High-Tech Art Sleuthing in the Harvard Magazine

Call them art detectives. Using scientific methods, the researchers at the Fogg Museum’s Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies gather evidence and help solve art mysteries: Who painted this? What materials did the artist use?

One such mystery involves the self-taught American artist James Castle. Profoundly deaf, perhaps autistic, he never learned to speak or write. He lived in rural Idaho, creating compelling, intimate works, including hundreds of drawings using only woodstove-soot mixed with his own saliva. He sketched with color as well, and assembled three-dimensional figures from bits of packaging. His work was still largely unknown outside Idaho when he died in 1977 at the age of 78.

Flash forward three decades. Conservators wanted to know where Castle obtained his pigments, what tools he used, and how he worked. Castle’s family had provided some clues, through artifacts and memories. For more precise information about certain pieces, Daniel Kirby, an associate in conservation science at the Straus Center who has a background in biotechnology, used an instrument common in biology but fairly new to art conservation: a laser-desorption-ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer…

Read the full Harvard Magazine article online to learn more about Kirby’s results and the use of LDMS in conservation.

Saving Scrapbooks From the Scrapheap

This article by Eve M. Kahn was published on August 5, 2011 in the Antiques column in the Weekend Arts & Leisure section of  the New York Times that highlighted several scrapbook conservation projects funded by government grant agencies such as the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Save America’s Treasures.  Read the full article on the NYTimes website.

Woody Guthrie saved paperwork documenting his peripatetic life, from utility bills for New York apartments to fliers protesting shanty demolitions in Seattle and lyrics for folk songs performed at a Los Angeles radio station. He and his family put some of the artifacts in scrapbooks, but that did not fend off damage over the years.

The glues and album bindings weakened and failed. The page edges turned brittle and crumbled. Newspaper clippings yellowed and tore.

The Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives, which the family helps run at a tiny office in Mount Kisco, N.Y., has long had to keep researchers away from the more fragile scrapbooks. “Anytime anyone looked through, I knew we would lose a portion of it,” said Tiffany Colannino, the collection’s archivist.

During the last year the staff has finally been granting access to the albums, thanks to preservation work undertaken with a grant of $80,000 from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. Among other things, the money allowed the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, Mass., to box a half-dozen Guthrie scrapbooks in dove-gray cardboard and sheath the pages in clear polyester.

New labels on the covers explain the other treatments performed, with phrases like “nonaqueously alkalized” and “magnesium oxide particles in a perfluoro compound.”

Next year the albums may go on the road for celebrations of Guthrie’s centennial. “Now that everything’s conserved, it can be traveled and exhibited,” Ms. Colannino said. Digitized pages will be reproduced for new books, including one by the singer’s daughter Nora Guthrie for powerHouse Books about his years in New York.

Photos and clippings in the scrapbooks trace his wanderings in Greenwich Village, the Upper West Side and Coney Island, through three divorces and the births of five of his children, and his decline from Huntington’s disease at hospitals in Brooklyn and Queens.

The government has financed dozens of other scrapbook rescues in the past few years. The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston has received $150,000 from the federal Save America’s Treasures program to help preserve about 100 of Jacqueline Kennedy’s White House albums.

She kept memorabilia from interior restorations, dinner parties and the redesign of the Rose Garden. Fabric swatches and dried flowers are tucked between pages.

The library staff has not yet fully examined the deteriorating albums. Until the Northeast Document Conservation Center can stabilize them, “We don’t want to handle them,” said Karen Adler Abramson, the library’s chief archivist.

Save America’s Treasures has given $170,000 to Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library in Atlanta to conserve three dozen scrapbooks made by African-Americans. They commemorate the lives of freed slaves, sorority members and celebrities, including the author Alice Walker and the vaudeville star Flournoy Miller. The tightly packed mementos include military patches as well as pencils for signing girls’ dance cards.

When an item has fallen off and ended up shuffled around, members of the Emory staff study the glue stains on the back to see if any empty page in the book carries a matching ghostly outline. “It’s a map of where it went,” said Kim Norman, the library’s scrapbook conservator.

This year the government also financed conservation for a deteriorating 1930s album that Laszlo Moholy-Nagy helped design for the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and ephemera scrapbooks related to the Ball family (of Ball jar fame) at Minnetrista, a museum in Muncie, Ind.

In the Balls’ arrays of photos, clippings and invitations, “anything that was supposed to be attached is becoming unattached,” said Karen M. Vincent, Minnetrista’s director of collections.

