• The story of AGATO : where does the name AGATO come from?
• User guidelines
• FAQ
• References
• What is an Historic mixed material artefact within ArtGarden and AGATO?
• Which materials are included in AGATO?
• What is AGATO’s reliability?
• Who can use AGATO?
• What is the concept of AGATO?
• How does AGATO work?
• How long will it take to complete?
• Editing your assessment & saving the results
• Results
• How to implement the output (risks & recommendations)?
• When should I review my assessment?
• What happens to your data?

FAQ

Why do the results present so many risks?

After completing all 18 questions, AGATO provides the user with the list of risks for the object. AGATO leaves no results out and all results are shown. This list may be long, especially when the object contains multiple materials and many risks are present.

Next to each risk, the color scale may be checked to see if the impact of the risks would be rather high, medium or low. As not all of the 10 agents have the same impact, this should help evaluating the situation and focusing on important risks.

Investing time and resources to mitigate one of the important risks, should considerably improve the situation for the object. Investing in risks very low in rank could turn out less effective.

Why do the risks or the ranking of the risks may seem odd compared to the object?

AGATO is initially designed to assess historic mixed media artefacts such as Enclosed Gardens, folk art, ethnographical art, religious artefacts, costumes, manuscripts,… It was not directly intended for more contemporary objects.

Although AGATO may be used for other types of objects, the results may sometimes be less applicable. One may very well use AGATO for any object containing only one material. Some other features on the other hand may be of such importance that they outweigh the characteristics of the materials constituting the objects.

For some large objects, its extraordinary dimensions may be a significant reason for damage by itself, more than the properties of the materials. A tapestry for instance may suffer from manipulation or shear gravity.

Objects exhibited outdoors for example, will be more exposed to and damaged by biological deterioration and severe climatical conditions than the same type of objects would be when exhibited indoors.

There are many ways in which your object may be different from the historical mixed-media objects for which AGATO was designed. It may be a 2D object and not 3D, or it may be part of an historical building and not be conserved individually (in a display case or storage cabinet),…

Always refer back to your object in its own context and consider if the results truly apply.