Harvesting the Power of science and technology in
Art authenticity : Are Indian Museums ready for it?
Indian Museums - the National Museum, Indian
Museum, CSMVS, Salarjung Museum, Allahabad Museum and several others spread
across the length and breadth of the country - have an enviable range of
collections of art and cultural objects the canvas of which spans the vast
history of India. A visit to any of these museums provides a glimpse of the
Indian premiership in art, architecture craftsmanship and culture. Then there
are the art galleries and academies, premier among them the National Gallery of
Modern Art, Delhi with its branches in Bangalore and Mumbai, that boast of an
outstanding range of collection of contemporary and modern art.
It was not until long ago that most of these
precious art collections in our museums were not adequately documented.
Fortunately, with a little nudge from the Ministry of Culture, documentation
has now taken a front seat and most museums have started documenting their
collections. Documentation makes the collections of the museums accessible to
the people, to whose collective ancestral ownership these belong, and will also
help in establishing their provenance.
Unfortunately documentation has mostly been alien
to our Indian culture and ethos and never been an integral part of our DNA, may
be because of the historicity of our oral tradition. Improper or lack of
documentation is a major concern for the safety and security of the national
treasures that are in the custodianship of our museums. Documentation of all
the art and cultural objects - in all its multifaceted forms including use of
appropriate technologies - helps not just in provenance establishment but also
in reducing the possibility of cultural illicit trafficking of the art and
archeological objects. Therefore it has become incumbent on Museum
professionals to adopt technological tools, that harvest the entire range of
electromagnetic spectrum, to document their objects so that provenance and
authenticity of these objects are very well established beyond any reasonable
doubts.
Most museum professionals are privy to the
whispers that roughly half of the artwork circulating on the international
market is believed to be fake. The problem stems from the genesis that the
current methods of authentication leave plenty of gaps in the system. Works of
art disappear and then mysteriously reappear on the market. Talented forgers
easily pass off fakes as the real thing. And collectors are left wondering
whether the expensive works of art they acquire, even after due diligence, are
actually worth the hefty price tag. According to Richard Newman, head of
scientific research at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, every museum may contain
artefacts that are not what they appear to be. “There are a lot of objects on
display at the moment whose attributions are a little bit shaky,” he says.
It is in this backdrop that I earnestly feel that
a healthy debate must start among the museum professionals in India on the use
of science and technological tools in supplementing domain experts knowledge in
authenticity of art objects. This is all the more relevant, particularly in
modern days, when forgeries have become an inescapable problem in the art
world. Unfortunately in India, most museums have continued to rely only on
curators and experts knowledge (which is restricted to the physicality of what
their eyes can physically see) to establish authenticity. But then even the
best of experts can occasionally go wrong. No one is infallible, an aphorism
advocated by Robert Jackson, Supreme Court Judge, US of A, exemplifies the
possibility of the experts going wrong. Therefore relying exclusively on the
experts wisdom, in art authenticity, may not necessarily be perfect and errors
if any could be too costly to bear.
Multidisciplinary studies involving collaboration
between art and natural sciences are helping curators archeologists and
scientists to join hands in firmly establishing a cooperation between archaeology,
art history and conservation-restoration on one hand and physics, chemistry and
biology on the other. Within this collaboration material analysis is of
increasing importance as the booming development of analytical methods has
brought a great number of new instrumental microanalytical techniques with
non-sampling (without taking original sample material) and in-situ
applicability to an artifact. X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF) plays a unique
role in that cooperation: It can be carried out in air, in most cases the
analysis is non-destructive or even non- invasive, which means that no changes
or alterations occur before, during or after the investigation of an object.
Miniaturisation, which has helped the electronics industry is also helping in
the development of x-ray tubes as well as x-ray detectors which are just a few
kilograms and below. Therefore, devices can be easily transported to an
archaeological site or into museums, libraries and galleries for analytical
investigations.
The technology is also helping the forgers to go
to great lengths to reproduce the materials and processes of the appropriate
historical period, thus increasing the possibility of error in judgment by the
experts. It is here that technology can come in handy while planning an
investigation. The museum curator has to identify which properties of an
artifact might yield clues to its origin and this can be done using
non-destructive techniques. Many familiar materials characterization
techniques, in particular X-ray radiography, optical microscopy, scanning
electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (ED-XRF),
are therefore extremely useful in the museum laboratory during investigation.
The surface of an object often gives an indication of how it was made. A
researcher can relate this information to when and where an artifact was made,
because the technical processes available to various civilizations throughout
history are well documented. Manufacturing processes leave telltale marks, such
as casting where there may be some 'flash' or extra metal as a result of the
molten material flowing into a small gap between molds, or turning by lathe,
which leaves concentric lines, as does a pottery wheel. If sheet metal was the
starting material, there may still be marks from the hammer that was used to
beat it into shape. Some surface details are not visible to the naked eye, so
an optical microscope or SEM can be used.
