The effects of plastics have received widespread exposure in recent years.
One example was the BBC’s 2016 Planet Earth II television series, which highlighted how, through the unexpected consequences of their manufacture and disposal, the pernicious polymers cause damage in every corner of the world.
In the same year, an expert group at the International Geological Congress said that a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – should be declared, such was the impact of humanity’s activities on the earth.
The ubiquity of plastic is one of the major characteristics of this new age. And for museum collections, plastics are also both widespread and potentially destructive.
“Plastics are used in many different ways and found in all types of museum collections housing artefacts from mid-19th century to the present day,” says Anita Quye, a senior lecturer in conservation science and the convenor of a new MSc in Modern Material Artefacts at the University of Glasgow. “Some are ‘obvious’ plastics, others are disguised or hidden.”
Found in collections ranging from science, transport and media to fashion, decorative arts and social history, plastic is pervasive; it is also unpredictable, as a relatively small range of basic plastics exist with many variations in their physical and chemical properties, depending on chemical additives and processing during manufacture.
While items may appear stable and robust, they are usually not built to last and can have a surprisingly short shelf life. Additionally, says Pam Langdown, the collection manager at the Museum of Design in Plastics (Modip), based at Arts University Bournemouth, “most museum objects have had a past life in unrecorded environmental conditions which will have had an impact on the object. And even having said that, some objects acquired from new still show signs of degradation over time.”
For museum staff, this has important impacts on conservation planning, collections management and interpretation. Plastics should be treated as vulnerable materials and, says Langdown, they should not be on permanent display.
Signs of decay
Once plastics start to degrade, they can break down quickly.
Physical signs of degradation can include the material becoming inflexible; cracking, crazing (forming fine cracks on the surface) or breaking; warping and distorting; changing colour; exuding liquid or becoming sticky to the touch; giving off distinctive smells (vinegary, from cellulose acetate or plasticky, from the plasticisers in PVC, for example); or corrosion in nearby materials, such as metal buckles.
Types of plastic that are particularly vulnerable include cellulose nitrate; cellulose acetate; polyvinyl chloride; polyurethane, especially foam; and synthetic rubber.
The factors that can cause or accelerate degradation vary depending on material, so identifying and assessing items and their condition is important. “Conservation scientists have portable scientific techniques, such as Fourier transform infrared spectrometers, which can be taken to collections to analyse and identify materials non-destructively,” says Quye.
Modip offers free advice, and loans its Identifying Plastics Toolkit to help museum professionals learn to identify plastics materials.
Staff need to be aware that moisture, humidity, airflow, UV and overall light levels, temperature, sharp fluctuations in environmental conditions, and the material that items are stored in are all important considerations. For more see Plastics care and conservation.
Workforce knowledge
For a modern material that appears so robust to have such potentially calamitous properties can seem counterintuitive, and knowledge of the issues is still developing – although significant progress has been made over the past few decades.
“Awareness is growing among museum professionals partly due to the work of the plastics subject specialist network,” says Langdown.
Even so, because of the range of types, additives, manufacturing processes and uses, working with plastics is not an exact science. For museum staff, dealing with such items is more about taking the right general approach than applying specific scientific skills.
Melanie Gardner is the keeper of fine and decorative arts at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle. Through regular monitoring of the fashion collection, as part of a general collections care plan, she found some causes for concern.
“There was a serious problem with a range of modern fashion in the collection – things like shoes, bags and jackets, dating largely from the 1960s to the 1990s,” Gardner says. “We'd collected those to tell a story of recent local fashion, and I noticed over several months of monitoring these items that they were degrading quite quickly.
“This was despite us as a museum doing everything that we should do as far as collection management is concerned. We were providing optimum conditions – a stable environment, and we had isolated the plastic items.”
Gardner realised pretty quickly that she needed to seek specialist advice, and contacted Quye, who visited to examine the items and produced a report with recommendations.
“That was really to help us make decisions about what we could do with these degrading objects,” says Gardner. “We couldn't display them; we couldn't make them accessible to people because they were too risky; and there were health and safety risks to staff.
“We decided, based on her advice, that this was an opportunity to make these items available for training and research. She suggested they could be used on her course for training and research, and that meant they had new life after they'd been in the museum here and degraded.
“We had to go through disposal with our local council but because we couldn't use them and we had this brilliant opportunity to make them available for research, it was very straightforward.”
One example was the BBC’s 2016 Planet Earth II television series, which highlighted how, through the unexpected consequences of their manufacture and disposal, the pernicious polymers cause damage in every corner of the world.
In the same year, an expert group at the International Geological Congress said that a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – should be declared, such was the impact of humanity’s activities on the earth.
The ubiquity of plastic is one of the major characteristics of this new age. And for museum collections, plastics are also both widespread and potentially destructive.
“Plastics are used in many different ways and found in all types of museum collections housing artefacts from mid-19th century to the present day,” says Anita Quye, a senior lecturer in conservation science and the convenor of a new MSc in Modern Material Artefacts at the University of Glasgow. “Some are ‘obvious’ plastics, others are disguised or hidden.”
Found in collections ranging from science, transport and media to fashion, decorative arts and social history, plastic is pervasive; it is also unpredictable, as a relatively small range of basic plastics exist with many variations in their physical and chemical properties, depending on chemical additives and processing during manufacture.
While items may appear stable and robust, they are usually not built to last and can have a surprisingly short shelf life. Additionally, says Pam Langdown, the collection manager at the Museum of Design in Plastics (Modip), based at Arts University Bournemouth, “most museum objects have had a past life in unrecorded environmental conditions which will have had an impact on the object. And even having said that, some objects acquired from new still show signs of degradation over time.”
