Daly Conservation

Photograph by Jack Delano Library of Congress

I’ve got my 1. registration (thanks Gutmann funding) 2. plane ticket 3. hotel.

I’ve also got 1. my roomate, Colombian textile conservator Catalina Hernandez - who will be presenting about her research on the use of surgical fabrics in textile conservation, a prequel of her research can be downloaded from the Washington Conservation Guild newsletter.

2. around $200 left in my book fund to buy the Getty Publications floor copies of their books.

I feel pretty prepared, and now to look over the schedule.

I am flying in on Tuesday mid-day.  There will be an Emerging Conservation Professional Network (ECPN) event that evening, time and place are TBD.  I will probably spend most of Tuesday wandering around the city or in my hotel room working on finalizing a report for WUDPAC.

I am probably attending most of the Objects Specialty Group sessions, and I am very interested in hearing the joint lunch with the Objects Specialty Group and the Electronic Media Group, covering case studies in contemporary art hosted by the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art-North America (INCCA-NA).  Glenn Wharton is speaking at Winterthur on Wednesday, February 24th so I might get a preview of the case studies that will be discussed in May.

I am also definitely going to attend some of the lectures about environmental standards and sustainability, as that has been the focus of my preventive conservation studies.   There will be two presentations on Wednesday, May 12th in the afternoon general session: Steve Weintraub will be discussing how to quantify risk of damage with environmental standards, and Patty Silence will be discusing the challenges of sustainable conservation in the 21st Century.

On Thursday I can sleep in and see the poster session at 10AM, then go to the IIC Roundtable discussion about environmental standards.  This was one of my main reasons for attending this year, as I had to convince myself that I could take the time off and why the AIC meeting this year was going to be important to my future research.  I found many explanations as to why conservators have certain environmental standards and most of my research convinced me that standards are not based on scientific research but dependent on what  building systems can maintain.  The roundtable has a number of very important conservators, scientists, and directors and I am very interested to hear what they have to say.

Friday it will be the objects sessions in the morning, then a lecture in the afternoon from the Wooden Artifacts Group (WAG) - Changing Requirements for the Museum Environment.

Saturday I will be giving a hand with the ‘Angels Project’  (which I haven’t figured out how to sign-up for yet, if anyone knows please post in the comments section).  I fly back to Delaware on Saturday afternoon.

The final version of my paper on HVAC shut downs has been written, edited, and turned-in to my advisor Dr. Joelle Wickens.  It will live in the files at Winterthur, and hopefully I will find a forum where I can talk about my findings with other interested conservators or building managers.  This project has made me more aware of groups like the International Facilities Management Association (IFMA) who may be interested in energy saving practices from a art conservation point of view.  Following is my project summary:

This study investigates how the environmental parameters required by a collection can be met using sustainable practices.
To save both energy and money it is possible to turn off Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems. If the systems are turned off when the buildings are unoccupied it is more likely the conditions in the buildings will remain stable. By turning off HVAC systems for short periods of time, the systems can be run in a more sustainable way as there will be less wear on  motors and fans.  The project researched the practice of these short shut-downs, and included a three-day HVAC shut down test at Winterthur.

Winterthur is a historic house that has 175 period rooms with various materials including: furniture, decorative arts, works of art on paper, books, paintings on wood and canvas, leather, basketry, glass, metals, and textiles. The building has thick masonry walls, insulation, and double pane windows.  The HVAC was installed in the 1960’s. The parameters at Winterthur in the winter are: 68°F-72°F, Relative Humidity (RH) 40% +/- 5%; in the summer the parameters are: 72-75°F, RH 50% +/- 5%. These parameters are a conservative standard for the materials in this collection.
A mild week in September was chosen for the shutdown, as the outside conditions would be similar to the collection parameters. During the 12-hour shutdown it was decided (by Bruno Pouliot) that if there were trends in the temperature and humidity moving quickly away from the parameters the systems would be turned back on.  Monitoring was done in a thorough and
systematic way, with readings taken by: building thermostats, thirteen dataloggers, and the building engineers took readings every two hours with a hand-held hygrothermograph.

The shutdown was for 12-hours, the entire system was turned off from 6:00 PM until 6:00 AM, three nights were tested.   The building temperature and RH remained within the parameters and the systems did not have to be turned on to regulate the environment.

There were fluctuations, the overall trend was that temperatures were elevated a few degrees, and the RH was elevated a few percentages.  The elevated temperature and RH is noticeable in the data charts, but when the data is examined in long time the changes during the shutdown are similar in degree to other general environmental fluctuations.

