Pavillon de Flore from Tuileries, 26 April 2008

The National Centre for Research and Restoration in French Museums (C2RMF, ''Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France'') is the national

research centre A research institute, research centre, research center or research organization, is an establishment founded for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research. Although the term often im ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

responsible for the

documentation Documentation is any communicable material that is used to describe, explain or instruct regarding some attributes of an object, system or procedure, such as its parts, assembly, installation, maintenance and use. As a form of knowledge manageme ...

conservation and restoration The conservation and restoration of cultural property focuses on protection and care of cultural property (tangible cultural heritage), including artworks, architecture, archaeology, and museum collections. Conservation activities include prev ...

of the items held in the collections of more than 1,200

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...

s across France. C2RMF also carries out extensive scientific studies and data recording for these collections, and is active both nationally and internationally in the field of

cultural heritage Cultural heritage is the heritage of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all heritages of past generations are "heritage"; rather, heritage is a product of selection by soc ...

conservation and analysis. The C2RMF is involved in the development of technologies and scientific procedures employed in the preservation of art works and artefacts, both on its own and in partnership with other museums and research institutions across the globe. The centre was established in 1998 by an ''arrêté'' (administrative decision) issued by Catherine Trautmann, the then Minister of Culture and Communications, which was gazetted in the ''Journal Officiel'' on December 30. It was created by merging the functions and facilities of two other research bodies, the

Laboratoire de recherche des musées de France The National Centre for Research and Restoration in French Museums (C2RMF, ''Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France'') is the national research centre in France responsible for the documentation, conservation and restorati ...

(LRMF, ''Research Laboratory of the Museums of France'') and the

Service de restauration des musées de France The National Centre for Research and Restoration in French Museums (C2RMF, ''Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France'') is the national research centre in France responsible for the documentation, conservation and restorati ...

(SRMF, ''Restoration Service of the Museums of France'') and it is organized in 4 departments. Today the center is affiliated to the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,63 ...

with the label UMR-171. In 2005 Mme. Christiane Naffah was appointed director of the centre by the French Minister of Culture and Communications

Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres (born 13 March 1954 in Neuilly-sur-Seine), often known as RDDV, is a French politician, France's Minister of Culture from 2004 to 2007. He is a member of the UMP center-right party, and the grandson of Henri Donnedie ...

, replacing Jean-Pierre Mohen. Naffah had been a

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

in France's

national museum A national museum is a museum maintained and funded by a national government. In many countries it denotes a museum run by the central government, while other museums are run by regional or local governments. In other countries a much greater numb ...

s since 1977, and prior to her appointment had held positions at the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the '' Venus de Milo''. A central ...

, Musée du Quai Branly and had been director of the Musée de l'institut du monde arabe. The actual director is Mme. Marie Lavandier. Since the early 1930s, over 174,000 paintings and 34,000 objects have been individually studied or restored by the C2RMF, and its predecessor organisations LRMF and SRMF. The C2RMF's key activities focus on the study of works of art at both a national and regional level. It undertakes investigations prior to any acquisition. Equipped with world-class experimental facilities that are constantly being improved, like the

particle accelerator A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined beams. Large accelerators are used for fundamental research in particle ...

AGLAE ''Aglae'' is a genus of euglossine bees, with the only described species ''Aglae caerulea''. Like all orchid bees, it is restricted to the Neotropics. They are metallic blue. This species, like the genus ''Exaerete'', is a nest parasite on free ...

, the C2RMF focuses its research on several key areas: the physical and chemical characteristics of materials, the ageing of materials, database management, image analysis, digitisation and 3D modelling. The C2RMF is one of the most experienced centres in the world in the use of scientific techniques on art works. They have an unparalleled knowledge and experience of the current state-of-the-art in the practical capture of 3D data from many different types of artefact. The latest research has concerned the multispectral imaging of paintings, ontologies and the semantic web and the 3D modelling of objects and paintings.Pitzalis ''et al.'' (2007) Furthermore, it has achieved significant results with an Open Source database management system that provides multilingual access (17 languages) to specialised vocabularies for the cultural museum sector and a semantic interface to browse the results.

References

* M. Menu (ed.), ''Leonardo's Technical Practice: Paintings, Drawings and Influence'', Paris, 2014. * D. Bourgarit, J. Basset, F. G. Bewer, G. Bresc-Bautier, Ph. Malgouyres et G. Scherf (eds.), ''French Bronze Sculpture 16th-18th Century'', Londres, 2014. * I. Biron, F. Alloteau, P. Lehuédé, O. Majérus, D. Caurant, ''Glass Atmospheric Alteration, Cultural Heritage, Industrial and Nuclear Glass'', Paris, 2019.

Sources

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External links

Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France, C2RMF official website

Open Archives of C2RMF

''Technè'' journal available on OpenEdition.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Center For Research And Restoration Of Museums Of France Research institutes in France Museum organizations Louvre Palace Museums in France 1998 establishments in France French National Centre for Scientific Research Conservation and restoration organizations