Detail of a paintings of iris flowers in a white ceramic pitcher against a white backdrop. The overall image of the painting is composed of several different bands that image the painting through different scientific methods to reveal various qualities of the painting. The scientific imagery is black-and-white sometimes resembles an x-ray.

Research Projects

Explore the department’s research activities through featured project abstracts.

The Chemistry Behind the Oddy Test

Developing new approaches in assessing the use of conservation materials for displaying, transporting, or storing art.

Composition image: on the left Adriana Rizzo scraps the inside of a large jar, and on the right a detail shot of a jar made by the enslaved potter Dave (later known as David Drake) shows visible handwriting engraved into the surface surrounding the edge of the jar’s opening.

The Inside (and Outside) Scoop

Learn about the intensive analysis undertaken by The Met’s Department of Scientific Research to determine what foods were stored in nineteenth-century stoneware jars produced by enslaved artisans from Old Edgefield, South Carolina.

The scientist Vaclav Krupicka of the University of Bordeaux prepares a sample for injection onto a scientific instrument called the ThermoFisher Orbitrap Eclipse Tribrid Mass Spectrometer pictured in the background.

Cutting Through the Fat

Following analysis of food sources in stoneware vessels from the Old Edgefield District, South Carolina, an innovative approach probes the composition of trace food residues through close collaboration of The Met’s Department of Scientific Research and the University of Bordeaux through ARCHE.

Two images side by side. At left, a painting by Vemeer from the Frick Collection, shows a woman receiving a letter from her maid in a dark room. At right, an X-ray Fluorescence map (an imaging technique where elements contained within pigments are visualized with false colors) shows that the artist initially painted a tapestry or painting with different figures between the two women in the background.

Scientific Discoveries in Johannes Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid Put Perennial Misunderstandings To Rest

Scientists, a conservator, and an art historian at The Met, The Frick Collection, and the Doerner Institut team up to investigate changes to the composition and the discoloration of some paint passages.

Two images side by side. At left, a close-up of a large 18th-century Cuzco School painting depicting the Virgin of Valvanera. She holds the Holy Child with her right hand and a bouquet of flowers in her left. At right, a magnified paint sample in black and white shows the different pigments and particles in the paint and ground layers of the artwork. A 10-microns scale bar denotes the magnification in the corner.

Plant Ash in Ground Preparations: Morphological Identification Uncovers Novel Artistic Patterns in Baroque Paintings from Spain, North and South America

The study of material derived from ash used in the ground preparations of paintings by both Spanish and Latin American artists in the Baroque period sheds new light on the spread of artistic practices beyond Spain.

Detail of marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx

Ancient Greek Sculpture in Color

A collaboration reveals new research on an archaic Greek sphinx finial at The Met.

Jacques Louis-David's "Antoine-Laurent and Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier" alongside two X-rays of the painting showing various drafts of the work

Refashioning the Lavoisiers

A team of experts from across The Met gains new understanding of Jacques Louis David's iconic portrait.

Revealing Madame X

Researchers at The Met describe methods used to uncover the artist John Singer Sargent's creative process.

Casting for the King: Archaeometallurgical Study of the Royal Palace Bronze Workshop of Angkor Thom, Cambodia

An archaeological excavation has discovered the location of the first historical bronze workshop in all Southeast Asia.

Developing Tools and Methods for Selecting Materials to Display, Store, and Transport Art

The Preventive Conservation Science Laboratory (PCSL) is addressing widespread collections-care issues by developing a new test for the assessment of construction, storage, and display materials for use with organic objects.

Saint John. Italian, mid-13th century. Poplar covered with canvas, gesso, and tin foil

From Immunology to Art: Antibody Research in the Conservation Sciences

Antibody-based techniques are applied in the field of conservation science to identify and localize the various kinds of proteins used in objects of cultural heritage, revealing insights into materials and techniques used by artists and craftspeople.

From Quarry to Sculpture: Understanding Provenance, Typologies, and Uses of Khmer Stones

A petrographic and geochemical study of Khmer sculptural production of the pre-Angkor and Angkor periods.

The Cuscuta plant (dodder) is a parasitic plant, which, in order to survive, obtains nutrients from the host plant.

Identifying Natural Dyes to Understand a Tapestry's Origin

The dye used in a Latin American Colonial textile from the sixteenth to seventeenth century is examined in order to determine the textile's origin.

Investigation of Heavy-Metal Soap Deterioration in Oil Paintings

A major goal of this project is to determine the causes and mechanisms of a degradation process in traditional oil paintings known as soap formation.

Granacci’s Scenes from the Life of Saint John the Baptist ca. 1506-7 in an Italian landscape. At the far left in the midground, men in robes walk up steps to an altar canopy. In the foreground, three quarters of the painting is dominated by a large building with an open colonnade and populated by several women in Renaissance garb.

Investigating the Formation and Structure of Lead Soaps in Traditional Oil Paintings

Lead and other heavy metal soaps have been detected and reported to be the cause of deterioration in hundreds of oil paintings dating from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. Understanding the nature of the chemical processes gives art conservators information on ways to slow, stop, and prevent the deterioration of unique works of art.

Pendant with figure of Prudence, French, second half 16th century, the back a 19th-century addition. Gold, enamel, jewels, chalcedony.

Renaissance Enameled Gold Jewelry: Distinguishing Between Old and New

The enamel compositions from a group of well-dated enameled gold jewelry were chemically analyzed to help distinguish between authentic Renaissance period pieces and later pieces done in Renaissance style.

Keep Exploring

Projects

View from over the shoulder of a conservator holding a small rectangular painting in blue rubber gloves; the painting is rendered in short brush strokes that form a kenetic image of a dark, silhouetted tree trunk in the foreground and lone silhouetted figure standing and leaning against a solid, waist-high wall overlooking a faint building in the distance.

Conservation at The Met

The Metropolitan Museum houses a world-renowned complex of scientific research and conservation facilities, each of which serves as a training ground for conservators across a variety of specializations from around the world. This project list provides a small sample of conservation research activities across the Museum.