Our Projects

Project

Unit(s) of assessment: General Engineering
School: School of Science and Technology

Overview

ISAAC’s projects takes the research team to museums, galleries and heritage sites across the World. We have visited numerous national and international organisations, applying our multimodal analysis for the examination of various artworks of different type and style.

From European projects at London’s V&A museum, the Louvre in Paris and Fondation Beyeler near Basal, Switzerland to North American work at New York’s Brooklyn Museum and Getty Conservation Institution (GCI) based in Los Angeles.
In China, our research has taken us to Shaan Xi History Musuem, in Xi'an, the Dunhuang Research Academy in Gansu and the National Museum of China, Beijing.

Instrument Development

Helping museums protect artwork: Assessing the vulnerability of artwork using a portable microfade spectrometer

Remote laser spectroscopy at standoff distances for heritage applications

Remote spectral imaging at the UNESCO World Heritage Site at Dunhuang

The Next Generation of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) for Art Conservation - in situ non-invasive imaging of subsurface microstructure of objects

Paintings

Culture and Trade through the Prism of Technical Art History - a Study of Chinese Export Painting

Conservation varnishes at the National Gallery: studying their optical and material properties

Non-invasive analysis and large scale imaging of murals at the UNESCO world heritage site of Mogao caves in Dunhuang

The application of optical coherence tomography in a study of The Mellow Pad by Stuart Davis, the American Modernist Painter

Ultra-high resolution Optical Coherence Tomography (UHOCT) for the conservation of the Leonardo da Vinci painting Saint John the Baptist at the Louvre