A Report from an Experts Meeting Organized by the Getty Conservation Institute and The Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA), December 13–14, 2022 Gwendoline Fife and Michael Doutre, 2024 On December 13 and 14, 2022, the Getty Conservation Institute organized an expert panel on the theme “Greener Solvents in Art Conservation” with The Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels, Belgium. This meeting brought together fourteen professionals in conservation, green chemistry, industrial chemistry, and sustainability from industry, academia, institutional, and private conservation practice. Their aim: to find common understandings about what greener solvent use means within the context of conservation treatments and sustainable development. Greener Solvents in Art Conservation presents the meeting’s findings, including the eight common understandings about greener solvent use that all fourteen contributors to the meeting agreed upon. Outlining selection criteria for solvents, the contributors found that certain sustainability factors have been generally underemphasized in the field. This publication seeks to correct that. Starting from the premise that the most safe effective solvent application is the most ethical choice, it includes key concepts, research priorities, and workable approaches to lessening the harmful effects of solvent use in the cultural heritage field. It discusses assessing solvent impacts on human and environmental health. It explores external factors in solvent choice, including the effects of markets and regulation, for example, the commercial availability of materials and legal restrictions on chemicals in the European Union and United States; clarifies the aspects that determine the relative greenness of a solvent; considers the challenges that conservators face when implementing changes; makes recommendations for future research; and features biographies of the meeting attendees and publication contributors. How to Cite this Work | ||||||
