Study wrongly implies LED to blame for van Gogh masterpiece
damage 16 January 2013 09.30 GMT (Netherlands) - Scientists use
old LED data to highlight why some yellow colours in Vincent van
Gogh’s paintings are turning brown due to lighting exposure.
Findings sensationalised by mainstream press. It has been known
for some time that the light yellow tones in Vincent van Gogh's
paintings are particularly prone to darkening, but now an
international team of scientists have produced a report which
suggests that the blue bandwidth in lighting could be to blame.
The experiments were apparently carried out using a Xenon lamp
high in UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C wavelengths. Unfortunately the
research group, which included scientists from the Van Gogh
Museum in Amsterdam amongst others, chose to highlight the
danger of LED lighting by publishing a spectral distribution
chart from a six year old LED system with a particularly high
blue bandwidth. The chart is labelled ‘Emission spectrum of a
typical "white" LED, containing a s