National Gallery Presents Paint Sample Data Work at ICOM-CC 2026

Our partners at the National Gallery, London are in Oslo this week for the 21st ICOM-CC Triennial Conference (14–18 September 2026), presenting a poster on how they’re documenting, sharing, and reusing paint sample data as part of their work with the HSDS.

ICOM-CC, the International Committee for Conservation, is part of ICOM (the International Council of Museums) and is the world’s largest network of conservation professionals. Its Triennial Conference, held every three years, is one of the biggest gatherings in the field, bringing together conservators, conservation scientists, and curators from around the world.

The poster, “The Heritage Science Data Service at the National Gallery: Documenting, sharing, and reusing paint sample data,” looks at a resource many conservation scientists will recognise: an archive of paint samples and analytical data built up over almost a century, immensely valuable but not always easy to find, understand, or reuse.

The team from the National Gallery is building a digital catalogue of the Gallery’s heritage science data, including its paint sample archive. Once complete this metadata will be shared through the HSDS Data Catalogue so researchers elsewhere can discover it. They’re also developing a more sustainable system for recording exactly where samples were taken from a painting, testing open-source platforms like ResearchSpace, and building on existing linked data standards so that the approach can be adopted by other institutions as well. Much of this work builds on the Heritage Paint Samples Working Group, which the National Gallery coordinates with over a dozen UK institutions, including Tate, National Galleries Scotland, and the Science Museum Group, to develop shared standards for paint sample documentation across the sector.

The poster is on display throughout the conference and the team from the National Gallery will be around all week, so if you’re in Oslo please stop by! They’re keen to talk through what they’ve learned so far and hear how these challenges show up in other collections.

Find out more about ICOM-CC 2026: icom-cc2026.org