Chemical Imaging of Works of Art at the Macro Scale: Visualization of Multimodal and Topographic Imagery

Summary: This symposium, the culmination of a five-year grant by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, covers the technological development and implementation of imaging instrumentation, key findings obtained when applied to works of art, and the implications for art history. Scientists, conservators, and art historians document the success of this project and highlight state-of-the-art work occurring at the National Gallery of Art and other institutions around the world using imaging methods based on reflectance spectroscopy in the visible, near-infrared, and mid-infrared, and x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. Ruven Pillay, imaging scientist, C2RMF, Paris, speaks about software for viewing multimodal data sets. He demonstrates how to combine these results with information obtained from 3-D imaging scanning of art objects. Pillay spoke at a one-day symposium held at the National Gallery of Art on September 21, 2015, which supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.