Tim Padfield, a world authority on preventive conservation, is giving two public lectures for Heritage Malta. The first, “Environmental standards force cumbersome environmental control. Is this necessary and wise?” will be given in the Aula Withmore, Ex-Royal Naval Hospital, Triq il-Missjoni Taljana, Bighi, Kalkara, today at 5.30pm.

In this lecture Dr Padfield presents some successes and failures of environmental control around art, with emphasis on the dominant role of standards. He casts a critical eye on the science that underpins the standards and the pressure to conform which is built in to the process of building a museum.

Dr Padfield will be delivering the second lecture on Thursday, 6 March. It will be of a more technical nature and will deal with the role of the building in conserving its content.

Dr Padfield lectures students following the M.Cons. programme. He is a freelance consultant in preventive conservation and has worked in the Conservation Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Leeds, and the Conservation Department of the National Museum of Denmark.