(PSG) MOXY: Plasma-generated Atomic Oxygen for the Cleaning of Sensitive Cultural Heritage Surfaces

Includes a Live Web Event on 08/26/2025 at 10:00 AM (EDT)

AIC's Paintings Specialty Group is excited to welcome guests to share information about the MOXY Project. The MOXY Project aims to empower cultural heritage professionals to preserve works of art for the future in a green and sustainable way. MOXY is venturing into new territory with roots in NASA research, bridging the gap between physics, engineering, aerospace, cultural heritage, and sustainability science, in pursuit of a breakthrough technology to conserve otherwise untreatable materials and preserve works of art for the future in a sustainable and green way. This 90-minute webinar presentation, led by Nina Olsson, will include talks by senior researchers and PhD students, videos of treatments, and live-streamed demos of the AO process. 

The tentative agenda for this webinar is as folllows:

  1. Nina Olsson: Overview of the MOXY project and the Green Cluster for Conservation Science and Research 
  2. Tomas Markevicius, PhD candidate UvA and UGent: The MOXY Plasma Generation mechanism for creating AO and AO treatment dynamics. Tomas will create a video of how the user would use the instrument. 
  3. Catarina Rochas Pires, PhD student UvA: AO Application for the Cleaning of Sensitive Paint Surfaces.
  4. Kirill Shumikhin, PhD student UPisa: Effects of AO on oil paint medium, and a comparison of AO and Laser as non contact cleaning methods. 
  5. Cecilia Campi, PhD student UPisa: Effects of AO on cochineal or other pigments.
  6. Tomas Markevcius: Unexpected effects of AO: Temporary bleaching of plaster and reversal of lead white darkening, new areas of research 
  7. Q&A

This event will be recorded.

Nina Olsson

MOXY researcher and paintings conservator

MOXY Project

Nina Olsson is a researcher and conservator of paintings in private practice established in Portland, Oregon in 2001. Nina has worked on the development and application of specialized heat transfer methods for art conservation since 2003. From 2011-2014, Olsson held a research position at the University of Florence, Italy Department of Industrial Engineering, and co-led the IMAT Project, a research initiative funded by the European Commission to develop an innovative new heat transfer device for the conservation treatment of cultural heritage objects that integrates cutting edge nanotechnology with the special demands of art conservation. Since 2015, Nina is President and co-founder of Heritage Conservation Group, LLC, (HCG) a consortium of Portland-based conservators of diverse specialties.

Nina is a collaborator in PLASMART, a pilot project hosted by the European Space Agency (ESA), in collaboration with the University of Ghent Department of Applied Physics, Plasma Physics and Engineering, and the Center for Art Technological Studies (CATS) at the National Gallery of Denmark, to investigate the use of monoatomic oxygen (AO) for use as a non contact method for removing carbonaceous soiling and soot from sensitive cultural heritage surfaces. Pioneering research on the application of AO for cleaning of art surfaces was conducted by Bruce Banks and Sharon Miller at NASA in the 1990s. Nina is also a Senior Researcher in the MOXY project, an EU Horizon funded research project that aims to investigate and develop AO technology for the treatment of cultural heritage materials. www.moxyproject.eu

Key:

Complete
Failed
Available
Locked
MOXY Webinar
08/26/2025 at 10:00 AM (EDT)  |  90 minutes
08/26/2025 at 10:00 AM (EDT)  |  90 minutes
You must register to access.