Abstract
The MEDUSA project meets today's challenge for the international conservation community to play an active role in society and in the safeguard of Cultural Heritage, in close and synergistic collaboration with local institutions and national stakeholders.
The widespread and delocalized presence of works of art exhibited outdoor constitutes an open-air museum that represents a worldwide unicum that must be valued and preserved for future generations.
The proposal arises from the urgent need to overcome the actual limits of scientific research in the technological transfer of products and treatments for the protection of bronzes exposed in a marine/coastal environment to the conservation professionals and to encourage preventive and planned conservation activities over time.
Specifically, the project aims to:
1. Conduct an historic and ‘in situ’ analytical survey aimed at evaluating bronze surface properties and the performances of past restoration treatments.
2. Produce a set of bronze mock-ups with different surface finishing and natural weathering patinas in order to study the system made by the bronze alloy/natural patinas as a whole complex interacting with different marine environments and to investigate its chemical, physical, morphological modifications.
3. Test a new sustainable product, such as a smart nanostructured coating designed by suitable nanocarriers able to gradually release the active agents (anticorrosive, UV absorbers, antioxidants) on the bronze surfaces.
4. Develop a sustainable analytical protocol for monitoring the performance of treatments and provide decision makers with tools for sustainable preventive and planned conservation strategies.
Departmental scientific manager
Rocco Mazzeo (local manager)
Partnership
CNR