May, 2020

Started in 2013 by the Getty Museum's Department of Antiquities Conservation, the APPEAR (Ancient Panel Paintings: Examination, Analysis and Research) project aims to increase the understanding of Egyptian funerary portraits of the Roman era. The general idea is to promote quantitative analyses on these portraits, kept in various museums of the world and share the results in a common database. More details can be found here.

One of these portraits is part of the Louvre Abu Dhabi collection, and the museum decided to participate in the initiative in partnership with NYU Abu Dhabi, where our lab performed XRF analysis on it. There have been two XRF (X-ray Fluorescence) measurement campaigns- the first one in November 2019 and the second one in November 2020. In a conversation mentioned in Emirates News Agency, Professor Francesco Arneodo mentioned that "NYU Abu Dhabi is a liberal arts college and a research institution, where we highly value interdisciplinarity. Our application of techniques common in atomic and molecular physics to answer questions in the cultural heritage domain is a perfect example of what we love to do" . "The collaboration with Louvre Abu Dhabi on the APPEAR project is a wonderful opportunity and an example of how universities and museums can work together to answer questions and open opportunities for researchers and students."

Read more about the APPEAR project,  highlighted on various media fonts, including Emirates News Agency, Gulf News and Gulf Today.