Author: Ryan Winfield

Call for Papers: Ninth Islamic Manuscript Conference

“Manuscripts of the Mamluk Sultanate and its Contemporaries”
The Ninth  Conference

Magdalene College
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
2-4 September 2013

The Islamic Manuscript Association is pleased to announce that the Ninth Islamic Manuscript Conference will be held at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, 2-4 September 2013. The Conference will be hosted in cooperation with the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation and the HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge.

The Association invites the submission of abstracts on topics related to the study of Islamic manuscripts, particularly codicology, and the care and management of Islamic manuscript collections. Preference will be shown to submissions pertaining to the Conference’s theme: “Manuscripts of the Mamluk Sultanate and its Contemporaries”.

The Conference seeks to explore the full range of manuscript production that occurred from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries

CE: from books produced under royal patronage, such as the Mamluk and Ilkhanid Qur’an manuscripts that are almost unmatched for splendour, opulence, and size in the history of the Islamic arts of the book, to simpler, less lavish manuscripts that are no less essential to increasing our understanding of Islamic codicology and palaeography.

The Conference will be organised around the Association’s four key working areas: cataloguing, conservation, digitisation, and research and publishing; and papers falling into these broad categories will be included in the relevant panel. The Association will also consider submissions on topics that do not fall directly under the purviews of these areas but are yet concerned with scholarship on Islamic manuscripts or the care and management of Islamic manuscript collections.

This invitation is open to members and non-members of the Association. The languages of the Conference will be Arabic and English, and submissions will be accepted in both languages. The deadline for submissions is 0900 GMT on Monday, 22 October 2012.

Late submissions will not be considered. The duration of each conference paper is 30 minutes inclusive of 10 minutes of questions and answers. Please note that preference will be given to speakers who have not presented papers at the Association’s previous conferences. All authors’ research and analysis should be sufficiently advanced that they can include concrete findings in their abstracts.

The Association will pay for round-trip economy class travel to Cambridge, accommodation in Magdalene College, and College-based meals for authors whose papers are accepted. Please send an abstract of 250 words, a 250 word biographical statement, and a cover sheet, available at www.islamicmanuscript.org/conferences/2013Conference/CallForPapers.html

to the Association’s executive committee at

The Islamic Manuscript Association Ltd
c/o 33 Trumpington Street
Cambridge CB2 1QY
United Kingdom

Fax: +44 1223 302 218
admin [at] islamicmanuscript__org

The Association’s selection committee will inform applicants of its decision by mid-November. 2012.

Charlie Walker-Arnott
Bilingual Events and Membership Coordinator
The Islamic Manuscript Association c/o The Lotus Gallery
33 Trumpington Street
Cambridge CB2 1QY
UK

+44 1223 303177
Fax: +44 1223 302218
Mobile: +44 7711 391 940

ICOM-CC Legal Issues in Conservation Working Group

The ICOM-CC Legal Issues in Conservation Working Group is in the process of refocussing its goal to become an important network where conservators can exchange information and experience about legal issues which face them in their daily work. Please visit the website, join the group, participate in the forum. All the suggestions and experience you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Please take part in creating a new and important network for conservators worldwide.

For more information, visit www.icom-cc.org/30/working-groups/legal-issues-in-conservation

Dr. W. (Bill) Wei
Senior conservation scientist
Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed

previously:

Instituut Collectie Nederland
Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage Amsterdam The Netherlands

Call for Proposals: 2013 Preservation Technology and Training Grants (PTT Grants)

The National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT) announces it’s 2013 Preservation Technology and Training Grants (PTT Grants) call for proposals.

The call outlines in detail how our grants program works. Briefly, we are looking for innovative proposals that develop new technologies or adapt existing technologies to preserve cultural resources. The deadline to submit a proposal to Grants.gov is November 1, 2012.

PTT Grants have funded recipients like the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum that is conducting innovative research in non-invasive documentation of complex submerged archeological sites located in turbid waters.

