Year: 2013

Why blog from the AIC annual meeting?

I first volunteered to blog from the AIC annual meeting 2 years ago. At that point, I didn’t really have much experience blogging, and honestly, I was a bit intimidated by the idea. I was concerned that I wouldn’t get the author(s) points across very effectively (or worse get details completely wrong) and I was also worried that my posts would be boring. A lot of the blogs that I followed were funny, clever, and insightful, and I just didn’t feel that I would be able to measure up to such standards. Finally, I just felt out of practice doing that kind of writing – being just out of graduate school, I was used to doing lots of technical writing and writing for scholarly purposes, but writing for a blog is different – you want to impart your voice and opinions, and it can be difficult to adjust to such a different format and style.
Well, I did blog from the annual meeting that year, and then blogged again last year, and I’m here to say that it isn’t all that bad. In fact, it was really worthwhile (and dare I say, fun??). Knowing that I was blogging for specific presentations made me pay attention to details I otherwise wouldn’t have, and it also made me think of capturing components of the talks that would work well in a visual presentation on the blog – photos of a poster or handout, a screenshot from the powerpoint, or an image from the conference room, etc. Blogging is also a great way to reflect on a talk and form your own opinions about the content. You don’t need to express these all in your blogpost, but ultimately, digesting a talk in a follow-up blogpost helps make that particular presentation more memorable and valuable.
Thinking about blogging from the annual meeting but unsure if you can hack it? Keep the following points in mind:

  • Only sign up to blog for a presentation that you’re already planning on attending.
  • Don’t worry about capturing all of the details – it’s okay to say in your blogpost that you missed something, or to even say – “did anyone else understand this particular point, or capture that particular detail?” This is a way to engage readers-some of the best blogposts are those that ask for reader feedback or ask questions.
  • Start by signing up to blog for 1 presentation or event. This shouldn’t be a stressful task, and signing up for 1 blogpost will be a huge help.  If you are feeling adventurous (or thirsty) AIC is offering a free drink ticket at the opening reception for the first 35 volunteers who sign up for two talks!
  • Try to write up your thoughts about the talk soon after you hear it, but don’t worry about posting something right away. The goal is to have posts up in the week after the meeting – but at least organizing your thoughts sooner rather than later will make things easier on yourself.
  • Think about images. If you have a camera or smartphone with you, snap a photo to include in your post. Readers always appreciate blogposts with images.
  • Have fun with it! Consider taking the opportunity to follow up with the speaker or talking to other attendees about the talk, and incorporate this feedback into your post. No pressure to do this, but it could make for a more enriching experience.
  • Keep it simple. Most people who read blogs don’t have a lot of time or patience to read thousands of words of content. They’re looking for quick access to information, so try to write succinctly and use headings to break up long blocks of text. Blogposts 600 words or less are typically best.
  • If you do end up blogging, include this on your CV. Future potential employers will take notice, and this type of writing is also good practice for future jobs or projects where you may be asked to contribute to a blog.

If, after reading this, you think you might be interested, please check out the Google Doc Spreadsheet to see which sessions or events are in need of bloggers and to sign up:

There is a separate tab down at the bottom for each session, workshop or event.  Input your name and email next to the talk you are interested in covering.  Easy! Also, please leave a comment here if you have further questions, and thanks for considering this!

Spotlight on Molly Gleeson, ECPN Chair and Project Conservator of "In the Artifact Lab: Conserving Egyptian Mummies" at the Penn Museum

Emerging Conservation Professionals Network (ECPN) Chair, Molly Gleeson has been busy in her new role as Project Conservator of “In the Artifact Lab: Conserving Egyptian Mummies” at the Penn Museum, Philadelphia, PA. “In the Artifact Lab” is a collaborative project between the Penn Museum’s Conservation Department and its Egyptian Section that is both a visible conservation laboratory and exhibition that opened on September 30, 2012. To learn more about this initiative and to see some exciting press, please visit the links below. Many congratulations to Molly and her colleagues at the Penn Museum for their work on this exciting initiative!
www.penn.museum/sites/artifactlab
http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/homepage-feature/item/45842- at-penn-museum-unveiling-the-secrets-of-mummies-while-you-watch?
 

