It seems to be de rigueuer for museums, galleries and the like to ban flash photography. Often the signs say that this is to “protect the delicate artefacts/paintings etc”.
I´m fairly sceptical that a tenth of a second of flashlight every now and then could have a significant effect on a painting. Does anybody have any evidence to the contrary or is it just a cynical ploy to sell more postcard reproductions in the museum shop?
Photoflashes emit fairly copious amounts of UV, which can energize chemical reactions, causing paint to fade and finishes to deteriorate. The damage is cumulative and nonreversible. A typical large museoum can have tens of thousands of visitors a year, and if everyone were allowed to take flash photos, the damage could be considerable after a number of years.
There’s an MP3 on this site you can listen to.
Basically, repeated exposure to flash can change the color of some of the pigments in the paint.
Listen to the MP3 if you would like the chemistry associated with it. (I don’t want to type it all out, and it would probably be a copy-write violation if I did.)
What Q.E.D. and alice say is right on the money. The cumulative effect of many flashes can damage the paintings.
Also, it annoys people.
What about rock? I was at Newgrange in Ireland, and no photo taking was allowed inside the tomb itself. There was no paper or paint - it was all rock. Any decoration was carved into the rock. The place has survived for 5000 years, I doubt any flash would wreck it. Why no photos?
Even some types of rock can be degraded by UV over time. Remember, the place survived because it was inside a tomb, and so not subject to as much direct light over time.
I work in a museum. The exhibits are primarily of three-dimensional artifacts, though we do have a fair ammount of paintings.
I’ll tell you a secret: We’re really not all that worried about fading. (After all, we have windows which let in natural sunlight.) What we’re most concerned about is copyright.
You can get permission to photograph our exhibits from the curator, and we photograph them all the time for our records. Our main problem is if the photographs end up in a magazine or book and aren’t properly attributed to our museum. (Which is why we won’t allow tourists to photograph even if they aren’t using flashes.)
when an American woman put a camera to her eye to take a picture of Rembrandt’s Nightwatch
http://www.gbg.bonet.se/3dcastle/castle/nightwatch.htm
A female security guard pointed out the sign in Enlish forbiding flash photography. Less than a minute later, the same woman took a picture anyway, and was arrested. They aren’t kidding.
I’m not sure I quite buy Lissa’s explanation entirely (no offense). The ban is explicitly on flash photography. It is perfectly possible to use very high ASA film, like 1600 or even 3200, and get decent photos without a flash, even in a dimly-lit museum. Granted, these are specialized films that the average point-and-shoot shutterbug wouldn’t know about, or have the equipment to use, but still, they are available. And in all the museums I’ve ever been in, the windows don’t allow direct sunlight to hit the displays, hence the artful lighting.
None taken.
Every museum is different, of course. We don’t have huge crowds through every day, so flashbulbs wouldn’t be a problem for us. If we had visitors along the lines of what the Louvre has, I could see where there’d be a problem.
Our museum is rather small, and is in what was once a mansion, hence all of the large windows and natural light. The paintings are not directly in front of a window, but are along the opposite and side walls. We do have furniture which gets direct sunlight, but we try to keep clothing and cloth out of direct natural light for fear of fading. Our budget doesn’t allow for much “artful lighting,” which is really unfortunate because we do have an astonishing collection.
My information came from what my curator told me, because I directly asked him about allowing no-flash cameras and camcorders. That’s when he told me about copyright.
You mean Sortie of Captain Banning Cocq’s Company of the Civic Guard? 
As the linked page explains, the painting gained its nocturnal nickname after many years of soot buildup. So unintentional damage to works of art was a worry long before the invention of flash photography.
But what about non-flash photographs, Lissa? Surely those would violate any purported copyrights as well. Does your museum allow those? Also, have you any links to your museum? I’d love to see it, if you do.
I’d like to second the comment that it’s really annoying to the other patrons of the museum.
If you want a copy, go to the museum shop. They’ll probably have much better reproductions than you’ll be able to get.
Many famous paintings such as the Mona Lisa are covered with a glass or plastic sheet. Glass is opaque to UV.
I was in Greece a year ago, and they would not let you pose in front of some famous sculptures. Note that the rule is not “be polite to others and give them space to look at the work before taking your picture” it is a flat DONT.
No, we don’t allow non-flash either. (Which is what I said in my first post! )
In interest of remaining anonymous, I’d prefer not to show any information about where I’m located. I’m sorry. (I don’t like to give out more than vague geographical information as to where I am.)
** hazel-rah ** we don’t have any postcards of any of our exhibits, either-- just the exterior of the building. It’s always dissapointing to patrons. For serious scholars, or those doing research, we do allow photographs of our artifacts. They just have to sign a release swearing not to publish.
Let’s try that hyperlink again –
Not entirely. Glass is opaque to shortwave UV (UV-B and UV-C), which is the most damaging, but not to longwave (UV-A). Which is why you can still tan through glass, but not as quickly (and not burn).
When I was at the Louvre just over a year ago, the signs there said “Flash Photography Discouraged” (emphasis mine). There were flashes popping all over the place. I never used mine myself (I understand why the ban is usually there) but a lot of people were and I was surprised that the Louvre (of all places!) would allow it at all.
OTOH, I was in Florence a few weeks ago and all of the museums there banned photography completely. I pulled out my camera once and a worker quickly reminded me of this fact. (I was actually planning on taking a picture out of the window, which he did let me do once I explained.) I asked about non-flash and he told me the problem was many people either couldn’t or didn’t know how to turn off the flash on their cameras and got upset that other people could take pictures when they couldn’t, so they banned them completely.
Not just that, but it doesn’t even have to be a sculpture. In Olympia, we were stopped by a guard when we tried to take a group picture in front of a fallen column. Doesn’t even make sense.
As far as flash photography goes, in my travels I’ve noticed that frescoes are a definite NO. I can see the point in this case – a lot of them are already very faded. Mosaics on the other hand usually are a yes, unless they are just applying the no flash rules arbitrarily.