why the Museum of Fine Arts of Dijon treats 90 works

After the discovery of small insects in a painting frame, the Museum of Fine Arts in Dijon (Côte-d’Or) treats 90 works using a nitrogen-based process. The operation began on September 30 and will continue throughout the month of October.

It is a small beast measuring less than five millimeters, yet capable of significant damage. From his name “Anobium punctatum”, or “little vrillette”, it infests and devours wooden structures. Furniture, beams, parquet floors… and, sometimes, picture frames, as noted this summer by the Museum of Fine Arts in Dijon (Côte-d’Or).

“During regular health monitoring carried out by the managers of the “Masters and Wonders” exhibition, the presence of an insect coming out of an older flight hole on a frame was detected“, explains the city’s Museums Department. The work in question, a painting on deposit at the museum entitled “Saint-Jacques the Greater”, is immediately removed from the exhibition and treated.

Four to five small beetles are found between mid-July and mid-August,”and no other since, thanks to health monitoring, and the light traps that have been set up“If no other painting appears to be infested, the museum nevertheless decides to treat all of the works in the exhibition.”in order to avoid any risk of propagation“. A small beetle larva can in fact take several months, or even several years, to reach maturity.

The treatment in question, called “dynamic anoxia”, began on September 30 and will continue throughout the month of October. It is carried out by a company specializing in the conservation of works of art. The principle: place the works concerned in an airtight bag, in which the oxygen is replaced by nitrogen. “Any insects, whatever their stage of development, die by asphyxiation.”

The duration of the treatment cycle is 21 days from the moment the oxygen level reaches 0.1%. Any living being at the beginning of the cycle is no longer alive at the end.

Directorate of museums of the city of Dijon

Several operations of this type have already taken place within the establishment: one in 2000 carried out on “the furniture collection“from the museum, then another in “semi-dynamic” anoxia”on part of the collections“, during a project in 2014. Others have also been carried out internally since 2010. “This preventive conservation measure is quite common“, underlines the Museums Directorate, because “all museums can be confronted with this subject.“

Note that anoxia is the last stage of the measures put in place to fight against insects. Before achieving this, prevention involves several measures: “climate control, detection by regular health monitoring, installation of light traps, implementation quarantine“, lists the Management. “It is also important to avoid attracting insects and introducing them (no food and drink for example) and to dust regularly.“

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The fact remains that the impromptu visit of the little beetles will not have caused any harm to the Museum of Fine Arts. Between May 4 and September 23, the “Masters and Wonders” exhibition, dedicated to Germanic paintings, welcomed more than 35,000 visitors.