Month: October 2012

Peru’s “Sistine Chapel” shines again

In a remote Peruvian village, 3,100m up in the Andes (700m higher than Machu Picchu), sits South America’s version of the Sistine Chapel.

An elaborate Mudéjar-style ceiling and a complex scheme of murals have earned the Baroque church of San Pedro Apóstol de Andahuaylillas, located 41km west of the colonial city of Cusco, its exalted nickname. But centuries of grime, bat droppings, earthquakes and dodgy restorations have dulled the original beauty of the church. The World Monuments Fund has worked with regional and national bodies to return San Pedro Apóstol to its former splendour and draw attention to other churches on the Andean Baroque route. The organisation plans to mark the completion of the four-year, $1.5m conservation project at Andahuaylillas with a celebration in the town on 31 October.

Read full story on theartnewspaper.com >>

AIC’s 2012 Internal Advisory Group (IAG) Meeting Cancelled

Unfortunately, the 2012 IAG meeting on Nov. 3 has been canceled due to Hurricane Sandy.  The decision was made jointly by the AIC President and Executive Director. Several factors have come into play that have forced us to make this decision. They include:

  • The very real possibility that the DC metro area loses power for a prolonged period after today. We felt that we needed to make a decision while we could still notify you and if you are in Sandy’s path, that you can get the notification.
  • While the weather should be back to normal in the DC area by the end of the week, it may not be in areas further north and west, as the effects of Sandy spread.
  • Planes, trains, and yes even roads may still be in disarray by the end of the week. Airlines have moved aircraft out of the area to be affected by Sandy, and it may take a while for schedules to get back to normal.
  • We did not want any member attending IAG to feel pressured to attend IAG. Since many may be dealing with loss of power, family concerns, or additional demands from your workplace due to Sandy.
  • We would prefer to err on the side of caution.

We will be scheduling a couple of webinars that will replace IAG this year. I will be asking you what times work best for you soon.

I will be canceling all of the rooms at the IAG host hotel today.

If you could cancel your flight or train reservations, and mention that the meeting you were attending has been canceled due to Sandy.

Please send me a quick email letting me know that you received this email.

Also, feel free to email me with any questions or concerns. If you don’t receive a response from me, we have probably lost power.

I am so disappointed that we will not be together on Saturday.

Best,

Ruth Seyler | Membership and Meetings Director

t 202-661-8062 | f 202-452-9328
rseyler@conservation-us.org
www.conservation-us.org |twitter: @conservators

Hurricane Sandy Approaches the East Coast, AIC-CERT on Stand-by

With Hurricane Sandy threatening the East Coast, museums, historic sites, libraries, and archives in much of the Eastern United States will be at risk. The American Institute for Conservation (AIC), the national association of conservation professionals, is offering free emergency response assistance to cultural organizations. Please help make sure that staff members of collecting institutions know to contact AIC-CERT when a disaster—flooding, hurricane, earthquake, fire—has damaged collections.

  • Call AIC’s 24-hour assistance number at 202.661.8068 for advice by phone.
  • Call 202.661.8068 to arrange for a team to come to the site to complete damage assessments and help with salvage organization.

AIC-CERT volunteers have provided assistance and advice to dozens of museums, libraries, and archives since 2007. AIC-CERT teams were on the ground following Tropical Storm Irene and flooding in Minot, North Dakota in 2011, the Midwest floods in 2008, and in the Galveston area following Hurricane Ike later that year. AIC-CERT members and other AIC conservators participated in an 18-month-long project in Haiti assisting with recovery of cultural materials damaged in the 2010 earthquake.

AIC-CERT is supported and managed by the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation (FAIC). In 2007 and again in 2010, FAIC received funding from the Institute of Museum & Library Services to support an advanced training program for conservators and other museum professionals that resulted in a force of 107 “rapid responders” trained to assess damage and initiate salvage of cultural collections after a disaster has occurred. They are ready to assist.

Resources and information on disaster recovery and salvage can be found on the AIC website at www.conservation-us.org/disaster. The public can also call AIC-CERT at 202.661.8068.

