Month: November 2010

News release from allied organization, Heritage Preservation:

WASHINGTON DC – Heritage Preservation announces the publication of Implementing the Incident Command System at the Institutional Level: A Handbook for Libraries, Archives, Museums, and Other Cultural Repositories. The book is written by David Carmicheal, Director of the Georgia Division of Archives and History, and published in cooperation with RescuingRecords.com.

When rainwater flooded the Alaska State Archives in 2009, conservator Ellen Carrlee began blogging about the trials and triumphs of rescuing a priceless cultural collection. Ellen’s daily journal struck a chord with author David Carmicheal. “This institution was isolated, trying to address a disaster internally, without the resources that FEMA and other agencies bring to the table when a disaster is widespread.” He recognized that the Incident Command System (ICS) could provide a powerful tool within a single institution.

Implementing the Incident Command System at the Institutional Level explains how libraries, archives, and museums can adopt the ICS as a temporary management structure whenever “business as usual” won’t get the job done. The manual, written in a clear and conversational style, describes staff roles and includes charts, duty statements, sample forms, and a step-by-step incident description. Whether preparing for fires and floods – or even planning a major public event – the Incident Command System is a proven management tool that safeguards lives, property, and collections.

Since its development in the early 1970s, ICS has been used to tackle a vast array of incidents, including fires, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes. “The system has demonstrated that it can scale up to handle disasters that mushroom over large areas and even multiple states,” says Carmicheal, “but the ICS was designed to scale down as well as up.”

Jane Long, Vice President for Emergency Programs at Heritage Preservation, believes the Incident Command System has particular value for libraries, archives, and museums. “Even small disasters can have big consequences for cultural institutions. ICS provides a structured and effective response and ensures that every responder involved is on the same page.”

The 208-page book is available in two formats: Perfect Bound ($47.00) or Coil Bound ($47.00), plus postage and handling. For further information, visit www.RescuingRecords.com/ics.html. RescuingRecords.com is a website dedicated to protecting essential records during times of crisis.

Link directly to the Heritage Preservation news release.

The January 12, 2010, earthquake decimated Haiti’s cultural institutions that housed the country’s artwork, artifacts, and archives. Learn how the Smithsonian- in partnership with American Institute for Conservation (AIC), the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield, National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) – is helping the Haitian government assess, recover, and restore Haiti’s cultural heritage.

The WEBCAST on the Smithsonian’s Haiti Cultural Recovery Project was recorded on Tuesday, November 9, 2010.

The Philadelphia Inquirer had only compliments about the yearly WUDPAC/Penn 2nd year objects students collaboration. I think the mutually beneficial collaboration was originally started over a decade ago by Ginny Greene and Bruno Pouliot.

The rare stringed instrument – a sarangi, made of dark tropical hardwood in colonial India – was falling apart. The rawhide sounding board was starting to separate. Only one of the instrument’s four strings was attached to the bridge. The item was covered in grime.

Enter LeeAnn Barnes Gordon.

A graduate student at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, she spent more than 50 hours cleaning, repairing, and stabilizing the object.

She was one of three students from the program this year who worked on objects from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Gordon, Rose Daly and Carrie Roberts delivered their findings last week at the Penn Museum.

The partnership between the museum and the Delaware program has been around for years. Each year, students get to borrow a few objects and practice the skills of their newly acquired trade; the museum benefits from the painstaking care given to a few of its one million artifacts.

Besides the sarangi, this year’s items included an early-20th-century woven hat from the Pacific Northwest; two bronze Etruscan vessels more than 2,300 years old; and a ceremonial model of a boat from the Mesopotamian city of Ur, dated to about 2,500 B.C. and made of a tarry substance called bitumen.

The gentle cleanings and other treatments were done in consultation with museum conservators and the students’ professor. One part of the sarangi’s care involved reshaping a loose section of bone trim with the help of a humidification chamber; the trim was then reattached with resin.

The exchange can result in a learning experience for the museum staff as well. They get to hear about the latest forms of spectroscopy and other high-tech imaging used to study the items’ conditions. After hearing the students’ earlier presentation in May, the museum’s head conservator, Lynn Grant, recalled: “I felt like Galileo at NASA.”

Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20101108_A_high-tech_tune-up.html#ixzz14nyqQowL

Northeast Document Conservation Center is featured in the science section of the Boston Globe. The article features book conservator MP Bogan and a recent treatment of Robert Frost’s attendance register.

Here is an excerpt:

To properly treat the Frost register, a conservator first surface-cleaned the pages and unbound the book. The pages were alkalized for protection, and tears were carefully mended using a special Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste. Next, digital photos were taken of each page. The pages were then reassembled, sewn with linen thread, and rebound in a cloth binding.

Senior book conservator M.P. Bogan put 22 hours into the project, which was – as with all preservation work at the center – done completely by hand. Bogan says items such as the Frost register hold a particular interest for her.

“What I like about working on projects like this is that it’s a working, one-of-a-kind document,” she says. “There’s only one in existence.”

Bogan and her fellow conservators work in the paper lab section of the center, which resembles an art studio. Some of the hand tools look as old as the documents on which they are used. Across the hall is the more modern digital lab, where photographic images are captured of the often centuries-old items. The process requires knowledge in several areas.

“The staff who work in the lab are not only conservators, but also artists and chemists,” says [Julie] Martin. “They need all of that background in addition to the skills to do the job.”

With its preservation process complete, the Frost register will return to Methuen in a custom-fit box for extra protection. The conservators will already be hard at work on other projects, and a piece of local history will be saved for generations to come.

The mounting of a Faith Ringgold exhibit at the Neuberger Museum (September 11- December 19, 2010) was the occasion for the recounting of a conservation tale with a happy ending. In 1970, Ringgold was commisioned to paint a large work in oils for the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island. In 1999, when that facility was housing men, inmates removed the painting from the wall and painted it over with white acrylic paint. Forunately, the painting was able to be restored and is now on view to the general public for the first time in the Neuberger show. The story in greater detail is available in The New Yorker piece, “The Artistic Life Behind Bars”.

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