Daly Conservation

I was honored to be a guest blogger for the IIC blog this past week.  I was blogging about the 3rd IIC Roundtable, The plus/minus dilemma.  It was a lively discussion and I greatly enjoyed hearing the speakers and hearing comments from the audience members later.  I have been searing on the Indianapolis Museum of Art ~IMA~ webpage and found they list their average daily energy consumption, and the live-time temperature and humidity graph for  their special exhibitions gallery.  I was impressed with their tranparency and honesty.  I think we can all learn a lot from the IMA.

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.

Portrait of an articulated skeleton on a bentwood chair,
originally uploaded by Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Here’s a quick blog post to catch up about the project and the strange and wonderful places it has taken me.  I got a huge response from conservators internationally from the posting to the OSG-l and the consdist list.  Since no one is an island, speaking to these conservators has been very helpful for me to realize that There is a great deal of interest in sustainable practices among conservators and collections managers.  I have conducted phone interviews with numerous people, including Sarah Brophey, the co-author of The Green Museum.

One of the more interesting discoveries from these interviews is the sense of responsibility that museum professionals feel toward sustainability.  The sentiments from the  Getty interview with Tim Padfield, Ernest Conrad, and Franciza Toledo demonstrates two sides of the issue that I found really intriguing. Whether sustainability is a moral or a pratical decision.  To me it is both, if the purpose of conservation is to ensure that cultural heritage is preserved, then you should also be working to preserve the environment as well.

I sincerely thank everyone who has contacted me about this project, whether it was to offer data, allow me to interview you about your practices, and especially to those who wrote me quick notes of encouragement or pointed me to someone else who could be helpful.  I have been incredibly impressed by the interest and support I received.

So, where is this project going?  With a 5,000 word limit and I have realized I have so much information that it will have to be more focused.  I will focus on the Winterthur HVAC shut-down test case, and the information I have from other conservators will be summarized in a more general way.

I have already thought about a Phase II for the project, possibly next year or further in the future to study more about what can be done without systems to maintain the correct collection environment.  I hope I will be able to attend the IIC Roundtable at the AIC 2010 meeting in Milwaukee about Guidelines for the Museum Environment. It will be exciting to see the authors of some of the papers I have been reading.