Eating Near Monuments Banned, Italians in Uproar: Perhaps it should have been posed as a means to preserve the cultural heritage

Germans ate ice cream at the central fountain in the Piazza Navona in Rome. Picture courtesy NYTimes.com

According to an article in The New York Times (“Buon Appetito, but Not Next to the Monuments“, by Elisabetta Povoledo, October 24, 2012), this month Rome instituted a new municipal ordinance outlawing eating and drinking and camping in areas of “particular historic, artistic, architectonic and cultural value”. The ordinance has been met with great opposition by Romans who have formed flash mobs with food on the steps leading to City Hall. The ordinance has been posed as a matter of civility and decorum. Perhaps opposition to it would be less if the ordinance had been posed as a means of preserving the cultural heritage of Rome since we all know that food and beverages can be destructive to stone, metal, wood, and other materials.

Read full article >>

Review of FAIC Preventive Conservation Workshop: Ossabaw Island, GA (January 7-20, 2012)

How does one care for a historic home that is currently being inhabited? How much care should be given to maintain such a site when funding and physical isolation prevent a clear future?

Last January I attended a two-week preventive conservation workshop along with five other participants on Ossabaw Island, a wilderness barrier island off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, to try to tackle these questions.  As a pre-program conservation student, this workshop offered me a chance to consider conservation outside of traditional contexts, to engage in preventive conservation, and to experience a truly unforgettable adventure.

The island, whose earliest settlements date to 2000 BCE, was occupied by the Guale and Creek Indians, Spanish and English explorers, and plantation owners until its eventual purchase in 1924 by Dr. Henry Norton Torrey of Michigan.  Dr. Torrey’s daughter, Eleanor Torrey West, inherited the family’s home in addition to the entire island where she fostered a creative retreat, The Ossabaw Island Project, attended by writers, artists, and scientific researchers. Mrs. West (99) continues to live on Ossabaw today, but has since sold the island to the State of Georgia under the condition that it be kept as a nature preserve for academic pursuits. The island offered a meditative and isolated setting for our preventive conservation study; ancient shell middens, Spanish moss draped palmetto and live oak trees, tidal marshes, untouched beaches, wild pigs, and the ruins of tabby slave quarters comprised the island’s lush landscape.

The primary focus of the workshop was to discuss and employ preventive conservation strategies, including monitoring the temperature, relative humidity, light, and pests, while following and revising a housekeeping manual for the 1924 Spanish colonial revival style Torrey-West house. The workshop, taught by Peebles Island Resource Center conservators David Bayne, Kristin O’Connell, Abby Zoldowski, Michele Phillips, and private practice conservator Rose Cull, also included dedicated sessions on the care of the house’s textiles, books and works on paper, furniture, and outdoor iron structures. Several preventive sessions were continuations of the 2010 campaign, including the recording of pest activity, temperature, and climate within the house.  We identified insects found in traps, discussed data reconnaissance techniques, recorded light and ultraviolet readings, and selected two rooms on the ground floor to be lightly cleaned using housekeeping methods appropriate to historic houses.

In the object-based workshop sessions, the group learned about ideal conditions and care for different objects within the house’s collection. We selectively intervened based on the house’s two main limitations: the climate could not be kept constant, and most importantly, the house was inhabited. During the two weeks, we examined textiles damaged by insects and conducted a freezing cycle on two infested pillows, we learned about the basic mechanism of iron corrosion and treated a corroded window grate, we constructed protective enclosures for books, and took part in lectures and demonstrations on conservation tools and proper handling techniques.

This workshop provided me with an invaluable and thorough introduction to preventive conservation and historic housekeeping. The artifacts in the Torrey-West house presented challenging scenarios for proposing care or treatment; many objects were in daily use, such as the rugs, furniture, and stove, or had potential to be used, such as a book on a shelf.  The need for interpretation also arose when choosing which rooms to monitor or clean, and which damaged objects ought to be stabilized.

Not only did the instructors teach us practical skills and concepts, but they encouraged the students to explore ideas about value, and balancing treatment ideals with real-world limitations.  The landscape, the lessons learned, and the networking prospects (two of the participants, myself included, continued on to intern at the Peebles Island Resource Center) at Ossabaw Island made it well worth the trip! The FAIC generously awarded the participants a travel stipend to attend, and housing was provided by the Ossabaw Island Foundation in the restored “Clubhouse” building.

