The Continuing Development of Display Recommendations at the National Galleries of Scotland: Exploring a Value-based Decision Strategy for Light Risk Mitigation

ABSTRACT The formulation of display recommendations plays an important role in collections management and in an institution’s sustainability. This paper presents the development of the display recommendations approach adopted at the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) since the acquisition of a microfader some ten years ago. The benefits of expanding from a material-based to a value-based approach to light risk mitigation are explored using the jointly-owned Artist Rooms touring collection as a case study: it is shown how assessing the relative value at risk of an item and deducing the associated preservation target enables an organisation to define the optimal conditions for its careful use, when exposure to light is involved. Microfading testing priorities can then be set following in decreasing order of preservation target. The paper also shows how grouping the relative value at risk to light into broader categories improves the implementation of such a value-based approach. The use of benchmarking of different scenarios can assist in determining which option best fits collection needs and institutional capacity. The paper also discusses how NGS would benefit from implementing the proposed value-based approach by comparing microfading costs between the value-based and material-based approaches.