NCPTT supports single year projects. Grants are awarded competitively with the maximum award of $25,000. Preference is given to proposals with a one to one cash or in-kind match, and to proposals that support our research priorities. NCPTT typically receives 40 proposals and funds approximately 10 grants per year.

The 2013 grants will be awarded during the federal fiscal year 2013 (October 1, 2012-September 30, 2013). Grants are funded by annual federal appropriation and are subject to availability of funds.

Graduate Programs in Art Conservation: New Students and Internship Placements

Queen’s University Art Conservation Program

New Students
Marie-Lou Beauchamp (Paper)
Emily Turgeon-Brunet (Paper)
Kelli Piotrowski (Paper)
Emily Ricketts (Artifacts)
Aimée Sims  (Artifacts)
Samantha Fisher (Artifacts)
Jessica LaFrance (Artifacts)
Stephanie Barnes (Paintings)
Laurence Gravel-Gagné (Paintings)
Aimee Turcotte (Paintings)
Melanie Cloutier (Paintings)

Internships
Evelyn Ayre, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham UK
Fiona Beckett, Anita Henry Paintings Conservator, Montreal, Quebec, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON, and National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa ON
Elizabeth Boyce, UBC Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver BC
Wendy Crawford, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, ON and Canadian Conservation Institute, Ottawa, ON
Moya Dumville, New England Document Conservation Center, Andover, MA
Timothy Greening, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON
Sonia Kata, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON
Jennifer Morton, Fraser Spafford Ricci Art & Archival Conservation Inc., South Surrey BC
Sarah Mullin, The New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, NB and Tripolis Greece
Kelly O’Neill, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON
Katherine Potapova, Canadian Conservation Institute, Ottawa, ON
Ghazaleh Rabiei, Canadian Conservation Institute, Ottawa, ON
Jessica Regimbald, Centre Canadien d’ Architecture, Montreal, QC
Corine Soueid, Institute of Nautical Archeology, Bodrum, Turkey and  INSTAP Centre for East Crete, Pachia Ammos, Crete
Jeanne Beaudry Tardif, Bibliothèque et archives du Quebec, Montreal, QC
Dorcas Tong, City of Vancouver Archives, Vancouver, BC
Jayme Vallieres, Glenbow Museum, Calgary, AB
Daniela Vogel, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Montreal, Montreal QC
Anna Weiss, Caere Excavation, Caere, Italy and Agora Excavation, Athens, Greece
Brittany Webster, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, QC

Institute of Fine Arts, NYU

New Students
Amy Brost, BA in Art History, BA in Studio Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Interest: Photographs and Electronic/Digital/Time-based Media
Kathryn Brugioni, BA in Art History and Archaeology, Washington University in St. Louis; Interest: Paintings
Annika Finne, BA in Material Art History, Brown University; Interest: Modern and Contemporary Paintings
Saira Haqqi, BA in Russian Studies, Carleton College; Interest: Books
Evelyn Mayberger, BA in Art History, Wesleyan College; Interest: Books and Special Collections
Abigail Teller, BFA Painting, BA in Art History and Archaeology, BA in History, Washington University in St. Louis; Interest: Undecided with an emphasis on Modern and Contemporary

The 2012 – 2013 Leon Levy Visiting Fellow in the Conservation of Archaeological Materials:
Wei Liu, BS in Conservation Science, Northwest University in China; MS in History of Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology, Beijing

Internships
Morgan Adams, Thaw Conservation Center, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY
Kristin Bradley, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
Sophie Scully, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Cybele Tom, Bode-Museum, Berlin, Germany
Shauna Young, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

University of Delaware, Art Conservation Department

New Students
Shannon Brogdon-Grantham
Emily Brown
Austin Curley
Clara Curran,
Kelly McCauley
Ronel Namde
Nicholas Pedemonti
Michelle Sullivan
Kimi Taira,
Emily Wroczynski

