The UP Museums are proud to announce that the Museum Art Conservator, Sandra Markgraaf, has been invited to join the Scientific Board of the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) in conducting an exploration to develop an online research platform for gathering and sharing information about the history, conservation and restoration of paintings on canvas. “I am honoured that the Getty Foundation recommended me to the RKD to be part of this amazing opportunity to enhance art conservation internationally and nationally by sharing knowledge and serving the scholarly community. This is an opportunity to learn from experts from abroad and contribute from a South African perspective,” says Markgraaf. 

According to Markgraaf, UP Museums will expand their academic network and become part of an international network of professionals, as well as have access to an ever-growing corpus of technical documentation and research results concerning canvas conservation. The goal is to offer a much needed, accessible, searchable, sustainable and state-of-the-art platform, to improve and facilitate online access to digital tools and research resources concerning heritage and data, in order to make heritage scientific data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable).

The RKD is famously known for its hybrid and digital strategy of art historical content, together with more than 5 million artworks and a growing corpus of technical research data. The new online platforms aims to facilitate discoverability of canvas data by sharing and connecting data with institutions worldwide, as this type of material is often not easily accessible.