svk conservation



Conservation

Cultural property deteriorates. It is destroyed by agents of deterioration acting upon the natural weakness inherent in the materials of the object or structure. The conservator´s mission is to detect the mechanisms of decay to prolong the life of cultural property for future generations.

The conservation of an object often contains actions to retrieve the original concept or legibility of the object. Conservation is an interprofessional discipline co-ordinating a multidisciplinary activity of different experts.

Conservation is often expressed in the terms of preventive conservation and interventive conservation.Many of these objects will otherwise be destroyed and lose much of their cultural value.

Preventive conservation entails protecting of cultural property by control of its environment, thus preventing agents of decay and damage from becoming active, but also collection management.

Interventive conservation deals directly with the material of the object. All interventive conservation work is documented in the form of a describing and analytical report to facilitate a future interpretation of what is original and what is spurious. The objects have different needs for interventive conservation. Immediate conservation is needed for archaeological artefacts and natural history objects (animals et cetera).

The majority of objects need interventive conservation after natural ageing, accidents or neglect of preventive conservation. There may even be aesthetic reasons for conservation.