For museum staff, this has important impacts on conservation planning, collections management and interpretation. Plastics should be treated as vulnerable materials and, says Langdown, they should not be on permanent display.
Signs of decay
Once plastics start to degrade, they can break down quickly.
Physical signs of degradation can include the material becoming inflexible; cracking, crazing (forming fine cracks on the surface) or breaking; warping and distorting; changing colour; exuding liquid or becoming sticky to the touch; giving off distinctive smells (vinegary, from cellulose acetate or plasticky, from the plasticisers in PVC, for example); or corrosion in nearby materials, such as metal buckles.
Types of plastic that are particularly vulnerable include cellulose nitrate; cellulose acetate; polyvinyl chloride; polyurethane, especially foam; and synthetic rubber.
The factors that can cause or accelerate degradation vary depending on material, so identifying and assessing items and their condition is important. “Conservation scientists have portable scientific techniques, such as Fourier transform infrared spectrometers, which can be taken to collections to analyse and identify materials non-destructively,” says Quye.
Modip offers free advice, and loans its Identifying Plastics Toolkit to help museum professionals learn to identify plastics materials.
Staff need to be aware that moisture, humidity, airflow, UV and overall light levels, temperature, sharp fluctuations in environmental conditions, and the material that items are stored in are all important considerations. For more see Plastics care and conservation.
Workforce knowledge
For a modern material that appears so robust to have such potentially calamitous properties can seem counterintuitive, and knowledge of the issues is still developing – although significant progress has been made over the past few decades.
“Awareness is growing among museum professionals partly due to the work of the plastics subject specialist network,” says Langdown.
Even so, because of the range of types, additives, manufacturing processes and uses, working with plastics is not an exact science. For museum staff, dealing with such items is more about taking the right general approach than applying specific scientific skills.
Melanie Gardner is the keeper of fine and decorative arts at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle. Through regular monitoring of the fashion collection, as part of a general collections care plan, she found some causes for concern.
“There was a serious problem with a range of modern fashion in the collection – things like shoes, bags and jackets, dating largely from the 1960s to the 1990s,” Gardner says. “We'd collected those to tell a story of recent local fashion, and I noticed over several months of monitoring these items that they were degrading quite quickly.
“This was despite us as a museum doing everything that we should do as far as collection management is concerned. We were providing optimum conditions – a stable environment, and we had isolated the plastic items.”
Gardner realised pretty quickly that she needed to seek specialist advice, and contacted Quye, who visited to examine the items and produced a report with recommendations.
“That was really to help us make decisions about what we could do with these degrading objects,” says Gardner. “We couldn't display them; we couldn't make them accessible to people because they were too risky; and there were health and safety risks to staff.
“We decided, based on her advice, that this was an opportunity to make these items available for training and research. She suggested they could be used on her course for training and research, and that meant they had new life after they'd been in the museum here and degraded.
“We had to go through disposal with our local council but because we couldn't use them and we had this brilliant opportunity to make them available for research, it was very straightforward.”
Inherent vice
Knowing that degradation is an inherent quality of certain objects has significant practical implications for collections work.
“This sort of material was acquired in the 1990s when there was less awareness, and also because items appeared to be in good condition with no signs of deterioration”, says Gardner. “But over the years they reach a point where degradation starts to happen quite quickly.
“This is something we're going to have to consider very carefully. If someone arrives with an item that's made from plastic, what type is it made from, is it in good condition, and do we need to get expert advice before we consider acquiring it?
“Is it too risky to acquire and, if so, do we acquire digital images and collect all the associated information around the object instead? That could be a way of dealing with certain problematic types of plastic.
“Others, because of their composition, might be fine. As with all of these things, if you don't know, seek advice.”
Inevitable ends
“Overall, it is a case of slowing down or trying to prolong an inevitable end rather than reversing or repairing,” Quye says. “The effects of degradation are not generally reversible, and the triggers may be inherent in the plastic. Degradation can happen unexpectedly, even on unused objects in collections.
“Being observant and vigilant is a major factor – a big task when faced with mixed material collections and many objects. The risks are not only to the object, but the collection as a whole, and even the reputation of the museum.
“Accepting loss is an inevitable part of plastics in collections, and the modern challenges come up against professional ethics of curatorship and conservation. It is an impossible and unrealistic expectation that everything can be kept.”
Knowing that degradation is an inherent quality of certain objects has significant practical implications for collections work.
“This sort of material was acquired in the 1990s when there was less awareness, and also because items appeared to be in good condition with no signs of deterioration”, says Gardner. “But over the years they reach a point where degradation starts to happen quite quickly.
“This is something we're going to have to consider very carefully. If someone arrives with an item that's made from plastic, what type is it made from, is it in good condition, and do we need to get expert advice before we consider acquiring it?
“Is it too risky to acquire and, if so, do we acquire digital images and collect all the associated information around the object instead? That could be a way of dealing with certain problematic types of plastic.
“Others, because of their composition, might be fine. As with all of these things, if you don't know, seek advice.”
Inevitable ends
“Overall, it is a case of slowing down or trying to prolong an inevitable end rather than reversing or repairing,” Quye says. “The effects of degradation are not generally reversible, and the triggers may be inherent in the plastic. Degradation can happen unexpectedly, even on unused objects in collections.
“Being observant and vigilant is a major factor – a big task when faced with mixed material collections and many objects. The risks are not only to the object, but the collection as a whole, and even the reputation of the museum.
“Accepting loss is an inevitable part of plastics in collections, and the modern challenges come up against professional ethics of curatorship and conservation. It is an impossible and unrealistic expectation that everything can be kept.”
