Abstract
The cleaning of acrylic emulsion paint surfaces poses a great challenge in the conservation field, due to their high water sensitivity. In this article, we present easy-to-make polymer hydrogels, made by UV-photopolymerization, that show excellent cleaning properties. The formulation of hydrogels obtained by UV-curing and their performance as dry cleaners for acrylic paints was investigated. First, different hydrogel formulations based on functional acrylic monomers were used to formulate a series of UV cross-linked hydrogels by fast UV photopolymerization. Their effectiveness on surface dirt removal was investigated by SEM microscopy and colorimetry. The hydrogels showed excellent cleaning properties and controlled water release, and they still performed satisfactorily after several cleaning uses. The obtained UV-hydrogels were compared to the well-known agar gels, showing benefits in terms of reducing excess water. This article shows that easy-to-make UV-cured hydrogels are an efficient tool for the cleaning of surface dirt from water-sensitive paintings, overcoming the limits of traditional cleaning methods.
Highlights
The cleaning of water-sensitive paintings such as acrylic emulsion paint films is a very common practice in the conservation of contemporary art
We investigated several formulations of UV-cured hydrogels based on commercially available functionalacrylates, in order to find the most effective formulation for removing surface dirt while not harming the paint surface
This study shows the improvement in terms of water containment when using the UV-cured hydrogels presented here
Summary
The cleaning of water-sensitive paintings such as acrylic emulsion paint films is a very common practice in the conservation of contemporary art. The gradual accumulation of surface grime on paintings is a very common concern everywhere that art is present [6]. The vast production of contemporary painters has filled museum collections with these kinds of works [10]. This apparently simple conservative intervention is a delicate and challenging operation, due to, on the one hand, the complexity of the paint system itself [6], and on the other hand, its high water sensitivity [11,12,13,14,15,16]
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