cameras have UV filters on the sensor already (and many people use additional UV filters over the lens) there's a good chance minimizing UV emissions from the flash was not high on their list of priorities.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    > since the cameras have UV filters on the sensor already there's a good chance minimizing UV emissions from the flash was not high on their list of priorities Oh, on the contrary, we like our batteries to last as much as possible.

BugsJustFindMe 10y ago

What gets me is that in a world where artists often experiment with viewer interactivity, sometimes you just can't tell what in a museum you're supposed to touch and what you're not supposed to touch. There was a huge retrospective exhibition of Yoko Ono's work at Musee d'Art Contemporain in Lyon, France in 2016. Included were a mixture of interactive/participatory elements (ladders you were meant to climb, a room filled with hammers and nails that you were supposed to contribute to by banging a nail into whatever you wanted) and other obviously not interactive elements (videos, paintings, things protected by glass). And I remember, in the same room as the ladders you could climb and combat helmets suspended from the ceiling by ropes that were swinging around because people were walking through them, was a sheet of either canvas or paper mounted on the wall, with another piece of either canvas or paper suspended about an inch in front of it by some string, with some holes cut into the front sheet so that you could just see that there was something drawn or written on the hidden layer. Well, in a room filled with people talking and laughing and climbing ladders and pushing helmets around, I went to peek behind the curtain and lifted up the front layer to take a look at the one behind. A custodian ran at me and told me to step away. I still don't know if I damaged it or participated in it.

lucaspiller 10y ago
You reminded me of this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3604278.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3604278.stm
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Geez. I'm trying to be understanding, but if your work was mistaken for garbage... It's like someone tossing my code because it looked like the output of /dev/random...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - mcguire 10y ago
    Let's just say that comments are important when you write Perl.

markbnj 10y ago

I suppose if you're going to make an artwork look like a bench and not surround it with protection, then you'd best make it function as a bench too.

nkrisc 10y ago
Yes, I would have thought that would be entirely predictable. I love art but seriously some art museums are UX nightmares. Looks like a bench, something present in nearly every museum ever but this one is actually art and you can't sit on it.
- cbhl 10y ago
  The SFMOMA actually has a bench that is also art that is fine for sitting on, but has a nearby sign warning people to not stand on it.
hbosch 10y ago
Assuming the artwork did look like a bench, I would like to know what the artist thought of the incident. I imagine if you make a bench out of chicken-wire and styrofoam, it would be very entertaining to hear that someone sat on it and broke it. (I skimmed the article she wrote on the experience, however, and it seems like the resemblance to an actual bench was "vague" at best, so I assume it wasn't just some silly fake bench at all.) One of the more beautiful mishaps in the OP's article is at the end, telling of a child who accidentally broke a sculpture an artist had spent over 2 years crafting and subsequently dedicated to her daughter. I imagine what the artist would think, making her perfect sculpture only to have it eventually come out broken – a fate not dissimilar from raising a child, such as her daughter whom the sculpture was dedicated to. Also, to be broken by another child in such a context would be delightfully sad. The fact that she renamed the sculpture "Broken" afterward is small, depressing turn of course.

Pica_soO 10y ago

My uncle works in art-work transportation, and some of the pieces are basically not transportable, but are travelling from museum to museum anyway. He remembers a charcoled doorframe, that had to be transported although it basically could come apart any second once moved. They have vibration reducing special boxes, with the same climate protection as humidors have it. Also there are titanic insurance fees at work, to move art. And sometimes, somebody in some state run museum, is forced to take the cheapest option available. One of those haulers venturing into art, transported a artwork by a Chinese artists (do not know the name), basically very long paperrolls with Chinese letters on them to be hung from a halls ceiling. Those rolls they come in cardboard boxes, sealed with tape- and the poor fellow, takes a cutter, and systematically, cuts through the tape that seals all the boxes. Each box a artwork, insured for 25.000€ - sliced.

rabboRubble 10y ago
So like how was he supposed to open the boxes if not by cutting the tape? Or were the boxes intended to never be opened?
- strictnein 10y ago
  Cut the sides, peel off the tape? Or maybe he used a box cutter with a long blade? Either way, it's not his fault
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    > Either way, it's not his fault I don't know about that. If you take a job transporting art, it's your job to understand what you're transporting. And at no point are you supposed to open boxes like that, anyway, no matter what you're transporting - when I unloaded the truck at a department store, they drilled into us that that's a very good way to slice through a rack of t-shirts or pants or whatnot.
    - rabboRubble 10y ago
      If the tape on the boxes was not meant to be cut open under any circumstance, and the tape was not a part of the art itself, doesn't the blame fall upon the person who put the tape on in the first place?

cosinetau 10y ago

Move fast and break shit!

nkrisc 10y ago
Children have been doing that for ages.

nsxwolf 10y ago

That traveling gaming museum that used to show up at E3... one year I was looking at a table covered in handhelds, and I saw a Sega Nomad in its box. I'd never seen one in person, so I opened the box and took it out. I was promptly yelled at "Hey! We'd like to keep that in the box!" Well why didn't you just bring the empty box then?

StavrosK 10y ago
Because... they wanted to keep the Nomad in the box.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  Odd to put it on a table with many other handhelds you were encouraged to pick up and look at.

elastic_church 10y ago

Clicked the link on my iphone, turns out I had artsys app installed and got deep linked into it, then was greeted with a login screen, no way to skip and not the article. Hunted and pecked for it on my home screen, and uninstalled it