Interviews with conservators, archivists, and building managers gave insight into similar practices that will or have been taken at other institutions. These professionals described their experiences shutting down systems for days, weeks, or a season in a variety of climates spanning the United States.  They spoke positively about their experiences, the environment in their collections remained stable or improved and they saved energy and funds, in some cases thousands of dollars were saved. Data was also collected about system setbacks, and the buffering ability of buildings with no environmental control. The success of these conservators and of the Winterthur test case may indicate to other museums the possibility of using similar methods to save energy and funds while maintaining the environmental parameters required by their collection.
This research may continue as I move on to my third-year internship, and I will definitely continue to study sustainable facilities management as I find time and support for my research.

Today was the first day to try out our housekeeping skills at the main house on Ossabaw Island.  It was really great to have a da

y of hands-on activity as I had been spending a lot of time in my head.  I am also thinking a lot about wrappin

g up this project as I am leaving on Monday, which is only a few days away.  We have a beach planned for Sunday, and then I am leaving the next day so Saturday will be my last real day of physical work.

Housekeeping is hard, grimey work, especialy as I decided to clean the hearth in the room first and I had Maggie and Ari to help me which was great.  Maggie was great at removing the buckets of ashes from the fireplace and then poultice cleaning of glass baubles that had been set on the mantle.

Ari cleaned the fireplace stones to remove soot, using dampened sponges and detergent.    She and I also cleaned windows, firescreens, and glass.

I have been really impressed with Ari and Maggie as they have identified insects, cleaned sooty fireplaces, and had the energy to cook dinner in the evenings for their “cook night”.  They both made sugar cookies last night which were very tasty, especially considering there are no measuring cups at the house.

Ben has been fearless cleaning the wainscoting with a duster, taking care to cover paintings and curtains to prevent pushing dust onto these items.

I have begun a two-week conservation project on Ossabaw Island, Georgia.  The project involves a team of conservators, conservation students, and conservation interns who will assess the condition of the main house on the island and give recommendations for future care of the collection and housekeeping.

The project began on January 16th, when I flew from Delaware to Jacksonville, Florida where I first met three of the other crew members.  I already knew the project coordinator, David Bayne, from a meeting over the summer at Shelburne Museum in Vermont. David became involved with the Island in the 1970’s as a director of ‘The Genesis Project’ which was a cooperative, sustainable community on the Island that operated with no electricity or running water.  I was curious as to what facilities would be available when I arrived on the island, would I have hot water? It’s January, I think it is a legitimate concern.

At the Jacksonville Airport I met Abby Zoldowski, Ben Carver, and Kristin O’Connell and we continued on to Savannah to meet the other half of our group, Arial Hausman and Maggie Bearden both in the University of Delaware undergraduate program in art conservation.

After introductions the group all drove through a Savannah rain shower to the studio of Greg Guenther, a furniture conservator and maker.  He gave a great tour of his studio space in a historic building where he was working on a variety of projects.  We were all impressed at the table Jason Thackeray, a furniture designer and maker, was in the process of finishing.  His neighbor, Michael T. O’Brien, a gilder, showed a project he was currently working on as well.

The next day we went to the store to buy provisions for the week (there are no stores on the Island) and set off on a 15-minute boat ride to Ossabaw Island. The Island is only accessible by boat and helicopter, and while the mainland is not very far away, once we arrived the sense of being far away from everything began to sink in and I felt incredibly relaxed.

This posting lists the current bibliography for my independent study.  I would love to receive feedback about these books and articles as I begin to compile this research. Especially if there is an excellent article about these topics that I missed.

I wanted to post this bibliography online because I found a lot of the information online (http://cool.conservation-us.org/byauth//kerschner/ccbiblio.html) or from a preventive conservation annotated bibliography compiled  by Associate Conservator of Objects and Adjunct Assistant Professor Bruno Pouliot.  I hope these sources are helpful for anyone studying similar topics.

ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT (SYSTEMS AND MONITORING)

ASHRAE Applications Handbook. 2003. Atlanta, GA: American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

Brown, Jonathan P. 1994. Hygrometric measurement in museums: calibration, accuracy, and the specification of relative humidity. IIC Preprints. International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works Ottawa congress.  Ottawa, Canada: IIC. 39-43.

