Decibel levels in museums

Suzanne Hargrove <shargrove [at] toledomuseum__org> writes

>Does anyone know of a conservation source for establishing
>decibel/vibration limits for music?  I have often thought, and been
>asked about loud music causing damage to art where music is
>performed at special events.

At Hampton Court Palace, we have been monitoring the vibration
levels caused by our annual Music Festival for a number of years.
The concerts vary from classical to pop, and are held in an open
courtyard within the palace.  Both elements of the building fabric
and artefacts in the State apartments have been monitored.  Results
indicate that in our case the objects (mostly a good distance from
the music) are not exposed to any greater levels than that caused by
visitors during normal opening times, but we have introduced noise
limits at concerts in order to control the vibration induced in
windows surrounding the arena.  Restrictions on low frequencies were
particularly important due to resonance effects in the glass panes
(see our paper  I Gibb et al, Conservation Science 2007, Milan
p36-40 and our forthcoming presentation at Icon 2010 in Cardiff in
the UK).  We follow similar principles with other one-off musical
events in other parts of the palace.

It is difficult to generalise or predict how individual objects will
respond to vibration, and the effects of even low levels are likely
to be cumulative, as in metal fatigue--much research is still needed
in this area.  I believe Bill Wie at ICN amongst others has looked
into some of the effects of loud music on canvas paintings.

Dr I Gibb
Conservation and Collection Care
Historic Royal Palaces
UK


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 23:33
                 Distributed: Wednesday, March 3, 2010
                       Message Id: cdl-23-33-006
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