Caroline Roberts, a graduate fellow at the Winterthur/UDel Program in Art Conservation, was lucky enough to spend a summer working at English Heritage with David Thickett, a pillar in the specialty of preventive conservation. Cary shared her involvement with various projects from her internship. For an overwhelming 400+ properties, Thickett’s work emphasizes practicality, resource-sharing, and sustainability. Decisions for environmental monitoring and analysis are data-driven, and thereby, case-by-case. This sensible method identifies and address problems when and where they occur, rather than applying and managing a systematic approach to many, many sites. Cary highlighted sophisticated and simple technology used, such as radio transmitters for remote data access, as well as iButton loggers in a micro-environment. I was impressed by the fine level of the problems being addressed in EH’s projects: they suggested that the institution has a handle on general preventive conservation management.
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AIC Blog Archives: Conservators Converse
Former Blog of the American Institute for Conservation