Brown, J. and W. Rose. 1996. Humidity and moisture in historic buildings: the origins of building and object conservation. APT Bulletin 27 (3): 12-23.

Brimblecombe, Peter. 2005. Effects of the Cultural Environment.  In Cultural heritage conservation and environmental impact assessment by non-destructive testing and micro-analysis. eds van Grieken, René and Janssens, Koen H.A. London: A.A. Balkema

Bullock, Linda. 2009. Environmental controls in National Trust properties.  Journal of Architectural Conservation. 15 (1): 83-98.

Cassar, M. 1995. Environmental management: guidelines for museums and galleries. London and New York: Routledge.

Conrad, Ernest A, PE.  1995. Balancing environmental needs of the building, the collection, and the user. East Norwalk, CT: Landmark Facilities Group.

Conrad, Ernest A. 1996. Environmental monitoring as a diagnostic tool. Preservation of collections: assessment, evaluation, and mitigation strategies: papers presented at the workshop, Norfolk, Virginia, June 10-11, 1996. Washington, D.C.: AIC. 15-20.

Harris, S.Y. 2001. Building Pathology: Deterioration, Diagnostics and Intervention. New York: John Wiley.

Jessup, W. C., ed. 1995.  Conservation in context: finding a balance for the historic house museum.  Washington, D.C.: The National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Kerschner, R.  A practical approach to environmental requirements for collections in historic buildings.  Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 31 (1): 65-76 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3179613>

Lstiburek, J. and J. Carmody. 1993. Moisture control handbook. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Oreszczyn, T., M. Cassar and K. Fernandez. 1994. Comparative Study of Air-Conditioned and Non Air-Conditioned Museums. IIC Preprints. International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works Ottawa congress.  Ottawa, Canada: IIC. 144-148.

Padfield, Tim. An Introduction to the Physics of the Museum Environment. Available: http://www.conservationphysics.org/

Paine, S. R. 1985. How to control environmental conditions in historical agencies and museums. Technical Report 3. Nashville, Tennessee: Technical Information Service of the American Association for State and Local History.

Park, S. 1991. Preservation Brief 24: Heating, ventilating, and cooling historic buildings: problems and recommended approaches. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, Government Printing Office.

Park, S. 1999. HVAC for historic buildings. ASHRAE Journal. April: 91-98.

Stolow, N. 1994. The preservation of historic houses and sites: the interface of architectural restoration and collection/display conservation principles. Preventive conservation: practice, theory and research: Preprints of the contributions to the Ottawa Congress, 12-16 September. London: International Institute for Conservation. 116-122.

Taylor, Thomas H., Guest Editor. 1996. Museums in Historic Buildings. APT Bulletin The Journal of Preservation Technology. 27 (3): 7-64.

Thompson, G. 1986. The Museum Environment. 2nd ed. London: Butterworth Publishers.

Winterthur Museum. 2007.  Guidelines and Procedures for Preventive Conservation at Winterthur Museum. Winterthur, DE: Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library.

Williams, M. 1994. Fresh-air climate conditioning at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. In Care of Collections. ed. S. Knell. London: Routledge. 107-116.

TEMPERATURE AND RH STANDARDS FOR COLLECTIONS

Anderson, Catherine E., and Clyde Kestner. 2003. Environmental monitoring and revised environmental standards at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. In Environmental Monitoring of our Cultural Heritage-Sustainable Conservation Solutions. Milton Keyes, UK: Environmental Building Solutions, Ltd.

Ashley-Smith, J., N. Umney and D. Ford. 1994. Let’s be honest—realistic environmental parameters for loaned objects.  Preventive conservation: practice, theory and research: Preprints of the contributions to the Ottawa Congress, 12-16 September. London: International Institute for Conservation. 28-31.

Erhardt, D., M.F. Mecklenburg, C.S. Tumosa, and M. McCormick-Goodhart, 1997. The Determination of Appropriate Museum Environments.  The interface between science and conservation.  British Museum Occasional Papers No. 116.  S. Bradley, ed. London: The British Museum. 153-163.

Erhardt, David., Charles S. Tumosa, and Marion.F. Mecklenburg. 2007. Applying
Science to the Question of Museum Climate. In Museum Microclimates. T.
Padfield and K. Borchensen (eds.). National Museum of Denmark.   Also
available online at http://www.natmus.dk/graphics/konferencer_mm/microclimates/pdf/erhardt.pdf

Lull, W.P. 1994.  Further comments on climate control guidelines. Abbey Newsletter 18(7):87-88.