One major underlying problem for conservators is that the scrapbooks in most cases were store-bought and mass-produced, with vulnerable flexing spines and acidic papers.

“They weren’t fancy books,” said Mary Patrick Bogan, the Northeast Center’s director of book conservation. “They were made for people to add to.”

Brooking Paper on Creativity in Museums

The Brooking competition recognizes innovative accomplishments that produce new ways of thinking and seeing within the museum field. Papers can describe examples of creativity in any aspect of museum operations, from collections, programs and exhibitions to finance, marketing and administration—or anything in between. If you can imagine your peers saying, “What a great idea—I’ve never heard of anybody doing that!” it’s a sign you’re headed in the right direction. Deadline: Feb. 1

A Dreamy Dram: Shackleton, whiskey and conservation on the South Pole

When I entered the field of conservation I hoped that the position would afford me the opportunity to travel for work.  My travel,  moving a couple of cities and the occasional courier or conference trip, has been gratifying but rather mundane.  Thus, I have marveled at the conservators who really seem to seize the amazing opportunities that our work sometimes affords and it has been a vicarious thrill to read the Antarctic Conservation blog posts of the conservators of the Antarctic Heritage Trust who are conserving 4 Antarctic explorers’ huts, including those used by Scott and Shackleton on their expeditions to Antarctica.  These conservators work throughout the year on the frozen continent, living in one of the most hostile environments on Earth.

Bottles of Shackleton's whisky at the Canterbury Museum in New Zealand, where they are being preserved in their paper wrapping and straw casing.

This project has also resulted in some interesting conservation issues.  If you are a whiskey lover then you will be particularly interested in the New York Times Magazine article of July 21, 2011 by Charles McGrath Spirits of the South Poll.  In February 2007 members of the preservation team came across three cases of Scotch frozen in the permafrost that were part of  Ernest Shackleton’s 1907 Nimrod expedition.  The Antarctic Heritage Trust, after much negotiation, allowed several bottles to be thawed out and brought to Scotland for study and analysis.   The article describes that the whiskey obsessed

likened the find to Howard Carter’s stumbling into the tomb of Tutanhkhamen.  Scotch this old is a great scarcity, but what kind of shape was it in?  Had it been preserved in the subzero cold – mummified, in effect – or had it gone bad, picking up notes of blubber, mildewed seal skin and dried penguin dung?

Read the rest the NYTimes article to find out!

Pressure-Sensitive Tape and Stain Removal from Photographs Workshop

I was fortunate to attend this workshop in Shepherdstown, WV in late November. The five-day course included classroom lecture, hands-on practicum in a well equipped laboratory, and participant presentations on the subject. Before arrival attendees received assigned reading pertaining to the history and formulae of pressure sensitive tape manufacturing. The reading was informative, and set the stage for the class. Day one an extensive handout packet was distributed, including a subject specific bibliography that is particularly useful to keep around for reference purposes. The instructors are nothing short of experts of tape and tape removal methods, and the lectures were practical and highly informative. Students were able to practice various methods of tape removal including mechanical / heat and with the use of solvents. Part of the lesson included a review of using the “Teas Chart”. Every attendee gave a short ten minute presentation on the subject at the end of the course, which usually included a slide show and case-study of their “icky tape encounters” on the job. Overall, the workshop left me with a feeling of empowerment and confidence to approach previously intimidating tape removal scenarios. In addition, I met many wonderful people while there!

Call for contributions to ECPN’s Annual Meeting poster

The Emerging Conservation Professionals Network is creating a poster for the 2012 AIC Annual Meeting entitled, Creative Endeavors and Expressive Ideas: Emerging Conservators Engaging through Outreach and Public Scholarship. The poster will highlight several case studies of emerging conservators using outreach to connect with public audiences, allied professionals, and other conservators. Selected contributions will be featured in the poster or as part of companion posts – including a ‘How-to’ section – on the ECPN blog. Those who would like to contribute may leave a comment here or contact Carrie Roberts at carrizabel@gmail.com by January 31, 2012.

FAIC Workshop on Tapes and Tape Stains removal in WV

Wonderful Workshop in a wonderful location. I have been honoured to have been among the partecipants of these Workshop. The group was very focused on the topic and lecturers were really specialized. The Workshop was very well scheduled and divided into theory and practice. I found great sharing treatments experiences through the partecipant presentations and I think that it should be done in every Workshops. Some more Photographic Samples to work on might help next time. Maybe participants can also prepare some samples on the workshop topics.

I found very exciting the International level FAIC Courses take place; I wouldn’t like to miss any of them, if it would just be possible.

