Whitney Museum
Guggenheim Museum
Paul Kasmin Gallery
Metro Pictures Gallery
Barbara Gladstone Gallery
Robert Longo
Carroll Dunham
Laurie Simmons
Cindy Sherman
Richard Serra
Bill Jensen
Sally Mann
Douglas Gordon
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fogg Art Museum
Parrish Art Museum
Yale University Art Gallery
Whitney Museum
Guggenheim Museum
Paul Kasmin Gallery
Metro Pictures Gallery
Barbara Gladstone Gallery
Robert Longo
Carroll Dunham
Laurie Simmons
Cindy Sherman
Richard Serra
Bill Jensen
Sally Mann
Douglas Gordon
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fogg Art Museum
Parrish Art Museum
Yale University Art Gallery

Carroll Dunham

What is Conservation Picture Framing? Many environmental factors can damage a work of art. Humidity, airborne grime, chemical reactions, UV rays...the sad fact is that without proper materials and the skill to use them effectively, picture framing almost always harms the object being framed. The central principle of conservation picture framing is to do nothing that introduces potentially harmful chemical or mechanical conditions, and nothing that is not completely reversible.

Conservation picture framing protects artworks from two kinds of damage: chemical harm, (generally caused by acid and accelerated by UV light) and mechanical harm. Protection from these factors rests upon a profound understanding of causes, effects, materials and techniques combined with a careful analysis of the specific task at hand.

When should you choose conservation framing? It's simple: when the artwork you have is worth preserving. Our customers have opted for conservation framing for work ranging from original paintings to limited edition prints to precious photographs and newspaper clippings-even objects such as a child's first drawing.

The Harm Framing Can Do
It doesn't matter if it's called "museum-quality." Whatever claims your framer makes, the fact is that most framing being done today does harm to the work of art. The damage may be mild or severe. It may occur slowly over the course of months, years or decades, or rapidly, in a matter of days, hours-even minutes. As a result of standard framing practices, nearly everything in a frame today has been damaged and is getting worse with time.

Here are some of the kinds of damage promoted by poor framing:

(Click the subjects for further reading)
Chemical Damage

Many framers use materials that aren't acid-free or chemically stable, despite having words like "archival" or "acid-free" on their packaging. Such problematic materials often include mats and backings, decorative fabrics, hinges or adhesives used to attach the artwork to the backing or frame.

Condensation

Condensation forming on the inside of glass or Plexiglas glazing can cause discoloration and staining or cause the surface of the artwork to stick to the back of the glazing.

UV Light

If the glazing doesn't filter UV light rays well, the art can become discolored or faded.

Inherent Vice

Many times, the artwork itself contains acid or other chemicals or mechanical conditions that can do it harm. Nonetheless, appropriate framing can often reduce or eliminate such an effect.

Mechanical Damage

Examples of the kinds of direct mechanical harm that can result from picture framing comprise a long list: tearing, buckling, furrowing, creasing, imprinted perimeters, sagging, lost corners, etc. Most of these forms of damage result from misunderstanding the fundamentals of how materials expand and contract with changes in temperature and humidity.

Direct Sunlight

Direct sunlight presents additional dangers. Sunlight contains tremendous energy. Unfortunately, frames can act like greenhouses. The surface of the art object warms quickly, driving moisture out of the artwork and museum board into the atmosphere within the frame. The humidity can rise rapidly, even within a few minutes. Meanwhile, the air outside the frame, and the glazing, itself (whether glass or Plexiglas) stay relatively cool. The result is that moisture condenses on the inside of the glazing and becomes a threat to the artwork. A quite shocking fact about both glass and Plexiglas is that they actually "breathe" - humidity passes right through them. Regrettably, it does not pass back out again fast enough to avoid condensation. Laminated glass products eliminate this passage of humidity, and are used in encapsulations.

How Conservation Picture Framing Protects Your Art from Harm
Conservation framing is the art of anticipating harm that might come to a work of art and protecting, as much as possible, against it. By definition, it is customized to the needs of the customer and the artwork in question. Of course, like all good framing, it involves aesthetic judgments, as well.

Conservation framing takes into account all of the following aspects of framing and materials:

(Click the subjects for further reading)
Environment

Frames create a mini-environment for the framed object. In conservation framing we choose materials and construct frames in ways that prevent the introduction of harmful chemicals into the artwork and its environment, including even the air that surrounds it. Generally, this means placing the object behind glass or acrylic glazing.

