Preserving fantastic plastics
Dr Katherine Curran has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to explore how polymers degrade – and how better to preserve them.
So often with complex modern materials, only time will tell how durable they are. However, thanks to prestigious new funding for research aimed at the preservation of modern materials in heritage collections, we may find out sooner.
The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded Dr Katherine Curran a Starting Grant – an award aimed at supporting talented young researchers across Europe. As one of only 325 starting grants awarded in 2016, Curran will be funded over five years to explore a new approach to understanding the degradation of polymeric materials as complex systems.
Polymers have made possible new forms of artistic expression such as photography or cinema, as well as modern sculpture and fashion, and these objects are collected in their thousands. However, despite the common perception that plastic lasts ‘forever’, these objects can be the least stable in collections, sometimes degrading suddenly and catastrophically. Factors such as light, temperature, moisture and the properties of the material itself are still very difficult to manage and predict.
Curran says: “Some of the best examples of this are sculptures by the Constructivist Naum Gabo who worked with the plastic cellulose acetate. Cellulose acetate is now known as a very unstable material in museum collections. As it degrades it emits acetic acid, which catalyses the degradation reaction.”
Working with research partners Tate and the Museum of London, Curran’s project COMPLEX will seek to address this issue by using ‘system dynamics’ – a new method to understanding polymer degradation – to comprehend the behaviour of materials as complex systems. In this way, COMPLEX can provide evidence-based conservation strategies for museums, and help them to preserve this unpredictable heritage into the future.
Curran says she’s very excited to have been given this opportunity by the ERC. “I have been fascinated by both the complexity of material degradation and the value of plastics as modern heritage for a long time, and this is a wonderful opportunity to explore both of these topics in the detail they deserve.”
Katherine Curran is Lecturer in Sustainable Heritage at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage.
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