The North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) announces a collaboration with Duke University’s Center for Molecular and Biomolecular Imaging (CMBI) that brings new technological advances to the Museum’s Art Conservation Department. The partnership between NCMA conservators and Duke scientists offers art research opportunities with the use of two lasers: a new nondestructive pump-probe laser and an Erbium:YAG (Er:YAG) laser cleaning tool.
Pump-probe laser imaging is a technique originally designed by Dr. Warren S. Warren, director of CMBI at Duke, to use in melanoma diagnoses. Through the collaboration between Duke and the NCMA, this technology can now be applied to art, allowing art conservators to better recognize the paint or other material used when the work was created. Paint pigments carry an identifiable molecular signature, meaning materials used by an artist can be identified through scientific analysis. www.ncartmuseum.org