While most frames are not actually airtight, glass or acrylic is generally needed to protect against airborne grime and UV light. (A process called encapsulation, in which an atmosphere is essentially sealed into the chamber around the object, is expensive and rarely used.)

But glass and acrylic don't protect against changes in humidity. Many people are surprised to learn that humidity passes directly through these materials. This can lead to two problems:

• Condensation can form on the inside of the glazing.

• Paper-based art will react to the changes in moisture.

To address humidity, materials such as silica canisters or sheets can be placed in the frame. While these can only help to a certain degree, they do keep the atmosphere in the frame more stable by absorbing moisture when humidity goes up, and releasing moisture when it falls.

Space

A good frame provides some space between the surface of the artwork and the back of the glazing. This protects the art from both condensation on the glazing, and the possibility of severe furrows or even creases as the paper expands and contracts in the limited area available. To create this space, the artwork's backing is set apart from the glazing through the use of spacers or a mat.

Ideally, there would be absolutely no contact between the artwork and the glazing, but in practice this is not always possible. Sometimes aspects of the artwork itself, the artist's or customer's preference or the visual requirements of the presentation, will result in some contact between the artwork and the glazing. (For aesthetic reasons customers rarely opt for spacers and molding of sufficient depth to prevent all contact.) "Floated" works, which are attached only with hinges and not adhered directly to a backing, sometimes will touch the glazing, particularly along the bottom edge.

Just look across a beam of light and you'll get an idea of all the particles of dust and other chemicals that surround us. The same dust that settles onto your furniture settles on (and into!) everything porous, especially works on paper or photographic prints. Since this grime is generally oily and acidic, it can do real and rapid harm, which only worsens over time. Once embedded, it is difficult or impossible to remove grime from porous materials. Glazing can also filter UV light and resist shattering.

When most people think of ultraviolet (UV) rays, sunlight comes to mind. But UV rays are present in all forms of light, whether incandescent, fluorescent or halogen. UV light speeds up chemical reactions, causing many dyes and pigments to fade. Conservation framing calls for UV filtering, and good glazing can filter over 99% of the UV light in the damaging part of the spectrum.

There are many fine acrylic-based glazing materials, including reflection-control, coated products that both filter UV light very efficiently and are highly resistant to shattering. Many glass products also filter UV light. Some glass is water white, which means the iron content, along with its blue-green cast, are much reduced. Many glass products also have a reflection-control coating and some are laminated with a layer of plastic that makes them shatter-proof.

Materials

Conservation framers generally choose materials that are acid-free and chemically stable, meaning that they don't have, and won't develop, the potential to react harmfully with materials of the artwork. The mat and/or backing are generally of museum (100% rag) board, acid- and lignin-free, and at least 4-ply thick. Museum board is commonly buffered: calcium carbonate or a similar compound is added, which provides some protection against acids migrating from other sources, including the artwork itself. (Exceptions include photographic color "c" prints, and many other types of color photo prints that have dyes that can be adversely affected by calcium carbonate; in these cases an unbuffered material is used.) The kinds of materials used in hinging are also very important.

In some cases other materials, such as aluminum honeycomb panels or dibond, are used as components of the substrate to which artworks are attached.

While silks and linens are often incorporated into mats to great visual effect, they are not acid-free. To safely use fabric on a mat or backing, conservation framers add a 4-ply layer of rag board or similar material as a spacer, to keep the fabric a safe distance from the artwork. Art that is made of or incorporates fabric is often handled differently in framing.

Paper

Clients are often surprised to learn how dynamic and changeable paper can be. Like many of the porous materials conservation framers work with (rag board, wood, etc.) paper is hygroscopic, meaning that it expands and contracts with changes in humidity. How exactly paper reacts to moisture depends on numerous factors: it is produced by a number of different methods from a wide range of materials, processed and stored in many different ways, and affected by the processing and materials that the artist brings to bear on it, as well. Many papers are highly sensitive and reactive to moisture, expanding greatly in response to it.