Applications for the next workshop (1/18- 2/1) are due November 12!  For more information, visit www.conservation-us.org/education.

AIC’s Ethics and Standards of Practice Committee Seeks New Member

The  is seeking to fill the vacancy of one of its five membership positions. We seek a Fellow (preferably) or PA with a specialty, geographic location, and type of practice (institutional or private) that will increase the diversity represented on the Committee.

The AIC Board of Directors sends cases of dispute involving AIC members to the E&S Committee for consideration of what if any AIC ethics and/or standards of practice are being chal­lenged or compromised. The Committee researches details of the dispute and the intent of the Code of Ethics and Standard of Practice and reports their findings to the Board for consideration of a solution.

If you are interested in serving and believe you will have the time to devote to the occasional obligations of research and delib­eration (by email and conference call), please send us a brief state­ment of your interest, the reason for your interest in serving on this committee, and what you feel you might bring to the delib­erations. Your email should be sent to Christiana Cunningham-Adams at cunningham.adams@gmail.com.

Stories of Success: A Collaborative Survey Shines Fresh Light on Korean Paintings

This post is part of the “From the Bench” series celebrating the work of conservators. Part scientist, part detective, part artisan, part caretaker, a conservator works to preserve the past for the future. This series features the voices of conservators who are working on IMLS-supported projects in museums across the United States. For more information about IMLS funding for museums see www.imls.gov/applicants/available_grants.aspx.

By Katherine Holbrow, Head of Conservation, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA

Shared expertise plays an essential role in good collections care. In Spring 2012, valuable support from IMLS enabled the Asian Art Museum to bring together an interdisciplinary team of experts to carry out a conservation survey of rare Korean paintings.

Korean paintings conservator Chi-sun Park and her assistant, Eun-Hye Cho, of Jung-Jae Conservation Center in Seoul, Korea, collaborated with Asian Art Museum conservators, curators, and translators to examine hanging scrolls, albums, and screens dating from the 14th to 19thcenturies. The team examined each painting, then identified conservation and curatorial priorities, evaluated scroll and album mounts, and discussed treatment alternatives.

Left to right: Asian Art Museum director Jay Xu, visiting conservator Chi-Sun Park, associate curator Hyonjeong Kim Han, and paintings conservator Shiho Sasaki discuss a Joseon dynasty painting.
Did you know that due to a tradition of under-floor heating, Korean folding screens typically have feet? Above, Chi-sun Park examines a Korean painting mounted as a folding screen. The mount uses a mixture of Korean and Japanese elements.

The project quickly grew beyond an assessment of treatment needs, sparking stimulating discussions of the broader ethical and aesthetic questions that surround the remounting of Korean paintings, including the following:

  • What characteristics do Korean mounts share with Chinese or Japanese mounts?
  • What elements are unique to Korea?
  • How can the mounts help tell the history of our paintings?

 Good conservation decisions require a cultural sensitivity to fine detail and a clear grasp of such abstract questions, even if there is more than one right answer!

This lively debate, along with explanations of common types of scroll damage, strategies to extend the life of a painting mount, and repair options, was shared with senior docents and museum visitors in publications, tours, and lectures. Read more about the Korean paintings project on the Asian Art Museum website.

From the Bench: Rehoused Instrument Collection Is Once Again Instrumental

This post is part of the “From the Bench” series celebrating the work of conservators. Part scientist, part detective, part artisan, part caretaker, a conservator works to preserve the past for the future. This series features the voices of conservators who are working on IMLS-supported projects in museums across the United States. For more information about IMLS funding for museums see www.imls.gov/applicants/available_grants.aspx.

By Catherine Sease, Senior Conservator, Peabody Museum of Natural History

             The Yale Peabody Museum’s collection of historical scientific instruments consists of approximately 4,000 instruments from a variety of scientific disciplines. Despite its significance, the collection has been completely inaccessible since 1991. At that time, due to the planned demolition of the building in which it was stored, the collection was packed up and, due to a lack of storage space, remained packed up until 2011. Over the years the boxes were extensively stacked and restacked and were moved at least three times, including the most recent move over seven miles. They have been stored in areas with uncontrolled climatic conditions, and have been exposed to drastic fluctuations in temperature and relative humidity as well as minor leaks and floods. These are all conditions that could easily cause the deterioration of the instruments.

