Saving masters’ paintings from age

SANTA FE, N.M. — Chemical reactions are gradually darkening many of Georgia O’Keeffe’s famously vibrant paintings, and art conservation experts are hoping new digital imaging tools can help.

Scientific experts in art conservation from Santa Fe, N.M., and the Chicago area announced plans recently to develop advanced 3-D imaging technology to detect destructive buildup in paintings by O’Keeffe and eventually other artists in museum collections around the world.

Dale Kronkright, art conservationist at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, said the project builds on efforts that began in 2011 to monitor the preservation of O’Keeffe paintings using high-grade images from multiple sources of light. That prevented taking physical samples that might damage the works. Destructive buildup of soap can emerge as paintings age. It happens as fats in the original oil paints combine with alkaline materials contained in pigments or drying agents. Thousands of the tiny blemishes can noticeably darken a painting.

The creeping problem looms not only over O’Keeffe’s iconic paintings of enlarged flowers and the New Mexico desert but also the vast majority of 20th century oil paintings in museums, in part because professional-grade canvases from the period were primed with nondrying fats or oils, Kronkright said.

To develop imaging technology that can assess the growth of the protrusions, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded $350,000 to the O’Keeffe museum and a collaborative art-conservation center.

The project aims to create a web-based system that allows any art conservator to upload and analyze images of paintings in efforts to limit damage from soap formation.