Plastification: the Plastic Identification Tool and workshop that helps to identify plastics in your collection

Unstable plastics are becoming a well-known phenomenon in contemporary art and design collections. To catalogue and care for the plastics in a collection, it is essential to know the types of plastic present. Therefore, the Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (SBMK) and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE), launched Project Plastic in 2017, a project within the Netherlands Institute for Conservation, Art and Science (NICAS). During this project, which lasted two-and-a-half-years, a Plastic Identification Tool was developed along with a workshop that facilitates a learning environment for organisations caring for plastic artworks in their collection. The workshop was initially set up in Dutch, but due to international interest was translated into English. The practical use of this tool is taught in a two-day workshop where participants learn to identify plastics by seeing, feeling, smelling and listening. A physical toolkit enables them to compare these characteristics. Following the workshop, participants have the opportunity to identify plastics in the collection of their own museum during a collection survey. Furthermore, the Plastic Identification Tool provides guidelines regarding the preventive conservation of the plastics. The identification and the created awareness of plastics in the collection may lead to improved circumstances that can prolong the lifetime of the plastic objects in the collection. This article will outline the shape of the tool by using examples from the collection surveys performed during the project

Plastics in Peril: Focus on conservation of polymeric materials in cultural heritage

‘Plastics in Peril’ was originally planned by University of Cambridge Museums as an in-person conference to be held in March 2020 in Cambridge, UK. The global pandemic threw all plans out of the window and we found ourselves stuck at home in lockdown. The future of the meeting was very uncertain when the Leibniz Association of Research Museums in Germany contacted the Cambridge organisers to discuss their own plans for a conference on plastics conservation. In short, we decided to work together to host an online conference blending contributions from both meetings. This volume contains the 13 papers selected for the original in-person Cambridge conference, and they reflect many of the themes that came out in the wider joint meeting