The online edition of AIC News is available now

The first online edition of AIC News is now available! On May 6th, an email announcement was sent out to all members with the link to the AIC News site.
The May 2013 issue features the article “ASG, Past, Present and Future: Architectural Specialty Group at 25,” as well as annual meeting announcements, excellent Health & Safety and Sustainable Conservation Practice articles, and an interesting new cleaning method in the New Materials & Research column. FAIC thanks all the AIC-CERT volunteers and announces new grant and scholarship recipients in the FAIC News column. As always, Specialty Group and Network columns provide timely updates for their members.
Please remember to check the Calendar Listings for interesting conferences and workshops to attend, and for possible venues to present your next paper. This section will be updated continually as new events are announced, so check back often.
I hope you enjoy this new feature of AIC membership!
To access the AIC News, log into the AIC website and navigate to www.conservation-us.org/aicnews. The link is under the Current Issue heading, as well as in the email members received on May 6th.

What if later on someone took the piece to be restored?

The May 14, 2013 Arts section of The New York Times features an article (“An Artwork Turns to Mush, All According to Plan”, by William Grimes) about the work of the artist James Grashow and a documentary that Olympia Stone, daughter of the art dealer Allan Stone, filmed about it. When Grashow’s papier mache sculptures were ruined after being left out on Allan Stone’s lawn for six months, he decided to accept the ephemeral nature of his materials and make work that would “embrace its own destruction”. Thus he made “Corrugated Fountain”, a multi-figure cardboard sculpture that in 2012 was displayed out of doors for six weeks at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield, CT) and then taken to a dumpster and disposed of. What would have been the ethical course of action if someone had taken the remains and brought them to a conservator for treatment?

Has a sculpture designed for a specific location been damaged when it is removed from its site?

According to The New York Times (“ Inside Art: Venice Plans to Evict ‘Boy With Frog’”, by Carol Vogel, May 3, 2013), Charles Ray’s sculpture, “Boy with Frog” which was commissioned four years ago by Francois Pinault for the tip of the Punto della Dogana in Venice is to be removed and replaced by a reproduction of a 19th century lamppost. The artist knew from the start that the permit for his sculpture had to be renewed several times a year and Pinault has offered to install the sculpture in the Palazzo Grassi where he has a museum, but Ray insists that the sculpture belongs in the location for which it was designed. Petitions have been circulated and criticisms have been flung. This incident raises the large question of whether a site specific sculpture has been damaged when it has been removed from its site.

The seductiveness of art

The May 12, 2013 “Lives” page of The New York Times Magazine features “Object Love”, an essay by Paul Gordon, a technician for a Los Angeles-based sculpture conservator which expresses so well the seductive qualities of art—- those qualities which led so many of us to choose conservation as a profession as it allowed us to hold and touch works of art. One wonders how many young people reading Gordon’s phrases like “there’s real magic”; “as I moved to the arch of her back, my stroke turned to a caress”; “only a fool could fail to feel the desire, the spirit inside such beauty”; and “I have witnessed the miracles. I have seen them happen under my own hand” will be drawn to conservation.

The 2013 AIC Great Debate

At the 2012 AIC Annual Meeting we hosted the first ever AIC Great Debate. By all accounts, it was a rousing success. While last year’s debate was good, this year we’re hoping to make it better.
The 2013 Great Debate will take place on Saturday, June 1 from 4:00 to 5:00 pm as the final session in the General Session.  Now not only will  everyone have the opportunity to attend, but you’ll have a good reason to stay to the very end of the Annual Meeting!  And, as the ultimate way to promote dialogue, camaraderie, and, well, fun, we will have a cash bar in the room. Finally, I’m working on walk up music for the teams: hint all of the musicians were born in Indiana.
But, before I list this year’s debate topics and participants, I want to make a very important disclaimer: I created the AIC Great Debate as an intellectual exercise to demonstrate that conservators are clever enough to see a tough topic from both sides and discuss it openly.
With this in mind, in many cases I have personally invited participants to debate from a position that is contrary to their personal beliefs. This not only adds a fun twist it proves the point that the Debate is not meant to provide a forum so we can prove one side is right, but rather to engage in a public dialogue to surface all of this issues around difficult topics. And though I’m listing participant’s institutional affiliations (so you’ll get a chance to know them better), in no way am I suggesting that the participants are representing an institutional position in the Debate.
TOPIC 1:

The greatest act of preservation for inherently fragile or fugitive cultural property is exhibition, even if the duration goes far beyond what is currently recommended.

