The Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France (C2RMFCentre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France ) is the national research centre

Research institute

A research institute is an establishment endowed for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research...

 in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 responsible for the documentation, conservation and restoration

Art conservation and restoration

Conservation-restoration, also referred to as conservation, is a profession devoted to the preservation of cultural heritage for the future. Conservation activities include examination, documentation, treatment, and preventive care...

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

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

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

Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations...

 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

Catherine Trautmann

Catherine Trautmann is a former Minister of Culture of France and now Member of the European Parliament for the East of France.She was elected as mayor of Strasbourg in 1989, re-elected in 1995, then defeated in 2001....

, the then Minister of Culture and Communications

Minister of Culture (France)

The Minister of Culture is, in the Government of France, the cabinet member in charge of national museums and monuments; promoting and protecting the arts in France and abroad; and managing the national archives and regional "maisons de culture"...

, 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 (LRMF, Research Laboratory of the Museums of France) and the Service de restauration des musées de France (SRMF, Restoration Service of the Museums of France) and it is organized in 4 departments. Today the center is affiliated to the CNRS 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

Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres , often known as RDDV, is a French politician, France's Minister of Culture from 2004 to 2007...

, replacing Jean-Pierre Mohen. Naffah had been a curator

Curator

A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...

 in France's national museum

National museum

A national museum is a museum maintained by a nation.The following is a list of national museums:-Australia:*Australian National Aviation Museum*Australian National Maritime Museum*, Sydney*Australian War Memorial*Museum Victoria...

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

Louvre

The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...

, Musée du Quai Branly

Musée du quai Branly

thumb|225px|Musée du quai BranlyThe Musée du quai Branly , known in English as the Quai Branly Museum, nicknamed MQB, is a museum in Paris, France that features indigenous art, cultures and civilizations from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. The museum is located at 37, 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, 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. 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.

Sources

External links

• Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France, C2RMF official website
• http://merovingio.c2rmf.cnrs.fr/technologies/?q=fr/showcase, C2RMF digital imaging technologies