The number of art shipments continues to increase worldwide. Paintings, statues and sculptures are exposed to major risks during transport. The handling of artworks in galleries, loading onto lorries, driving over bumpy road surfaces or handling at airports expose art objects to situations in which serious damage and accelerated ageing can occur. Art transport is therefore of particular importance as a cause of potential damage.
According to the online portal Weltkunst, around 15 per cent of art damage occurs during transport. This is a considerable proportion when you consider that damage during art transport can run into the millions due to high insurance sums. The annual premium volume for art insurance worldwide is estimated at around one billion euros.
Art works have a high sentimental value
In the case of art transport, every loss represents a loss because each art object is unique and has a sentimental value. In the event of damage or even loss, historical works of art cannot be replaced. For these reasons, avoiding transport damage is a top priority for transport companies. The lender of artworks also wants to get their loaned works back undamaged, just as borrowers want to ensure that the art objects they have loaned for their exhibition can be exhibited without damage in order to attract numerous visitors.
Risks during the transport of art
Whether paintings or sculptures are being transported: During transport, they are exposed to high levels of stress: climate and light as well as shocks or vibrations are serious transport risks. Whilst vibrations have a continuous effect over a longer period of time, shocks occur as one-off and sudden shocks. These shock events often occur during the domestic phases of transport, e.g. during loading and unloading.
Environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity and UV radiation can also damage artefacts and lead to high insurance costs. This makes it all the more important to keep the climatic conditions as stable as possible during transport. The optimum temperature during transport, for example for vegetables, should be 17 degrees with a relative humidity of between 50 and 55 per cent.
Effects on works of art
If, for example, there are sudden temperature rises during transport, this leads to faster ageing in the case of vegetables. Too much cold, on the other hand, can lead to cracking and fine cracks. Too high a humidity level causes corrosion or mould growth, while too low a value promotes drying out, among other things. An abrupt change in humidity of more than 5 per cent can even cause surfaces to crack.
Shocks and vibrations also pose an enormous risk of damage to works of art: even minor shocks during transport, for example, can lead to flaking of paint layers and material damage, which are often difficult to recognise and are only discovered years later. Even if no damage can be detected immediately after transport, signs of fatigue can occur in the material structure, which can lead to visible effects in the long term. In this case, it is difficult to prove and argue in a damage lawsuit.
Data loggers reliably detect damage
The transport of art is a challenge for every commissioned company. In addition to careful preparation and safe transport, documentation and verification obligations for clients and insurance companies must also be met. Data loggers that record accelerations, shock events, shocks, vibrations, light, temperatures and humidity can be the solution: Transport data loggers, which are attached outside or inside the transport packaging, are particularly suitable for recording and documenting transport conditions. Specific sensors in the data logger continuously record all critical events (e.g. temperature, humidity, acceleration, light, position) during the transport of the artwork, time-stamp them and save them. All relevant data can be processed and analysed on a PC via USB.
Advantages of transport data loggers:
- Documentation of measurement data
- Real-time monitoring
- Theft tracking and localisation of the transport
- Optimisation of transport packaging
- Clearance of damage claims
- Documentation of transport data;cases and proof of insurance
- Avoiding expensive recourse claims
How temperatures can be safely monitored during the transport of cultures to prevent damage can also be found in our free white paper "Understanding and successfully optimising cold chains".