Lull, W.P. 1995. Conservation environment guidelines for libraries and archives. Ottawa: Canadian Council of Archives.

McCrady, E. 1994. Temperature & RH guidelines challenged by Smithsonian. Abbey Newsletter. 18(4-5):44-45.

Mecklenburg, M. F., and C. S. Tumosa. 1999. Temperature and relative humidity effects on the mechanical and chemical stability of collections. ASHRAE Journal 41(4): 69-74.

Padfield, T. and K. Borchensen (eds.). 2007. Museum Microclimates. National Museum of Denmark.
The text is fully available online through the National Museum of Denmark website (http://www.natmus.dk/sw53828.asp)

Michalski, S. 1993. Relative humidity: a discussion of correct/incorrect values. ICOM Committee for Conservation preprints, 10th Triennial Meeting, Washington, D.C. Paris: ICOM. 2: 624-628.

Michalski, S. 1993. Relative humidity in museums, galleries, and archives: Specification and control. In Bugs, Mold and Rot II. A Workshop on Control of Humidity for Health, Artifacts, and Buildings. Proceedings, eds. W. B. Rose, and A. TenWolde. Washington, D.C.: The National Institute of Building Sciences. 51-62.

ENERGY CONSERVATION & CLIMATE CHANGE

Ayres, J., J. Marx, C. Haiad, H. Lau. 1988. Energy Conservation and Climate Control in Museums. Los Angeles: Ayres Ezer Lau Consulting Engineers.

Burmester, Andreas. 2005. Visions for a new museum: the Museum Brandhorst
Studies in Conservation 50 (Preprint of the Forbes Prize Lecture presented at the IIC’s Twentieth International Congress ‘Modern Art, New Museums’ at Bilbao (Spain) on the 13th of September 2004.)

Cassar, Mary ed. 1994.  Museum Environment Energy.  London: HMSO.

Christoffersen, Lars D. Zephyr. 1995. Passive Climate Controlled Repositories. Storage Facilities for Museum, Archive and Library Purposes. Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark Conservation Department.

Climate change and preserving cultural heritage in the 21st Century. 2008. 90-minute video of panel discussion. http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications/videos/public_lecture_videos_audio/climate_change.html

Cull, Dan.  Who you calling conservationist? Blog posting and comments. http://dancull.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/who-you-calling-conservationist/

deSiliva, Megan. 2009. Steps towards environmental sustainability in Museums & Conservation. Presentation at the Welsh Libraries Archives and Museums Conference 21 - 22 May 2009: Space for all    Available at: http://www.cilip.org.uk/branches/byregion/wales/conference09

Dubin, F., Mindell, H., Selwyn, B. 1976.   How to save energy and cut costs in exisiting industrial and commercial buildings. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Data Corporation.

Fulton, R. 1988. Curators and M&E Consulting Engineers. Museums Journal 87 (4): 203-205.

IIC Climate Change and Museum Collections September 17, 2008 conference.  Transcript available online at http://www.iiconservation.org/

Matthai, R. ed. 1979. Protection of cultural properties during energy emergencies & energy conservation and historic preservation.  New York: Technical Assistance Project.

Padfield, Tim. 1990. Low-Energy Climate Control in Museum Stores. ICOM Committee for Conservation Preprints. 9th Triennial Meeting. Paris: ICOM Committee for Conservation II. 596-601.

Podany, Jerry, Henry, Michael C., Cassar, May, Staniforth, Sarah, Serota, Nicholas, Sabbioni, Cristina and Reilly, James M. 2005. Climate Change and Museum Collections
Studies in Conservation. 53 287-297

Royal Ontario Museum. 1979.  In Search of a Black Box.  A report on the Proceedings of a Workshop on Micro-Climates Held at the Royal Ontario Museum, February 1978.  Toronto, Canada.

The end of 2009 is drawing near. That means it’s getting close to that special time of year when everyone starts thinking about who is going to win a 2010 Conservy Award.

New to this year’s award contest is an open nomination process. Now you can help decide who made the best conservation-based web projects in 2009. This year we’d like to throw the process open to you, we would like to hear your suggestions for nominations in all the categories from last year, and we’d like to also hear suggestions for nominees for new categories too. Please leave your suggestions in the comments section of this post.

Please feel free repost this announcement and ask people to leave their suggestions here.

So…. who do you think deserves a Conservy Award in 2010?

