Education As The Basic Tool of Conservation in the 21st Century
The third talk of the morning session was delivered by Paper Conservator Eugenia Guidobono of the National University Institute of Art in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her talk titled, Education As The Basic Tool of Conservation in the 21st Century, grew out of the results of her Master’s thesis on improving collections through preventive conservation. She examined conservation in public museums via surveys and interviews. She briefly discussed the history of conservation in Argentina with the introduction of preventive ideas in the 1980s brought about by loan stipulations imposed by other institutions. In the 1990s the Smithsonian began to conduct courses in Argentina.
Guidobono then went onto focus on her survey of museums within the Entre Ríos Province. She found that of the museums that responded 18% were art museums, 13% had general collections, 62% were history museums, and 6% solely museums of Anthropology. 94% of the museums listed for this one province were part of the Town Hall (run by the state). 81% of these museums do not operate with a fixed budget and have to rely on political affiliations to raise money.
There are no regulations in place for professional training. She emphasized that local universities only have a few museum courses and that in general there is a total lack of conservation training available. Of some 133 employees interviewed, only 4% have a university education. 11% of those practicing conservation in museums in the Province of Entre Rios have conservation training, while 89% of those practicing do not. The author stressed that while there are national laws in place for heritage protection they are not regulated. The Town Hall authorities are neglecting the needs of the collections and she found that the human factor is the greatest detriment to the collections surveyed.
She called for a change to the mindset of society, with preventive conservation becoming the concern of all museum staff members. She concluded with images of storage areas in shambles versus storage areas in institutions that have worked on maintaining preventive conditions.