{"id":41946,"date":"2022-02-28T21:37:59","date_gmt":"2022-03-01T04:37:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/santa-fe-museum-gets-patent-for-high-tech-transport-crate\/"},"modified":"2022-03-01T04:37:59","modified_gmt":"2022-03-01T04:37:59","slug":"santa-fe-museum-gets-patent-for-high-tech-transport-crate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/santa-fe-museum-gets-patent-for-high-tech-transport-crate\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa Fe museum gets patent for high-tech transport crate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dale
Dale Kronkright, head of conservation for the Georgia O\u2019Keefe Museum, inspects Georgia O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s oil on canvas painting \u201cBack of Marie\u2019s No. 4\u201d for damages and cracks on Feb. 18 in Santa Fe. Using infrared photography and digital software, Kronkright is in the final stages of development of next-generation transportation crate for fine art. (Gabriela Campos\/The New Mexican via AP)<\/span>Gabriela Campos<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SANTA FE (AP) \u2013 Space age and farm age engineers have been teaming up with the Georgia O\u2019Keeffe Museum to create a next-generation transportation crate for fine art as it travels the world.<\/p>\n

Art is transported to places like New York, London, Cairo and Shanghai via old-school cushioned wood crates, said Dale Kronkright, the O\u2019Keeffe Museum\u2019s head of conservation.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Kronkright does it with the about 100 O\u2019Keeffe works typically on the road. That\u2019s how he did it on a tour to Europe with 80 O\u2019Keeffe works in 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got the show back to here, I noticed about eight paintings were developing new cracks (in the paint) or existing cracks got bigger,\u201d he said. \u201cI was with them at every point of transport. I know none of them had been dropped or suffered a collision or had experienced temperature or humidity extremes. If they didn\u2019t get mishandled, where did the cracks come from?\u201d<\/p>\n

Using infrared photography and digital software, Kronkright determined that vibrations were the culprit. The art industry ships art works protected against shock but not vibration, especially vibrations in trucks, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew we had to do something better,\u201d he said. \u201cWood crates make vibrations worse. Strapping the art to the truck would be better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ten years and two patents later with a third patent pending, Kronkright might be within a year of having the Georgia O\u2019Keeffe Museum art transport system ready for museum use to ship art to and from other museums \u2013 and potentially create a cottage industry.<\/p>\n

Kronkright demonstrated the alpha model of the transport system in New York City in 2018 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, the corporate home of Walmart.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere appears to be pretty good interest from museums around the world,\u201d he said. The royalty potentials for the O\u2019Keeffe Museum \u201care substantial, in the seven digits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ten years ago, Kronkright was entirely focused on protecting the 3,000 O\u2019Keeffe paintings in the museum\u2019s custody.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say we could have a working beta model in 12 months,\u201d he said. \u201cIf it tests out, we will use those (crates) for our own collection.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he is well aware that other museums may come knocking. He wants to get ready for much higher demand than the number of transport systems the O\u2019Keeffe Museum would need.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would have to partner with someone for the production,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need manufacturing capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The museum has produced four alpha models of the box-within-a-box concept Kronkright developed with a team of retired vibration engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and John Deere agriculture machinery manufacturer.<\/p>\n

Right now, Kronkright is lab-testing a beta model. A road test will follow with inconsequential art transported on trucks and planes. This will determine if vibrations of art works are successfully dampened.<\/p>\n

Kronkright determined paintings are most vulnerable when vibrating between 10 and 50 hertz (cycles per second), noting humans start hearing vibrations at about 200 hertz. Kronkright also determined that paintings in trucks vibrate in \u201cdouble drum mode,\u201d meaning one half of a painting can vibrate at a different rate than the other half.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrucks vibrate at 10 to 60 hertz,\u201d he said. \u201cIt literally could not be worse for paintings. Trucks vibrate at exactly the wrong range. Airplanes vibrate at 200 to 1,000 hertz.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kronkright\u2019s ambition for a decade has been to create a transport container that could dampen vibrations to 5 hertz.<\/p>\n

The research has led to the museum receiving a first patent to dampen the vibration in the picture frame, and just this month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a second patent for vibration damping in the transport container. A third patent is pending that deals with the vibrations in the corners that hold the painting in place.<\/p>\n

What Kronkright has created is an 80-by-80-inch \u201csuper rigid\u201d weatherproof outer container that is 35 inches deep, able to transport four to six paintings up to four feet in size. The art is secured in an inner box.<\/p>\n

The inner box is fastened to the outer box with eight vibration isolators, which Kronkright describes as shock absorbers. These can be \u201ctuned\u201d to a desired hertz level, which Kronkright sees as 5 hertz.<\/p>\n

Kronkright describes his day-to-day job thusly: \u201cI try and keep things from falling apart and put them back together when they do. I study the physical and mechanical properties to understand what can damage art.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said big museums have many artists and many artworks to choose from if individual pieces get broken. He said the O\u2019Keeffe is limited to one artist and 3,000 works.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe board\u2019s mission is anything you can do to prevent damage to our collection means our museum will be more successful into the future,\u201d Kronkright said. \u201cHere\u2019s what I said to the board (11 years ago): Every object in our collection has a vibration lifetime before it starts to break apart. If we can cut the vibrations in half, we can double its life.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said about $1 million has been spent to develop the transportation system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kronkright, head of conservation for the Georgia O\u2019Keefe Museum, inspects Georgia O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s oil on canvas painting \u201cBack of Marie\u2019s No. 4\u201d for damages and cracks on Feb. 18 in Santa Fe. Using infrared photography and digital software, Kronkright is in the final stages of development of next-generation transportation crate for fine art. (Gabriela Campos\/The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815,138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-41946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-associated-press-new-mexico","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41946"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=41946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}