Journal
Longer pieces on the places where the standard advice runs into a real building, a real budget or a contested piece of evidence.
Updated 14 August 2026
The guides in the other sections answer a question. These entries do something different: they take a piece of received wisdom, or a decision that keeps going wrong in practice, and work through it properly.
They are opinionated where the evidence supports an opinion and explicitly undecided where it does not. Where a figure is in dispute among people who know more than we do, that dispute is the subject rather than something to be smoothed over.
In this section
The cost of a number
How a working assumption became a specification, what it cost, and what the revision means for a museum that cannot afford plant either way.
Where the first budget goes
A spending order for a collection starting from nothing, ranked by how fast the damage happens rather than by what is easiest to order.
The sealed case paradox
The same seal that lets a case hold humidity also concentrates whatever the case is emitting. Improving one worsens the other.
Related reading
Preventive conservation
The whole field in one page: the ten agents of deterioration, which of them you can actually measure, and a defensible order to work through them.
Climate monitoring
Choosing loggers, placing sensors where they tell the truth, keeping them calibrated, and reading a year of data without fooling yourself.
Humidity control
The range to aim for, the equipment that holds it, and the case for treating one showcase instead of one building.
Light and UV
Fading is spent permanently. How to measure it, how to filter it, and how to budget a year of display rather than dimming by feel.
Air quality
The damage that comes out of the storage furniture rather than in through the window, and how to find it before the object does.
Pest management
Traps first, identification second, treatment last. The cheapest monitoring in preventive conservation and the fastest damage if you skip it.