Affirmative Team

2012 Great Debate
2012 Great Debate
    • Rosa Lowinger (Rosa Lowinger & Associates)
    • Patty Miller (2 Arts Conservation)
    • Jodie Utter (Amon Carter Museum of American Art)

Negative Team

    • John Campbell (Campbell Contemporary Sculpture Conservation)
    • Fletcher Durant (New York Public Library)
    • Jessica Ford (University of Delaware Art Conservation Graduate School)

TOPIC 2:

While volunteers used on preservation projects often allow us to accomplish more work, they undermine our capacity to regularly employ conservation and collections care professionals.

Affirmative Team

    • Rose Cull (Kress Fellow in Sculpture Conservation at Tate)
    • Kelly Keegan (Art Institute of Chicago)
    • Dawn Walus (Boston Athenaeum)

Negative Team

    • Will Hoffman (Mariners Museum)
    • Michele Marincola (Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts/Metropolitan Museum)
    • Beverly Perkins (Buffalo Bill Center of the West)

Like last year, I’d like to ask you for help to make the AIC Great Debate successful.  We need you!  We need you in the audience to be lively, interested, engaged, and fun.  And I don’t mean just to cheer on your favorite conservator or team; we need you to participate in the Great Debate at AIC!

There will be a significant amount of time in which the audience will get to ask each team questions to which they have to respond.
And, finally, we need you to decide who wins the debate.  The winning team for each topic will be the one who sways the most opinions in the audience.
If you’re interested in reading about how the AIC Great Debate went last year, there are reviews on this blog of each debate topic.
2012 TOPIC #1:  Publishing accurate and complete “how-to guides” for conservation and restoration treatments online is the best way for us to care for cultural heritage in the 21st century. Read the review here.
2012 TOPIC #2: Having conservators perform treatments in the gallery is the most successful way to generate funding for museums and raise awareness about the profession. Read the review here.

Rembrandt authentication has long been a problem

The Spring 2013 issue of Chemical Heritage contains a fascinating article (“Quest for Permanence”, by Augustin Cerveaux and Even Hepler-Smith) about Maximillian Toch (1854- 1946), industrial chemist and pioneer in the use of science– particularly x-radiography– in the authentication of art. In 1923, Toch who later warned of the deterioration of “Cleopatra’s Needle” following its installation in Central Park (New York City), was brought in by art historian John van Dyke as a scientific consultant in a dispute to establish authorship of the then fifteen “Rembrandt” paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection. This was forty-five years before the Rembrandt Research Project attempted to do the same thing for Rembrandt’s corpus.

A Casualty of Armed Conflict

The New York Times has reported (“Minaret on a Storied Syrian Mosque Falls“) that the 11th century Umayyad Mosque in the ancient walled city portion of Aleppo (Syria), a UNESCO World Heritage site, was badly damaged during fighting between insurgents and government forces. Despite UNESCO’s pleas that the integrity of heritage sites be respected, fighting has taken place near them for months. In a two-year long conflict during which tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced, is it unlikely that the combatants will be careful of buildings.

Another article about how bureaucratic inefficency is allowing Pompeii to collapse

The April 21, 2013 issue of The New York Times featured yet another article about how bureaucratic inefficiency is leading to the total collapse of Pompeii (“The Latest Threat to Pompeii’s Treasures: Italy’s Red Tape“, by Rachel Donadio and Elisabetta Povoledo). This article was occasioned by the start of the Great Pompeii Project, a $137 million project undertaken by the European Union. And the article’s conclusion was the same as that of every other article– i.e., that without major changes in how Italy operates, nothing will be accomplished.