From the Art Institute of Chicago ARTicle blog entry by Francesca Casadio, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Conservation Scientist, Art Institute of Chicago. © 2009 The Art Institute of Chicago

If I say “ring” you might first think of Frodo. Or maybe Wagner if you’re an opera lover. But you’ll find neither Hobbits nor Valkyries at the ring-shaped Argonne National Laboratory just outside Chicago. What you will find is Art Institute conservation scientists, as we visited the Lab this month on a mission to bring Picasso to the ring.

Let me qualify that: we brought minuscule samples of Picasso paintings from the Art Institute to the Advanced Photon Source [APS], the Western hemisphere’s brightest source of X-ray beams. At this top-notch facility, scientists rip electrons from atoms and make them spin furiously around the circumference of the experiment hall—which is large enough to encircle a baseball stadium. These enraged electrons (always charged with that negative attitude!) give off enormous amounts of energy, which the scientists can bend and direct to do wonderful things.

We used the energy from this process to penetrate every single grain of white pigment that Picasso used with nanometric resolution (that is, splitting human hair eighty thousand times to get down to a nanometer) in order to determine where it came from. Was it from a wrinkled tube from one of the artist’s storied houses, produced on the banks of the river Seine in chi-chi Paris? Or did it come from a drippy can of mass-market produced house paint? Could the paint possibly have been made in the U.S.? By looking at infinitesimal contaminants in these zinc oxide pigment particles we hope we will be able to answer these questions and advance our Picasso-related detective work.

Often conservators are surprised to find themselves in facilities such as these. But at Argonne, scientists riding around on tricycles (the facility’s favored mode of transportation) were probably just as surprised to find us. These scientists were encountering Picasso in unexpected places: posted in a note with our project title on our experimental station’s door and attached with a drop of nail polish (an ironic fate for a known womanizer!) on a small pin!

Outside, at night (yes, because when you are awarded time for an experiment, you work 24/7 for 5 days: science cannot wait), dragonflies sparkle amidst the grass in the calm, bucolic setting. Inside, it sparkles too…we are brimming with the excitement of discovery. And that is how Picasso, a trailblazer in both life and death, went nanotech at Argonne on a hot day in July 2011.

The original blog can be found here >

Use of the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory was supported by the DOE’s Office of Science under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

The Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory is one of five national synchrotron radiation light sources supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science to carry out applied and basic research to understand, predict, and ultimately control matter and energy at the electronic, atomic, and molecular levels, provide the foundations for new energy technologies, and support DOE missions in energy, environment, and national security.

To learn more about the Office of Science x-ray user facilities, visit http://science.energy.gov/user-facilities/basic-energy-sciences/.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.