In conservation framing there is no attempt to control or prevent the natural tendency of paper (or any other material) to move, expand, or otherwise change. Such an attempt would inevitably fail and the problems would be made worse, resulting in direct harm to the paper. Conservation hinging and framing make allowances for the personalities of materials like paper, rather than trying to exercise control over them.

Conservation HingingHinging is the heart of conservation framing, because hinges are the only part of the frame that are attached directly to the work of art. Conservation hinges don't come in a package and don't come with pre-applied adhesive. It doesn't matter who makes the packaged hinging material or what the package says — packaged hinging is not conservation hinging. And even though manufacturers of such hinges may claim they are acid-free, they may well contain acid, or develop it over time.

True conservation hinges are handmade from materials that are carefully purchased from a reliable supplier and custom-designed for each work of art. The hinger starts by assessing the qualities of the artwork, such as weight, translucency and reactivity to moisture and color. Based on this assessment the hinger chooses from a wide range of papers (generally Japanese mulberry papers). The hinger custom tears each hinge to size, carefully feathering the edges.

The adhesive is also custom- and hand-made. The hinger starts with raw materials from a reliable supplier, to ensure they contain nothing other than vegetable starch. The adhesive, which is made in small batches so that it can be used almost immediately, is applied first to the hinge. It is allowed to dry to a certain point before the hinge is applied to the artwork. Immediately after this application the hinger uses a process of desiccation to draw moisture out through the back of the hinge, thus exercising as much control as possible over the amount of moisture going into the artwork. This meticulous process is designed to minimize the occurrence and severity of puckering at the site of each hinge, and to maximize reversibility in every way.

In positioning hinges, the hinger doesn't seek to control the behavior of the paper. In other words, hinges won't be used to help the artwork look flatter in the frame. The reasons for this are first that it won't work and, second, that it is dangerous. Hinging can't control paper and over-hinging, stretching paper on hinges and placing hinges at the bottom of a work all have potential negative consequences that far outweigh even the imagined advantages--advantages they don't actually deliver.

For example, the most common mishap a framed artwork faces is for it to fall, landing on the bottom edge of the frame. Conservation hinges, placed at the top, are designed to roll away from the work's backing in this situation. This is a purposefully-engineered shock absorbing function that can actually prevent the force of the blow from being directed at the artwork, itself, resulting in creases or tears. In such a situation, bottom hinges are disastrous. They not only interfere with the ability of the top hinges to let go, but keep the artwork attached at the bottom while the weight of the paper pulls around and against them — resulting in further tears or creases.

But even without this kind of accident, over-hinging and bottom-hinging result in mechanical problems that ultimately make the artwork look bad and possibly harm it. This is because both the artwork and the museum board to which it is hinged are continually expanding and contracting with changes in humidity. When an artwork that is hinged at the bottom shrinks, the paper gets stretched, producing unsightly furrows or even tearing. When the artwork expands, it pushes against the hinges, bellying out toward the glazing, and can easily crease or tear.

For all these reasons, the ideal condition for a work on paper in a picture frame is to be hanging like a drape, attached only at the top. Nonetheless, there are good and appropriate exceptions to these principles. For example, sometimes side tabs are called for. They are governed by strict rules of placement and are generally attached more loosely than the top hinges. Most exceptions to the principles of conservation hinging are relatively rare, to be addressed on a case-by-case basis.

Encapsulation

When a work of art is going to be displayed in extreme conditions, such as an especially dry or humid setting (a desert or beach area, or even a bathroom), more than usual may be done to control the atmosphere within the frame.

Encapsulation is a relatively rare process that involves using materials, including laminated glazing, to permanently enclose a favorable atmosphere inside the frame around the artwork. This kind of humidity control is also a consideration for artworks with extreme sensitivity to moisture, such as works on animal skin (true vellum).

Artworks On or Of Fabric Artworks that are created on, or made of, fabric, and scrolls in general, are sometimes treated differently in conservation framing. Works that are made of fabric are often stitched to specially designed panels that have been prepared by stretching layers of fabrics on a stretcher or a strainer. Alternatively, they can be stitched onto panels very like the panels used to back works on paper.

Some works that have been created on fabric, such as oil paintings, are less vulnerable to the damages from airborne grime described above, as their surfaces are less porous and they are easier to clean. Scrolls with dowels (often combinations of mulberry paper and silks) have special requirements that need to be taken into consideration on a case–by-case basis.