Preventative Conservation

Preventative conservation is defined as ‘all measures and actions aimed at avoiding and minimising future deterioration or loss’.

 

An initial survey of a collection would identify ‘at risk’ objects, a report from a survey would develop an action plan and the implementation of that action plan would prevent preventable damage.  This may be as simple as moving a picture from an environment that was damaging to one that prevents further deterioration. A simple analogy is a survey that identifies that the hanging systems in place at a collection are so old and brittle that it is only a matter of time before they drop, and cause massive damage that is both financially costly and destructive to the painting or object but is wholly avoidable by the implementation of a Preventative Conservation Survey.