Sistine Chapel

Lori Arnold <woodbldg [at] aol__com> writes

>I am looking for an article that I recall seeing a long while back
>regarding the connection between the tourist traffic at the Sistine
>Chapel and the conservation impact of that traffic. I am working on
>developing a plan for tourism traffic for another site and the
>number of 500 keeps coming up as an acceptable number for minimizing
>tourism traffic. I seem to remember this number in relation to the
>Sistine Chapel. ...

Referring to the limits on visitors at the Sistine Chapel might be a
politically astute move to convince someone in administration or
planning that visitors must be limited, but I'm not sure that a
comparison to your site would be applicable, unless your climate,
building structure, and frescos are very similar.

I would suggest that your first order of business would be to
consult a heating and cooling engineer and perhaps an objects
conservator specializing in the endangered artefacts.

The engineer should be able to predict the loads (heat and humidity)
resulting from different visitor levels. He may also comment on
their effect on the building envelope (for example, in winter high
visitor levels could result in condensation which in turn could lead
to mold). This is the kind of work that must be done before a
heating or cooling system is installed; while such a study is
normally done to design an appropriate air handling system, it can
also be used to determine what kind of environment you will have to
deal with should you have no active climate mitigation system.

An objects conservator (and / or research into some of the excellent
studies done in Italy and other European countries) can provide
insight into how your site might respond to the various levels and
cycles of heat, dust, pollution, and humidity predicted by the
engineer.

With this information in hand, you can then make educated guesses
and predictions, and do some old-fashioned risk analysis. You will
need to determine how many visitors you can accept, over what
period(s)of time, what dangers they might bring, what kind of
mitigation techniques you can use, and what trade-offs you are
willing to make. With too few visitors you may not be able to afford
minimal site maintenance, with too many the cost may be the well
being of the site itself.  I expect that a similar complex decision
making process was at the heart of any limitation on visitors taken
by the Vatican.

Jerry Shiner
Keepsafe Microclimate Systems
800-683-4696


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 25:29
                 Distributed: Sunday, December 18, 2011
                       Message Id: cdl-25-29-004
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