News from Diagnostic World: New tecnologies aimed at protecting street art

Written by Tiziana Pasciuto
Translated by Sarah Fortunée Tabbakh
Italian Version here

The topic of Conservation of Cultural Heritage has become increasingly complex, as new materials are continuously being experimented in art and the list of what we consider to be a cultural asset gets longer and longer with time.

Street Art has recently entered the world of art, thus implying the need to protect and safeguard this modern form of mural art. The Department of Chemistry "Ugo Schiff" of the University of Florence and the Center for Colloid and Surface Center (CSGI) of Sesto Fiorentino have recently published an article on this topic in "Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry".
The article, entitled "Nanofluids and chemical highly retentive hydrogels for controlled and selective removal of overpaintings and undesired graffiti from street art", deals with the possibility of selectively removing unwanted repainting, tags and graffiti from street art works. This is very complex, as the nature of the binder of the graffiti and the work of street art is chemically the same.

The solution proposed by the Florentine team is the result of a combination of nanostructured intelligent liquid systems supported by a stable gel that allows to limit the action of the fluid on the contact surface between the work and the unwanted substance. The substance is based on a hydrogel of polyhydroxyethylmethacrylate (or pHEMA, a polymer that forms a hydrogel in water, mainly used in the contact lens industry) and polyvinylpyrrolidone (a water-soluble polymer, known as PVP), loaded with a nanofluid, based on ethyl acetate and propylene carbonate. The product was tested to selectively remove a modern acrylic white paint from a white acrylic paint, applied to a mortar sample.
The results of the cleaning were then observed through visual and photographic means, optical microscopy and FT-IR micro-reflectance.

To know more, here is the full version of the article: Giorgi, R .; Baglioni, M .; Baglioni, P .; "Nanofluids and chemical highly retentive hydrogels for controlled and selective removal of overpaintings and undesired graffiti from street art", Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, vol. 409 (15), pp. 3707-3712, JUN 2017. DOI: 10.1007 / s00216-017-0357-z
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00216-017-0357-z

I look forward to seeing you in the next article!