In recent years, museums have attracted audiences of all ages as a good place for cultural check-ins, and the collections in museums have attracted public attention, and their derived cultural and creative products have also become popular, forming a "museum fever", but many people who have been to museums will notice that there are "no photography" signs in many places in the museum. And this prohibition is not unique to one museum, and museums all over the world, large and small, have such a rule, why is that?
The reason for the ban on photography in museums is, of course, the first reason is the need to protect cultural relics. Although there is a lot of evidence that the mere act of taking pictures does not cause harm to cultural relics, the flash of photography poses a certain risk for precious collections. Theoretically, almost all light can cause damage to cultural relics, especially ultraviolet and infrared rays, which can cause structural damage to the surface of artifacts and accelerate their aging. Many Qin terracotta warriors and horses were painted on the surface when they were first unearthed, but soon after they were unearthed, they mostly fell off due to sudden changes in the preservation environment such as temperature, humidity, and light.
David Saunders, a collection conservation expert at the National Gallery in the UK, experimented by exposing five sets of pigments to flash and normal exhibition light. The results showed that the pigment that was flashed by the flash every seven seconds during the experiment, and that it was flashed more than 400,000 times in three years, was no different from the damage caused by the paint placed under normal exhibition lighting. As a result, Saunders argues that the extent to which light can damage the pigment depends on a combination of light intensity and light duration.
Therefore, the ideal environment for the preservation of cultural relics should be absolutely lightless. However, it is obviously impractical to display the collection in total darkness, and light is essential for museum exhibitions. Therefore, in view of the sensitivity of various cultural relics to light, the cultural relics protection department has issued relevant regulations to strictly control the limit of light exposure of cultural relics during the exhibition.
In addition, there are some materials that are sensitive to flash and require special attention. Researchers have conducted more than 4,000 flash irradiation experiments on six kinds of silk dyed with different plant pigments. The results showed that the silk captured with the flash not only faded, darkened, and even formed charred spots visible to the naked eye. It can be seen that, at least for collections such as silk fabrics and ancient paper, frequent exposure to flash lights does cause a certain degree of damage. In other words, every flash photograph of such an exhibit will cause an irreversible damage.
Some media interviewed the staff of the Cultural Relics Protection and Restoration Center of the Chengdu Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology about the flash photography, and they said: "The flash contains ultraviolet and infrared rays, which will cause damage to cultural relics during the exposure process. Different cultural relics have different photosensitivity, which are generally divided into three gradients. For textiles that are particularly sensitive to light, the illuminance should be less than 50 lux (illuminance units); For bone tools and murals that are more sensitive to light, the illumination should be less than 150 lux; Exhibits that are generally sensitive to light, such as stone carvings without pigment and painting, should have an illumination of less than 300 lux."
The illumination of the flash moment of a typical camera is as high as 8000 lux. There have been insect specimens that have faded after being photographed with multiple flashes. Zhao Li, director of the Huaxi Insect Museum, said, "The color of insect specimens will fade by 10%-20% after being flashed more than 500 times, and the color of the specimens will fade by more than half after being flashed more than 2,000 times. ”
It can be seen that the damage of the flash to the cultural relics is a cumulative process, these precious cultural relics through time for people to see, appreciation is the first, the irreversible damage caused by the flash photo is more than worth the loss, so the display of exhibits in the museum will comprehensively consider the needs of "how to better show the beauty of the collection" and "protect the collection", the staff will formulate in advance to maximize the preservation time of the collection of the display plan, for the exhibits that can not accept strong light irradiation, they will hang "no photography" and display the exhibits in a darkly lit pavilion.
However, some people have raised the question: why are there still many museums that do not allow visitors to take pictures, even when flash is not used? This is mainly due to the difficulty of supervision, and due to the limited manpower of museums, it is difficult to ensure that everyone turns off the flash to take pictures. Therefore, in order to protect cultural relics, we still have to comply with the relevant regulations of the museum and pass on the beauty of cultural relics forever. Instead of recording the charm of cultural relics with the sound of the shutter one after another, it is better to "see is believing".