MOXY project kick-off meeting

Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in workshop, seminar, course

Description

Works of art and tangible cultural heritage assets constitute an invaluable and irreplaceable resource of humanity, which is increasingly threatened by contaminants from pollution, vandalism, smoke, fire, and many other factors. Currently available cleaning methods require contact with the surface, mechanical action, liquids, countless chemicals, and auxiliary means, which increase the carbon footprint of treatments. Their efficiency can be limited, and they can be detrimental to art materials, as well as harmful to health and the environment, and unsustainable in the long term. The urgent need for sustainable green approaches has been emphasized for over a decade, summarized in ICOM-CC's Melbourne 2014 declaration, but the actual progress in creating green solutions has been very slow. To kick-start a breakthrough, the European Commission has funded Green Atmospheric Plasma Generated Monoatomic OXYgen Technology for Restoration of the Works of Art – MOXY project 2022-2026, coordinated by Ghent University with a Horizon Europe grant in the call Green Technologies and Materials for Cultural Heritage: HORIZON-CL2-2021-HERITAGE-01-01 (grant agreement ID: 101061336) to bring to fruition a radically new approach to the cleaning of tangible cultural heritage assets, based on atomic oxygen, which will empower practitioners in diverse areas of conservation to safely remove highly problematic contaminants in a contact-free, non-mechanical, solvent-free and liquid-free action, without health or environmental concerns, or waste.
Period7 Nov 2022
Event typeWorkshop
LocationGhent, BelgiumShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational