News and editorial about The Chemistry Gallery — from Exhibo and from the gallery.
Editorial coverage on Exhibo
Soft packs, HTS travel frames, plywood crates, foam specs, sensors and when to commission a professional crate shop
An art shipping crate is a designed system: travel frame or soft pack, foam that floats the work, a rigid shell, and often climate barriers plus shock sensors. This guide covers crate types, build specs, materials, kit contents, costs and when to commission a maker rather than improvising plywood.
Relative humidity bands, temperature limits and ASHRAE types for paintings, with monitoring and material exceptions
Ideal humidity for artwork sits near a stable mid-range band, not a single magic number. This table-led guide compares CCI, Bizot, Icon, NPS and ASHRAE setpoints, then covers how to monitor the room, which materials break the mid-range rule, what museums do now and what holding a safe climate costs.
Lux budgets, UV limits, window films and conservation glazing for home display, drawn from CCI, Smithsonian and Getty practice
Sunlight fades paintings through visible light as well as UV, and damage tracks lux multiplied by hours on the surface. This guide sets museum-derived lux and UV targets by medium, then covers meters, window films, frame glazing, LEDs, edge cases, costs and when a conservator should examine the work.
Surface barriers, corner guards, upright boxing for house moves, and when DIY packing should yield to fine-art handlers
Pack paintings for a house move with a surface barrier, rigid corners, cushioning and an upright picture box. This guide covers framed glass, bare canvas, works on paper and small sculpture, a materials failure table, indicative costs, and when a house move needs fine-art handlers instead of DIY.
Day-to-day examination and treatment, ethics, museum labs versus private studios, and how owners commission care work
An art conservator examines, documents, stabilises and treats cultural objects under professional codes. This guide covers daily work, AIC and Icon ethics, institutional versus private practice, material specialisms, commissioning costs, and when to hire a conservator rather than clean at home.
A practical guide to packing methods, courier liability limits and deciding when a fine-art shipper is safer for domestic transit
Shipping a painting means choosing the right network, packing against shock and abrasion, and documenting condition before the box leaves the wall. This guide covers domestic courier packing, materials specs, common edge cases, professional art logistics and realistic cost bands for UK and US routes.
Owner-level soft-brush dusting for stable oil paintings, and the hard line where only a paintings conservator should work
Most “how to clean an oil painting” advice online invites irreversible damage. This guide draws the museum line: call a conservator for grime, varnish and any unstable paint; reserve soft natural-hair dusting for stable surfaces; and show what professionals do differently, what treatment costs, and when to stop.
From Kashan luster bowls to Mamluk mosque lamps and Safavid silks: a museum survey of four luxury media with named works in London, New York and Doha
Islamic decorative arts are the portable luxury crafts of Muslim-ruled lands: pottery and tile, inlaid brass, enamelled glass, woven silk and knotted carpet. This survey follows workshop conditions, techniques and trade from Abbasid Iraq to Ottoman Istanbul, with four close readings and a media comparison table, while Iznik depth, arabesque theory and building programmes sit in sibling articles on the series hub.
Stalactite vaulting from Nishapur stucco to Alhambra domes: geometry, construction, regional variants and four buildings you can still visit
Muqarnas is tiered niche vaulting that turns square rooms into round domes. This guide stays with the architectural form: cell geometry, workshop assembly, patronage and close readings from the Met, Córdoba, the Alhambra and Safavid Isfahan, with links to the wider Islamic art series.
Goryeo celadon, pensive bodhisattvas, buncheong ware and Joseon true-view painting across Korea's historical courts
Korean art history spans Three Kingdoms gilt-bronze sculpture, Goryeo celadon with sanggam inlay, Joseon buncheong and white porcelain, and true-view landscapes. This museum-led survey names kiln regions and National Treasure works so you can read a wall label without collapsing Korea into a China or Japan footnote.
Lost wax from wax positive and ceramic shell through pour, chase and patina, with Greek, Benin and modern foundry practice on named works
Bronze sculpture in the lost wax tradition begins as a model, becomes a hollow wax shell invested in ceramic, receives molten alloy, then passes through chasing and patina. This guide walks wax, shell, pour, chase and patina on Riace warriors, Benin brass and Rodin, Giacometti and Moore foundry casts.
When paint, paste, print and found objects share one surface: how mixed media works as technique and label, from Cubist paste to Neo-Dada combines and contemporary assemblage
Mixed media art combines two or more materials or techniques in a single work so the label lists more than one substance or process. This guide defines the term against collage and assemblage, traces adhesive chemistry and layering order, reads six museum objects from Picasso to Rauschenberg, and notes how composite works fail in storage.
