Hi Jerrie,

 

I think that you may have made a sound choice.

Anything that you do that enables you to go to LEDs in the future could pay off.

The key word at this point seems to be "future".

There are many indications that LEDs may play an important role in this future but there are also some extremely disturbing and dangerous qualities exhibited by many versions of this light source as it stands right now.

So you may be paying a price right now with the halogens but in the long run things should work out. The technology is developing at a rapid rate.

 

This is an important topic right now. You can find some informative discussions at the Forum on the PACIN website-

 

 

the specific topic is at this link

 

 

In general though, there a variety of things to consider about the use of any kind of lighting in the museum environment.

The two most commonly discussed are UV percentages and color temperature. These are what most of us are familiar with.

 

Two less discussed yet important aspects though, have to do first with color rendering (how accurately do colors appear to the eye when viewed in a given light source) and secondly with the specific frequencies emitted by the light source.

 

The thing is that you can have a "daylight" balanced light source (desirable color temperature) that does not accurately recreate the colors found within a work of art (something like the blues are fine but the reds are duller and flatter than in the original) but the overall "color" of the light when seen on a white sheet of paper may be just what you are measuring for. This has to do with the CRI or color rendering index of the light source (so far most LEDs are similar in this regard to florescent bulbs most of which are not acceptable for accurately displaying artwork).

 

The second aspect is that the strength of specific frequencies of light may be much higher in some sources than in others even when the overall balance (in terms of color temperature) is the same.

 

Why this matters is that different materials are effected by different frequencies in different ways.

In other words you can have a light source with the ideal color temperature and low UV output that can still put certain objects in your collection at significant risk.

 

Luckily for all of us there are a bunch of folks working on this right now. Specifically noted on the website are Steve Weintraub, Dale Kronkright, and Jim Druzik at the Getty Conservation Institute.

 

In addition to what you can finde there right now I have an article in the works for publication on the main part of the PACIN website on Fundementals of Museum Lighting Technologies. 

If this is a topic of interest to you, you can stay tuned at the website (if you are registered there you can "subscribe" to a thread or topic and you will recieve an email notice when posts are submitted on the topic or thread of your choosing (stuff you are not interested in is safely avoided by not subscribing to that topic).

 

You are dealing with an issue that is very important for a lot of people. I for one am really interested in how these issues can be worked with. In the mean time I hope that the discussions on the website may be helpful.

Regards,

 

Ashley