There has been a recent discussion on the Objects Specialty Group e-mail list about Conservation, Treatments, and object value. Valuation can be financial or philosophical and assessed by an appraiser or the owner of the object. One idea posed was whether a treatment will increase or decrease the value of an object.

I had not thought of conservation treatment as decreasing the value of an object, and many of the responses were similar to my thinking, objects decrease in value when they are damaged or neglected and this decreases the value. Treatment as a consequence of this damage or neglect should not decrease the value. However, there is always the possibility a treatment will not go as planned and the object could then be further damaged, this was alluded to but not discussed. Some said that an ethical treatment always adds value to an object. I could certainly see cases where this would be true, but I am reluctant to say ‘always’ about anything in conservation.

A conservator cannot tell a client whether a treatment is “worth” doing, as it is not the conservator’s job to give any value to the piece they are treating, this is why a conservator can offer different treatments of different costs and let the client determine how much they would be willing to pay to treat the object.

It left me thinking about how I treat objects based on value. I have treated objects of little or no value like my nephews toys, and then objects worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Do I approach them in the same way? Tomorrow I will sit down with the rounding board I am treating and really think about what I am doing in my approach to the treatment of that object.

Being a student in Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation (WUDPAC) I learned and participated in the Iraq Cultural Heritage Project (ICHP). I first learned about the project from my professors who were directly involved. The program was involved in creating a school for conservation in Erbil, northern Iraq, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan and one of the oldest continually inhabited cities.
I knew very little about the region, so I began reading about the history of the Kurdish people and their ongoing struggle for independence by the Kurds in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Afganistan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. It is not a happy history, scrolling through centuries of conflict and struggles that continue until today. As well as open conflict the kurds are culturally oppressed, in some counties they cannot use their kurdish names, celebrate kurdish holidays, and they are discouraged from speaking kurdish.

The Iraqi Kurdistan region is beautiful, There is a series of photographs by Ed Kashi that show Kurds in daily activities.

See http://mediastorm.org/0011.htm

The plan is to build a conservation school and library in Erbil where conservators from throughout Iraq can come for training. There will also be training for museum directors and collection management staff. The museums in Iraq will be satellite museums to the main museum in Baghdad, using the national collection. The director of the project is Jessie Johnson and she is blogging about her experience as an American expat living in Erbil at http://roundthing.wordpress.com/ . I like this project because it is helping Iraqi citizens take better care of their cultural heritage. It is a good thing to do and it is an exciting opportunity to help the country.

One of my favorite initiatives is Save Outdoor Sculpture (SOS!)
I like the initiative for many reasons:
1. I love outdoor sculpture and monuments and I could look at them or talk about them for days.
2. It is a collaborative project, anyone in the USA can contribute, from girl scouts (there is a merit badge) to conservation professionals, to interested community members.
3. It shows how important documentation is to conservation. Treatments are exciting, but good, thorough documentation and knowing what to look for is what will inform treatments. You can’t make recommendations for treatments until you have comprehensively documented a work.

There are currently around 40,000 sculptures in the database. Nancy Proctor the Head of New Media at the Smithsonian American Art Museum spoke about SOS in an interview with Sumaya Kazi the Senior Social Manager of Sun Microsystems on her blog talk radio show socially speaking. The interview included discussions about how the Smithsonian is using social media to make their collections more available. Nancy spoke about how the SOS! project can continue to create Wikipedia pages for each sculpture that could be linked to Flickr photos, allowing the public full access to the information. This would preserve the sculptures and educate the public about them. The interview has a great review by Molly Holtman on her blog.

Dale Chihuly Sculpture, Missouri Botanical Gardens
Source: creative commons on flickr.com

Another Smithsonian outreach project is Artful Abe which takes the visitor to statues of Abraham Lincoln from around the country and then relates them to pieces in the collection at the American Art Museum. A scavenger hunt using google maps and the American Art database. It is a great way to make the collection accessible to everyone with online access.

I am hoping to add reports to the SOS! database, writing reports is a skill I would like to improve. I have scanned a SOS form and I hope I can find some sculptures in Vermont to document and add to the database.

In spring 2008 I visited the conservation labs at the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, in New York City with Ashley Jehle and Abbie Brennan. The labs were built by Samuel Anderson Architects concurrently with the recent MoMA Expansion. I was given a tour of the labs by Paige Isaacs who is currently a third-year intern at the MoMA. Paige was king enough to show us the objects she was working on and the layout of the objects and paintings labs.