How The Museum’s Remote Monitoring System Provided Peace of Mind Through the LA Fires

I’ve spent most of my professional life surrounded by beauty, fragility, and history. As a curator for an art museum located just on the outskirts of Los Angeles, my days are filled with the quiet intensity of preservation. My job is to safeguard priceless pieces—paintings from the Renaissance, ancient manuscripts, rare books, one-of-a-kind textiles, and delicate sculptures—each holding stories older than most buildings in the city. Our archives represent not just artistic achievements, but irreplaceable fragments of human culture. I’ve always known the weight of this responsibility. But it wasn’t until a few months ago, when the wildfires came alarmingly close, that I fully felt the gravity of it.

When you’re in charge of collections valued in the millions, every risk takes on a monumental scale. We’ve always prepared for earthquakes, theft, humidity, and general deterioration. But wildfire season in Southern California has grown more intense and unpredictable. This past year, when the fires broke out just a few miles from our facility, we faced a situation unlike anything before.

The sky turned to rust, and smoke poured over the hills like something out of a nightmare. The air quality plummeted within hours. We were told to evacuate. I had minutes to grab what I could and leave. As I locked the final door, the thought of losing our collection felt paralyzing. These weren’t just objects; they were pieces of civilization.

But here’s where preparation met technology. Months earlier, we had installed a comprehensive environmental monitoring system throughout the archives and exhibition spaces. The system includes water detection sensors under every major shelving unit, temperature controls in each sealed vault, air quality monitoring that measures particulates, gases, and humidity, and remote alerts that notify us of even the slightest anomaly.

As I sat in traffic trying to escape the evacuation zone, I watched my phone. Alerts began to come through. Not warnings of disaster, but data—temperature remained stable, particulate levels were slightly elevated but within manageable parameters, no water intrusion detected, and the air filtration systems were doing their job. Despite the fear around me, I had clarity. I knew, in real time, what was happening inside our sealed vaults.

This remote insight changed everything. For years, museum operations relied on in-person monitoring and occasional manual logging. We would do daily walkthroughs, weekly condition reports, and annual climate audits. It worked, but it was vulnerable to the unexpected—and what’s more unexpected than a firestorm that forces you out of the building?

The monitoring system gave us eyes and ears when we couldn’t be there ourselves. We could check on our 18th-century oil paintings without risking a curator’s life. We could ensure our parchment documents weren’t curling or suffering chemical deterioration from toxic air particles. We knew exactly when our internal HVAC systems kicked into protective modes, and we could verify that our oxygen-reduction system in the manuscript vault had activated properly.

I’m not exaggerating when I say this technology saved our collection. While the fire never reached the museum itself, the secondary threats—ash, heat, airborne chemicals—were very real. There’s a misconception that danger only comes when flames touch a building. That’s simply not true. Elevated humidity from nearby water drops can trigger mold. Microscopic ash particles can infiltrate and damage canvas fibers. Gases can chemically interact with pigments or paper.

The system gave us an advanced warning for everything. It recorded every shift in microclimate, allowing us to deploy response teams to assess damage as soon as reentry was permitted. Our HVAC teams made adjustments remotely. Our conservators prepared specific cleaning and treatment regimens based on the exact data collected during the fire period. Nothing was left to guesswork.

It’s surreal to say, but the fire taught me that stewardship today is as much about data as it is about devotion. I’ve always believed in hands-on care—I still do. But without the tools to sense threats in real time, even the most dedicated curator is working in the dark.

Our system also proved invaluable in the weeks that followed. While many were focused on cleanup, we were in the midst of analyzing sensor data from over 200 zones within the museum. We pinpointed areas where air filtration lagged and made upgrades. We identified where vibrations from emergency vehicles caused microshifts in shelving, and we adjusted our mounting systems. We adjusted HVAC response times and sealed two previously unknown air leaks in the attic ducts—things we wouldn’t have discovered without the system.

Even more interesting, we now use this data for insurance reporting and grant applications. We can show, with timestamps and raw logs, exactly how our environmental protections held during an emergency. It’s powerful evidence of risk management, and it’s already helped us secure funding for additional retrofitting.

I often think of our archive as a patient. You monitor a patient’s vital signs to detect when something is wrong before it becomes fatal. That’s what this system does for our collections. And just like with a patient, time is everything. Early detection saves lives. In our case, it saves irreplaceable works of art.

Not long ago, I walked back into the main gallery for the first time after the evacuation order was lifted. The lights were dimmed, the air was clean, and everything was just as we left it. No soot, no warping, no odd smells. The Renaissance painting that hangs in the central hall—a piece we've insured at nearly seven figures—looked untouched. But behind that calm image was a whirlwind of micro-adjustments, automated reports, and silent sensors that had worked tirelessly in our absence.

I know many in the art world are hesitant to embrace too much technology. We think of our work as tactile, human, intuitive. And it is. But it can also be precise, data-informed, and technologically assisted. The fire made it clear: the future of curatorial work isn’t just about collecting and preserving—it’s about anticipating, sensing, and responding in ways we never thought possible before.

Our museum is doubling down on these efforts. We’re expanding our system to include vibration sensors on display pedestals. We’re testing UV-detection arrays for our illuminated manuscripts. We’re even collaborating with software developers to create a dashboard that integrates condition reports, air quality data, and climate control history into one real-time interface.

Looking back, I’m deeply grateful. Grateful for the technology. Grateful for the foresight our board had in approving the monitoring system budget. Grateful for the engineers who made it easy to install and intuitive to use. And yes, grateful for the fire—not for the danger it brought, but for the lesson it taught. It proved that modern curatorship isn’t just about preserving the past. It’s about embracing the tools of the present to ensure that past survives whatever future we might face.

For anyone who oversees a collection, whether it's in a museum, library, archive, or private estate, I urge you to consider the power of environmental monitoring. It might just be the most important curator you never see.