Thick paint, knife and brush: binders, drying chemistry, Van Gogh to de Kooning, cracking modes, and studio costs today
Impasto is the practice of laying paint so thick that brush or knife marks stand in relief on the support. This guide stays with technique: how binders carry weight, how workshops sequence layers, who pushed the method from Rembrandt's lead white to de Kooning's scraped surfaces, and why conservators treat peaks differently from flat film.
Relief, intaglio, lithography, screenprint and monotype: how each matrix transfers ink, where it fails, and museum examples from Dürer to Warhol
Printmaking is the transfer of an image from a prepared matrix to paper or fabric, usually in multiples called an edition. This guide maps the main process types (relief, intaglio, planographic, stencil), walks through materials and steps for each, and points to museum examples you can still see on the wall.
Opaque watercolour on gum arabic and chalk, from Turner highlights to Matisse cut-outs, plus designer versus artist ranges
Gouache is water-based paint made opaque with extra pigment and white filler, bound in gum arabic like watercolour but drying to a flat matte film you can rewet. This guide covers chemistry, designer versus artist ranges, working method, history, named museum works, conservation risks, and what tubes cost today.
Binders, drying chemistry, glazing and conservation through museum examples, from van Eyck’s oil films to post-war acrylic on canvas
Oil paint dries by oxidation; acrylic dries as water leaves a polymer film. That difference governs layering, glazing, studio safety and how conservators clean ageing surfaces. This comparison walks binders, process, mid-century adoption, named museum works, and typical material costs without turning into a shopping list.
Buon fresco, secco and a secco on lime plaster: chemistry, giornate, Giotto and Michelangelo, and what wall painting costs when pigment becomes stone
Fresco is mural painting in which water-based pigment meets wet lime plaster and fixes as the wall carbonates. This guide separates buon fresco from secco and a secco, walks the plaster layers and a giornata, then reads Pompeii, Giotto's Padua cycle and Michelangelo's Sistine vault with conservators' notes on failure and repair.
Tesserae, mortar, and andamento: how mosaicists build durable pictures in stone and glass, from Roman floors to Byzantine walls.
Mosaic in art is a surface built from small set pieces (tesserae) fixed in mortar or adhesive. This guide covers materials, direct and indirect methods, opus and andamento, six museum examples, failure modes, and what a serious commission costs today.
Cut paper, glue and found print on a support: how collage works as technique and object, from Cubist papiers collés to digital layers
Collage glues fragments of the visible world into a new picture plane. This guide defines the technique against photomontage and assemblage, traces paper chemistry and adhesives, walks a studio sequence from support to seal, reads six museum works from Picasso to Bearden, and notes how acidic glue and cheap print stock fail in storage.
Academy hierarchy, Beaux-Arts training, and how a European category still organises museums after the old ladder collapsed
Fine art is a historical rank, not a medium. Academies placed history painting above still life, Beaux-Arts schools trained that rank, and later practice pulled the ladder down. This guide maps the category against visual arts and high art, reads six named works, and shows what wall labels still mean by the phrase.
Materials, supports and mixed media, read through named museum works, plus why the plural is media rather than mediums
A medium is the material an artist works in, and sometimes the whole class of practice (painting, bronze, print). This guide separates medium from support and from technique, walks six named works from Giotto’s fresco to Ofili’s mixed canvas, and shows how to read a museum label without treating “media” as a newsroom word.
Hue, mixing and the colour wheel as studio grammar, read through six named paintings from Titian through to Bridget Riley.
Colour theory in art is the set of looking rules studios use for hue, mixing and harmony. This guide maps subtractive and additive systems, the wheel, complementary and analogous schemes, and six museum works, then shows how to read a palette on the wall without sliding into symbolism or pigment lore.
Marian blue, imperial purple, gold ground and modernist hues as dated Western conventions you can check against named museum works.
Colour symbolism in Western art is a convention you can date: who wears the hue, which feast it marks, whether gold stands for light. This guide reads liturgical codes, Marian blue, Tyrian purple and gold ground through named museum works from San Vitale to Klein, then shows how to test a reading in front of the picture.
How conservators keep video, film, software and installation playback working as tapes fail and display equipment goes out of production
Tate, MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Met keep video, film and software playable: they document artist intent, migrate analogue signals and decide which decks stay dedicated to the work. This guide covers formats, ingest, Variable Media strategies, how the specialism formed, and current costs for museums.
Nine public disputes, chosen for a named conservation reason: overcleaning, amateur work, reconstruction ethics or missing records
Restoration fights are arguments about what a treatment removed, added or failed to record. This list sets selection criteria first, then walks nine documented cases from the Sistine Chapel and the National Gallery to Borja, Angkor Wat and Tutankhamun’s mask, with dates and 2026 locations checked against institutional sources.