             Because they were packed up, the instruments were unavailable for study, teaching, and exhibition. Their inaccessibility was further compromised by the inaccuracy of the catalog record. We knew that the catalog contained numerous errors; for example at least two percent of the collection was listed as missing. In addition, many instruments had accessories and parts that were not catalogued and some were packed separately from their primary instrument.

             Our IMLS-funded project enabled us to unpack the entire collection and rehouse it in new high-quality storage cabinets in a storeroom with climate control suitable for the long-term preservation of the collection. As each instrument was unpacked, the museum’s catalog was checked to verify that the description was accurate and all the pieces were present. Many were also photographed and the pictures were uploaded into the database. We now have a complete inventory of the entire collection on the museum’s database that is available to anyone with access to the Internet. The instruments are now spread out so that students and researchers can easily browse through the collection and see the instruments without touching them. They are now readily available for teaching and exhibit. Even though the project is not quite finished, we have already had requests for the loan of instruments for exhibits and professors are using instruments in their classes.

New Guidelines for IMLS’s Museums for America (MFA) Grant Program Announced

Guidelines are now available for the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ (IMLS) Museums for America (MFA) grant program, which now includes funding for projects previously under Conservation Project Support (CPS). The MFA deadline is January 15, 2013. We encourage our members and colleagues to review the new guidelines and begin planning their application(s) as soon as possible.

There are three categories within the MFA program, including Collections Stewardship.

As stated in the guidelines, “Projects should support the care and management of collections to expand and sustain access for current and future generations. Projects should reflect systematic, holistic, logical approaches to the documentation, preservation, and conservation of tangible and digital collections to sustain and improve public access.” There is no restriction on the number of applications an institution may submit to one or more of the three categories.

To aid those interested in conservation and collections care projects, the Connecting to Collections Online Community will host a free webinar featuring Connie Bodner, IMLS senior program officer. Connie will review MFA guidelines and answer questions live on November 7 at 2:00 pm (Eastern). No prior registration is required to participate in this webinar. On November 7, simply go to the www.connectingtocollections.org and click “Access Meeting Room.”  IMLS staff will also be conducting a series of five web conferences to provide an overview of the program and answer questions.

In addition to MFA, activities once supported under the 21st Century Museum Professionals grant program have now been consolidated under National Leadership Grants. The deadline for this program is also January 15, 2013.

To further highlight their commitment to conservation, IMLS has launched a new blog series, “From the Bench.” Cosponsored by Heritage Preservation and the American Institute for Conservation, the series will provide a platform for conservators to share their work with the public and will highlight how IMLS funding has supported collections care efforts.

2013-2014 Getty Graduate Internship Program Announced

Getty Graduate Internships are offered in the four programs of the J. Paul Getty Trust—the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Foundation—to students who intend to pursue careers in fields related to the visual arts. Training and work experience are available in areas such as curatorial, education, conservation, research, information management, public programs, and grantmaking.

Eligibility
Internships are open to students of all nationalities. Applicants must be:

  • Students currently enrolled in a graduate program leading to an advanced degree in a field relevant to the internship(s) for which they are applying, or
  • Individuals who have completed a relevant graduate degree on or after January 1, 2010, with postgraduate activities in their field, paid or unpaid.

Terms
Internships are located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles or the Getty Villa in Malibu. All positions are full-time beginning September 9, 2013. Most internships are for eight months, ending May 16, 2013. Conservation internships are twelve months, ending September 5, 2014. Grant amounts are $17,400 for eight months and $26,000 for twelve months. Support for research travel is available for up to $2,500. The grant includes health benefits, but housing and relocation funds are not provided.

Deadline
The deadline for applications is 5:00 p.m. PST, December 3, 2012.

For more information, visit www.getty.edu/foundation/funding/leaders/current/grad_internships.html.