Transport of Long Useful Life Elements
Introduction
Packaging in cultural heritage conservation includes the set of techniques, materials and procedures intended to protect heritage objects during their handling, storage, transportation and display. Its main objective is to mitigate physical, environmental and chemical risks, guaranteeing the stability of the object and minimizing deterioration during periods of immobility or movement. Packaging is considered an essential strategy within preventive conservation.
Historical context
Cultural property packaging as a formal practice within heritage conservation is relatively recent when compared to other areas of the field, such as painting restoration or archaeology. Until the middle of the century, museums, archives and collections used traditional methods based on locally available materials, such as unsealed wooden boxes, various papers or non-standardized textile fillings. These techniques provided minimal protection and, in many cases, contributed to accelerate deterioration processes due to acidity, abrasion, trapped moisture or biological contamination.[1].
Beginning in the postwar period (1945–1960), with the growth of large international museums and the mass transportation of works of art, the need arose to establish formal protocols to mobilize collections, especially for temporary exhibitions and international loans. Institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art (Washington) and the Victoria & Albert Museum began to develop internal manuals that raised protection standards through technical padding, reinforced boxes and stable chemical materials.[1][2].
In the 1960s and 1970s, the development of petroleum-derived materials—such as closed-cell polyethylene foams (Ethafoam), polypropylene, and barrier films—radically transformed packaging, allowing controlled cushioning, precise internal immobilization, and reduction of vibro-impacts during transport. At the same time, the concept of “museum grade” emerged, which identifies stable, inert materials free of compounds harmful to objects.[3][4].
With the founding of organizations such as and , preventive conservation was formalized as a discipline, incorporating packaging as one of its main areas. During this stage, pioneering guides such as and the first were published with systematic recommendations for the safe packaging of collections.[5].