Conservation
This factor is the most common cause of damage to organic artworks like paper and textiles, measured in Lux.
What is light?
This is the broad name for information labels placed on a gallery wall that provide context about the exhibition, artist, or specific artwork.
What is didactic information?
In the VCAA curriculum, these are the individual physical elements an artist manipulates, including line, shape, colour, texture, and form.
What are art elements?
Left behind by visitors' hands, these two chemical substances react with metal surfaces over time, accelerating oxidation, tarnish, and corrosion.
What are Skin Oils and Sweat/Acids?
In Australian cultural protocols, this formal statement is spoken or written at the opening of an event by a visitor to acknowledge and show respect for the Traditional Custodians of the land.
What is an Acknowledgement of Country?
To protect fragile works from fluctuations in temperature and humidity, museums maintain relative humidity within this standard percentage range.
What is 50% relative humidity?
This display technique ensures that artworks are mounted so their center point sits at roughly 1.5 meters, aligning with standard human sight lines.
What is eye height?
This broad term defines the overarching inherent properties, look, mood, and feel of an artwork that develop through an artist's signature style.
What are aesthetic qualities?
Due to their fluid composition, oil paintings are uniquely vulnerable to this physical flaw when high temperatures cause the paint layers to expand faster than the canvas backing.
What is cracking?
Guarding against cultural misappropriation, mislabeling, or harmful spatial placement.
What is ethical display?
This specific type of flat, heavy-duty protective container is the global museum standard for storing, transporting, and organizing unframed works on paper.
What is a solander box?
When planning an exhibition, this refers to the cohesive central idea, topic, or narrative that connects all chosen artworks.
What is exhibition theme?
This specific phrase describes the physical sensory characteristics and tactile qualities inherent to a material, which heavily influence how an audience responds to a three-dimensional form.
What are material properties?
This biological hazard thrives when relative humidity spikes above 65–70%, causing irreversible staining, structural rot, and fuzzy growth on organic materials.
What is mould?
To show respect for local First Nations communities, galleries place this type of warning signage at exhibition entry points if a deceased person's name, voice, or photograph is featured.
What is a deceased persons warning?
Organic materials like wool or wooden sculptures are highly prone to this type of threat, which includes silverfish, beetles, or mold.
What is biological degradation (or pests/micro-organisms)?
This specific type of display lighting uses adjustable bulbs on an overhead rail to highlight specific focal points or individual artworks on a wall.
What is track lighting?
The combination of materials, techniques, and processes chosen by an artist creates this specific visual communication system.
What is visual language?
This specific type of print or drawing medium is highly prone to foxing—reddish-brown spots caused by fungal growth reacting with iron impurities inside organic pulp.
What is works on paper?
Removing physical, economic, cognitive, and cultural barriers to entry.
What is audience access?
This specialized framing material is chemically inert, acid-free, and prevents the discoloration or burning of paper artworks over time.
What is archival mount board (or acid-free matting)?
This document, written by a curator, outlines the thematic premise of a show, justifies the selection of artists, and details how the exhibition space will be managed.
What is a curatorial intention/rationale?
This noun describes the specific arrangement and structural order of art elements within a work, designed by the artist to command visual flow and focal points.
What is composition?
Curators must monitor bronze, copper, and iron outdoor installations for this chemical reaction, which accelerates rapidly when atmospheric pollution mixes with coastal humidity.
What is oxidation?
What is a Dual Attribution (or Culturally Contextualised) label?