Assessing museums’ daylighting adequacy without annual measurement campaign: Dataset of a confrontation between measured and simulated illuminance values inside the Cetacean Gallery of the Charterhouse of Calci

Lighting Cultural Heritage is a complex task: light is necessary for the act of seeing, it can even enhance the visual experience [1,2], in addition proper lighting can significantly cut down energy consumptions [3], but on the same time it has detrimental effects on exhibits, especially daylight. In order to safeguard the exhibits from damages, national and international standards provide specific recommendations for exhibits’ exposure, based on their photosensitivity category. These recommendations are the annual luminous exposure(LO) and the Maximum Illuminance Level (E(max)), museums’ curators have to verify that the display lighting conditions comply with the standards. Historical buildings are often converted into museums but, as their original purpose was different, the lighting conditions are often inadequate (e.g. too much uncontrolled daylight), therefore the lighting conditions’ adequacy of the space should be assessed [4]. As the name suggest the annual luminous exposure requires an annual monitoring campaign, unfortunately it often happens that exhibits have been exposed incorrectly for prolonged periods, and therefore it is very important to evaluate the need of a fast intervention. In this casuistry a prolonged measurement campaign is not acceptable. Simulations can help running a great number of analysis while reducing the length and expenses of a measurements campaign, however their previsions must be validated. This paper provides the data acquired through measurements and simulations inside the Cetacean Gallery of the Monumental Charterhouse of Calci, near Pisa (Tuscany Region, Italy). The data comprehends horizontal and vertical illuminance measurements, recorded on December the 6th, and simulations run in Grasshopper with the plugins Honeybee+ and Ladybug. The data are related to the research article entitled “Application of climate-based daylight simulation to assess lighting conditions of space and artworks in historical buildings: the case study of Cetacean Gallery of the Monumental Charterhouse of Calci”, published on the Journal of Cultural Heritage [5].