Module 5: Microbes and Museums

For this project I visited the Harn Art Museam, located right here in Gainesville, Florida. For a lot of these, I wasn't able to get super close up to take pictures of biodegradation in the art because the Harn puts a lot of their art in protective cases, they place their art high up on the wall, or they create a boundary of some sort that they ask you not to cross. So for each "close up", I will simply be zooming in.

This book is called Yellow Hebane; Tabaco or Henebane of Peru; Tabaco of Trinidada. These are woodcut illistrations as part of a book. This is found in the Discovery collection of the museam.

Up in this corner, you can see that the pages have browned, and that the pages have frayed. While its hard to determine what exactly caused this degradation, because the book was cleaned and purified before being placed on display, it is likely that it is some microorganism that can aeobically degrade cellulose, like a bacteria perhaps. The bacteria probably came from being in water that came in contact with these pages. In order to preserve these pages, the curator said that they fumigated the book, and applied preservative chemicals in order to keep these pages from degrading any more.

This piece is called the Bowl or Cosmetic Mortar, and it is from Africa. It is made out of patina wood, and was used by people to grind and mash makeup materials that were used for the royals. This is also found in the Africa collection.

While a couple of these markings seem to be scratches, there are a few small colonies that look like small growths of white mold. This mold probably grew because of redisual moisture in the wood, combined with the fact that is was stored in a dark place before being put on display. Again, the curature said that in order to protect this piece of art, it was treated with preservatives and fumagated before being placed behind this glass. This was meant to preserve the wood, as well as prevent further growth of these colonies. I would recommend that it also be treated with antifungals next time they take it out of the glass container. While I don't think the mold is too dangerous to the art, it should be stopped in order to prevent the growth from taking away from the aesthetics of the piece.

This piece is a Basketry Screen, in the African collection of the Harn. It was created by the Tutsi people of Rwanda. This Basketry Screen is made out of fiber, grass, rattan strips, reed strips, and bamboo strips. Portions of the fibers are dyed with tick blood, but we did notice some other discoloration that seemed to not follow the intended geometric pattern. The curator pointed out this spot that he says has been growing.

While this one was hard to determine because of how high it was on the basket (maybe 4 fee above me), it's hard to determine exactly what this growth could be. By best guess would either be black mold or a black staining bacteria. It is possible that if it is bacteria that it could be feeding on either the organic plant materials or possibly the blood dye. I would recommend that this piece be re fumigated and sterilized in order to prevent this grwoth from spreadng further. Black mold can be danerous if it is that, and both bacteria and mold could ruin the coloring of this art.