How carbon-14, pigment first-use dates and tree rings date a painting, and why those laboratory results still cannot name the artist
A date on a painting is a date on a material: flax in the canvas, oil in the binder, a growth ring in a panel, a pigment that did not exist before a given year. This guide covers radiocarbon including the bomb peak, pigment terminus post quem, dendrochronology and lead isotopes, then the failure modes that keep a calendar from proving authorship.
Linseed oil, aged varnish, dirt and unstable pigments each yellow or darken a picture, and cleaning reverses only some of those changes
Old pictures look brown for mixed reasons: soot, oxidised varnish, yellowed linseed oil, and pigments that have changed in the film. Conservators can lift dirt and later varnish in many cases. They cannot restore copper greens gone brown or lead white turned transparent. The chemistry, the history of noticing it, and the limits of treatment.
Age cracks, drying cracks and impact webs: how craquelure forms in oil, tempera and ground, and how to tell it from craft crackle
Conservators read craquelure as a map of how paint, ground and varnish have shrunk, flexed or taken a blow. Age, drying and mechanical webs look different under raking light; Italian panels crack unlike Dutch canvases. Six museum pictures show the types. Craft crackle glaze is a different object.
Pigment anachronism, imaging and dating: laboratory methods that catch a false claim, and the limits that leave authorship unproved
A laboratory can date a pigment, a panel or a binder. It cannot, on its own, name the painter. This guide sets out the chemistry of anachronism, the order of a technical examination, and the known failure modes of dendrochronology and radiocarbon, with published cases from the National Gallery, the Getty and independent pigment studies.
From examination to varnish: how conservators clean, fill and retouch easel paintings under the ethics of reversibility
Conservators restore paintings through examination, cleaning, filling, retouching and varnish, under codes that demand reversibility. This guide covers studio chemistry, the museum treatment sequence, how the profession formed, why old linings fail, and how private work is priced, without amateur solvent recipes.
Science prerequisites, master’s programmes, internships and specialisms on the route from first degree to bench work
Art conservation trains you to examine, stabilise and treat cultural objects under ethical codes. The route runs through chemistry and studio prerequisites, competitive master’s places, and post-graduate fellowships. This guide maps UK and US programmes, specialisms, costs and when a technician or allied role fits better.
Art history degree explained: modules, assessed skills, BA/MA/PhD routes, indicative fees, and studio versus history paths
An art history degree trains you to look, research and argue about images, objects and buildings in historical context. This guide covers typical curricula, the skills departments assess, BA through PhD paths, studio versus history distinctions, indicative fees, and when specialised curating or conservation programmes make more sense than a general degree.
A period survey of prehistoric art: Ice Age conditions, parietal and portable media, major sites, and debates over meaning.
From South African ochre workshops to Chauvet’s sealed chambers and Altamira’s painted ceiling, prehistoric art shows how Ice Age and early farming communities marked stone, bone and ivory. This survey covers media, key sites via museums and replicas, and debates over magic, shamanism and authorship.
From Burgundian courts to German prints: what Northern Renaissance art looked like, who made it, and which works still define the period.
Museum visitors meet Northern Renaissance art beside Italian labels: Bruges oil panels, German engravings, Tudor court portraits. This card points to the cities and patrons that funded it, the visual habits that mark a northern panel or print, four works still on public view, and why scholars still argue over the name.
From Republic verism to imperial marble: how Romans used portraits, reliefs, mosaics and painted walls as political tools.
Roman art is less a single look than a toolkit: veristic faces for ancestry, Greek bodies for prestige, spiral relief for conquest, painted walls for rooms that had to impress. This period survey tracks patronage and empire from the late Republic to Constantine, with close readings of monuments still standing in Rome and museums.
Images built to work for gods, kings and the dead: canon, craft and change along the Nile across nearly three millennia.
Ancient Egyptian art was rarely made for the museum wall alone. This period survey explains why statues and reliefs functioned as cult tools, how a stable visual canon held for centuries, where Old, Middle and New Kingdom styles diverge, and which collections still make those differences visible today.
The dazzling white of Gulf cities looks like simple physics — sunlight, reflected. The real story runs through coral, lime, faith, oil and the way traditions acquire their reasons after the fact.
Everyone knows why Gulf cities are white: white reflects the sun. It isn't wrong — it's just one strand of a much thicker rope. Follow it back through coral walls and lime skins, a sustainability code that never mentions colour, and a desert that was never really dark and the tidy explanation starts to look like something we tell ourselves afterward.