Stefania Ruello

Does Kurt Vonnegut’s satire of an artist and his materials still resonate?

While not a new novel, Bluebeard, by Kurt Vonnegut (1987), the “autobiography” of Rabo Karabekian, an artist who was associated with the most famous mid-20th century Abstract Expressionist painters is a cautionary tale about the use of untested art matrials. Karabekian himself is best known for the fact that due to unforeseen chemical reactions between the sizing of his canvases and the Sateen Dura-Luxe acrylic wall-paint he used “whose colors according to advertisements of the day, would ‘… outlive the smile on the Mona Lisa”, all of his paintings destroyed themselves when the paint detached from the canvas not too long after the works were completed. Moreover, Sateen Dura-Luxe has been found to degrade over time into a very deadly poison and is almost impossible to dispose of legally.
Are today’s artists more conscious about permanence and safety of their materials than Vonnegut’s fictional artist of the 1960s?

I’m not a PA, but I want to be

While there are some emerging conservators who will apply for Professional Associate (PA) status as soon as they are eligible, it seems that many others might be less aware, less interested or less confident about applying to become PA’s. PA membership was more or less off my radar until several months ago, when my good friend and former pre-program internship supervisor wrote me an email asking if I had thought about applying, offering to write a recommendation, and informing me of the next application deadline. She had actually encouraged me to start thinking about this before I was eligible, and the fact that she was taking the initiative to bring this to my attention again made me sit up and think about it much more seriously.

Once I determined that I could apply, I looked closely at the application and guidelines and started asking myself why I, or why any conservator, would want to be an AIC Professional Associate, other than the privilege of getting to attach a little ribbon to your nametag at the annual meeting. What does it mean to be a Professional Associate?

I had heard that there are a lot of people who are eligible who do not apply, but after looking over the application requirements and the benefits, I couldn’t think of any reasons NOT to apply, so I thought I’d poll a few conservators who are PA’s to ask them why they applied, what the application experience was like, and what PA status means to them. Their responses made me even more convinced that I should apply, and prompted me to come up with a list of reasons that might inspire others. Here they are:

Top 5 reasons to apply to be a PA

1.  Inclusion in the “Find a Conservator” tool on the AIC website

This benefit may be particularly attractive for those in private practice or interested in private work. Several of the conservators I spoke with mentioned that they had gotten leads on private work through this listing.

2.  Voting privileges within AIC

The ability to vote was seen as especially important by many members during the certification discussion. When future issues come up for a vote by the membership, being a PA ensures that your voice will be heard and your opinion will count. I’ve heard some people argue that just being an associate member of AIC should be enough, but this isn’t going to change, so if you want voting privileges, this is how you can gain them.

3.  Make yourself stand out when applying for jobs, contracts and grants

From the colleagues I spoke with, I know for a fact that PA status will be valued on job and grant applications and that some government issued RFQ’s (requests for quotes) require that applicants are Professional Associates.

4.  Eligibility to apply for Individual Professional Development Scholarships

I recently found myself in a position where I wanted to attend a meeting but I really couldn’t come up with the money to go. I realized if I was a PA, I would be able to apply for this funding, which can help defray costs for professional development activities, including attending workshops, courses and conferences.

5.  Recognition among your peers and colleagues

This is a big one that I really took for granted. But among all of the conservators I’ve spoken with, their respect and appreciation of PA status is very evident. One person said that “if you want other people to advocate for you, provide them the ammunition-peer approval in a profession is big ammunition”. When I realized that people I really respect and admire think that being a PA is a valuable part of being a professional conservator, I found myself aspiring to this as well.

So now that I’ve written all of this, the pressure is on me to actually apply, since I’m now eligible to do so. I’m encouraged by the fact that everyone I spoke with said that applying was straightforward and easy, and that it was possibly more work for the people writing the recommendation letters than the applicants. So make sure to ask the people who you want to sponsor you as far ahead of time as you can and make it as easy on them as you can.

Finally, for those of you who are PA’s or Fellows, I encourage you to reach out to conservators who have not yet applied for this status to do so, and offer to support their application. And for those of you who are eligible but uncertain-don’t wait for people to suggest this to you-start a dialogue with your past and current colleagues, professors and supervisors, and ask them if they recommend that you apply and if they’d be willing to support you. You will undoubtedly be rewarded with encouragement and a boost of confidence.

A special thanks to Ellen Carrlee, Anne Kingery-Schwartz, Vanessa Muros and Emily Williams for their assistance and encouragement!