A bright, beautiful day at The Met. The sun
shining on the trees in New York City's Central Park, the smiling visitors in the plaza...
And the fourteen acres of windows on top of the Museum.
Sunlight cascades into the building, illuminating paintings, sculptures, and other works of art
as brightly as if they were resting in the park outside. But some galleries have no windows, or
have partially covered or even blocked their windows shut so nothing can shine through.
-We need light to see the art, but really the safest place for art is in the dark.
[Record scratch] Umm, excuse me?
-Light, like heat and motion, is a form of energy. It has the capacity to change or cause change
in something else. The sun contains those bands of light, as do lightbulbs. Damage is possible on the
material it strikes. A good example is ultraviolet light, or UV, from the sun causing sunburn. If the
skin is exposed to too much UV radiation, it can damage skin cells and cause mutations to
their DNA. The redness we observe is the body sending blood to the area to repair the damage.
So, art can get a sunburn?
-The most common effect of light on art is the fading of colors.
We've also observed damage to plastics, feathers, and binding media used to hold pigments on painted
surfaces, as well as the fibers used to make paper and the thread in tapestries.
So the safest place for art is in the dark. But we still need light to see. So galleries at The
Met were specially designed to only allow in soft light. There's nothing worse for
some objects than a direct beam of sunlight. When you go into a gallery so dark that your
eyes need to adjust before they can see, that's how you know you're about to find
something really delicate and precious. Special UV-blocking coatings are placed on windows
to block out the most damaging rays from the sun. Objects with fabrics, like Japanese samurai armor,
are strategically placed in areas of the gallery that are known to get less light...
And objects made with less sensitive materials like metal are allowed to show off their shine.
[Sword unsheathing] Met scientists also use tools to measure how much
light has already damaged an object. A device called a fadometer shoots a focused beam of light
at a specific spot to test how sensitive a certain color is to light. And some colors and dyes fade
faster than others, like in the painting Irises by Vincent van Gogh. By using a mix of research and
analysis, we were able to learn that this... ...used to look like this.
By studying light, we can make sure the art at The Met can live to shine another day.