GREen ENdeavor in Art ResToration

Project Information

GREENART

Grant agreement ID: 101060941

DOI

10.3030/101060941

Project closed

EC signature date 9 June 2022

Start date 1 October 2022

End date 30 September 2025

Funded under

• Culture, creativity and inclusive society

Total cost

€ 3 826 282,50

EU contribution

€ 3 826 282,50

Coordinated by

CONSORZIO INTERUNIVERSITARIO PERLO SVILUPPO DEI SISTEMI A GRANDE INTERFASE
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - GREENART (GREen ENdeavor in Art ResToration)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Cultural Heritage (CH) must be maintained, well preserved and accessible, counteracting degradation often enhanced by climate changes. Traditional materials and methodologies in conservation lack durability, sustainability and cost-effectiveness, or are based on energy-consuming processes or non-environmentally friendly materials. GREENART proposes new solutions, based on green and sustainable materials and methods, and on the elaboration of advanced tools, to preserve, conserve and restore CH and boost its socioeconomic driving force on a full European scale.
This approach has been followed to grant that the new GREENART materials be more effective than traditional tools, provide durable remediation of degraded artefacts, and adhere to the principles of green chemistry supported by the Green Deal, which was assured by Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Cost analyses. The best candidates have been assessed by expert conservators on representative mock-ups and actual masterpieces, and disseminated to the scientific, industrial and art conservation communities,creating new standards in remedial and preventive conservation.
Such a large-scale sustainable approach in art conservation is unprecedented to the best of our knowledge.
Overall, the new solutions have been grouped in five families of products:
1. Cleaning systems.
2. Protective coatings.
3. Consolidants.
4. Packaging materials.
5. Solutions for monitoring CH assets.
Finally, our last goal has been to make the research, products and know-how developed in GREENART accessible to the scientific and art conservation communities, to the industry, and to the civil society through the engagement of citizens and end-users.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Over the full project lenght, GREENART has progressed in line with the proposal’s objectives, achieving key-results:

1) Numerous green fluids and gels for the cleaning of works of art have been produced. Tests on mock-ups and actual works of art, using the materials developed in the first year, have been completed in the project, with optimal results. Case studies have been completed by conservator partners/institutions. Final TRL 9 was reached.
2) Passive and active green protective coatings were formulated and tested. Several protective systems have been formulated, characterized, and assessed with good results, covering multifunctional coatings produced with different components. Case studies have been completed by conservator partners/institutions.
3) Green hybrids and functional materials as consolidants have been developed to strengthen aged works of art or as packaging and facilitate their storage/transport. Several systems have been produced, characterized, and assessed, with good results. Case studies have been completed by conservator partners/institutions.
4) Green tech sensors have been developed. Characterization and sensing properties of new humidity, temperature, and VOCs monitoring tech has been completed with good results. Natural and bio-based substrates for the sensors have been produced. Validation and testing protocols for the new sensors in real museum/collections environment have been completed.
5) The safety, functionality, and sustainability aspects of the new materials were integrated to assess the overall sustainability of the products and of existing benchmark solutions. The most promising solutions from earlier stages were further evaluated using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) methodologies. Notably, GREENART also contributed to the testing phase of the SSbD Framework, providing insights into its applicability.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

GREENART has produced three fundamental advancements in CH conservation:
1) The new materials and methodologies can now substitute traditional benchmarks that have scarce sustainability or pose ecotoxicological risks. GREENART has established new green and unprecedented standards for art conservation.
2) GREENART fully addressed climate change-induced damage to CH in two ways: (1) producing green and sustainable solutions that (2) preserving CH against degradation induced by environmental factors and effects of natural disasters.
3) The new materials have been developed in a universally valid scientific framework (colloids, materials science) and SSbD, to produce materials useful beyond CH preservation, e.g.: in food industry (packaging), detergency/cosmetics (gels, cleaning fluids), tissue engineering (gels for wound care, tissue regeneration), pharmaceutics/drug-delivery (controlled release of actives from confining networks), plant management (coatings against corrosion), security industry (sensing tools).

This is a breakthrough since traditionally art conservation borrowed solutions from industrial sectors, while GREENART is fostering the opposite trend. Having developed bio-inspired/biomimetic solutions, GREENART fosters socioeconomic "re-growth", i.e. expanding the community’s productive capacity without altering the community’s ecosystems equilibria, maintaining/improving welfare standards previously achieved by less sustainable means.

Key features that ensure uptake and success of the new solutions are:
1) Enhanced sustainability and efficacy of the new materials.
2) Extensive demonstration carried out in the project at European/global scale to conservators, curators, and policy makers, taking advantage of the expertise of SSH partners in the project.
3) IPR support, supportive regulatory and standardisation framework to allow patenting/trademarks on the new solutions.
4) Internationalisation, access to markets and finance, targeted in the project by bringing some conservation materials up to TRL 9 and commercialisation.

Methodology