The Heritage Science Laboratory (HS lab) was organized within the Russian-French project to establish a Heritage Science Mobile Laboratory of Russia based on the state-of-art optical technologies HS-MOLAB RU. In 2020, the HS-MOLAB RU project was among the winners of the 8th Russian Government Megagrants Competition. The laboratory, thus, was established at the ITMO University in collaboration with the State Russian Museum and the Center for Research and Restoration of French Museums (C2RMF, Louvre Palace, Paris). The leading scientist of the project is Michelle Menu, who had been in charge of the C2RMF research laboratory for 20 years.
HS lab is primarily focused on the investigation of museums’ collections and cultural heritage objects using optical spectroscopy and tomography methods. The laboratory includes mobile and stationary groups. The first one, mobile group, is equipped with portable technologies for conducting research in-situ. It studies non-transportable (mural paintings, sculptures, buildings) and difficult to transport objects of historical and cultural heritage. Difficult to transport objects such as paintings, ceramics, jewelry, manuscripts, are, in fact, possible to transfer. However, most of the time, it is related to substantial costs and risks due to the objects condition. The second, stationary group, performs systemic research of the samples (pigments, paint swatches, paintings fragments), processes and analyzes the results obtained by the mobile group.
The research fields of the laboratory are devoted to the following areas:
- ancient Russian architecture and architectural decor;
- techniques of ancient Russian paintings;
- historical items made of Russian art glass;
- Russian avant-garde techniques investigation.