Internships
The program’s third year students, their internship sites and majors are:
Bartosz Dajnowski – (The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Military University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland – Objects Conservation)
Greta Glaser – (Smithsonian Institution Archives and Library of Congress – Photograph Conservation)
Laura Hartman – (Mauritshuis and Yale University Art Gallery – Paintings Conservation)
Morgan Hayes – (Los Angeles County Museum of Art – Paintings Conservation)
Sara Lapham – (Philadelphia Museum of Art – Furniture Conservation)
Sara Levin – (Metropolitan Museum of Art – Objects Conservation)
Carrie McNeal – (Library of Congress – Library and Archive Materials Conservation)
Crista Pack – (Museums of New Mexico – Objects Conservation)
Emily Schuetz – (Philadelphia Museum of Art – Textile Conservation)
Elena Torok – (The British Museum and Yale University Art Gallery – Objects Conservation)

Buffalo State College, Program in Art Conservation

New Students
Zach Long
Jennifer Hunt Johnson
Erica Schuler
Jena Hisrschbein
Amanda Chau
Dawn Planas
Liz Sorokin
Ellen Davis
Colleen O’Shea
Christina Taylor

3rd Year Internships – Class of 2013
Genevieve Bieniosek – Biltmore
Ashleigh Ferguson (Schiezer) – The Huntington Library
James Gleason – The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Ashley Jehle – The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation)
Elizabeth LaDuc – The Walters Art Museum
Dawn Mankowski – Columbia University Libraries
Laura Neufeld – Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Legion of Honor)
Fran Ritchie – Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University
Lianne Uesato – The Cleveland Museum of Art
Aisha Wahab – The University of Michigan Libraries

UCLA/Getty Conservation Program

Summer Internship placements for 1st year students
Dolph, Brittany – Museum of Volos, Greece and the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles
Fuentes, Ayesha – Shaanxi Archaeological Institute in Xi’an, China and Department of Archaeology in Sri Lanka
Griswold, Geneva – working on the Siqueiros Mural (through the Getty Conservation Institute), working in Varallo, Italy and at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, NY
Mahony, Caitlin – INSTAP, Crete, Greece
Mallinckrodt, Casey – Arizona State Museum
Neiman, Madeleine – Anchorage Museum, Alaska
North, Alexis – Tell Tayinat, Turkey and the Brooklyn Museum
Tzadik, Carinne – Benaki Museum, Athens

Placement of current 3rd year students
de Alarcon, Tessa – U of Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Doan, Lily – Los Angeles County Museum of Art as Andrew W. Mellon Fellow
Ledoux, Nicole – Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums
O’Hern, Robin – National Museum of the American Indian as Andrew W. Mellon Fellow
Scott, Cindy Lee – For the summer 2012, Cindy Lee will be teaching conservation to Archaeologists at Gournia in Greece

Our remaining students, Elizabeth Drolet and Dawn Lohnas, are awaiting outcomes for next years’ positions.

AIC Responds to the Closing of Georgia State Archives to the Public

Read the letter from Meg Craft, AIC President, to Governor Deal:

“Dear Governor Deal:

As the board president of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Works (AI C), the national membership organization supporting conservation professionals in preserving cultural heritage, I write to ask you to reverse the  decision made by Secretary of State Brian Kemp to close the Georgia Archives. Public access to the critically important records held by the Georgia Archives is a right of your citizens, while the loss of open access will have long-term negative consequences for both your state and the nation.

The Georgia Archives serves a multitude of constituents, including genealogists, historians, teachers, students, lawyers, and governmental employees. It supports legal arguments, settles disputes, documents “historical events,. and helps us all better understand our past. While I echo the dismay of others, as expressed in letters such as those from the presidents of the American Library Association and Society of American Archivists, I want to make sure that you are aware of other critical losses that will result from closing your state archives.

The conservation lab at the Archives is a comprehensive and well-equipped facility that has provided much needed space for conservation and preservation educational programs, workshops, and meetings for state and national conservation professionals. The Prese.rvation staff hosts graduate students from the Clayton State University’s Master of Archival Studies Program, and works with”numerous interns, providing valuable hands-on experience in a conservation lab working on archival records, from land grant maps to chain gang records. The Preservation Services Division also provides training for a steady stream of scanning interns, who are funded by a “Friends of the Archives” grant. All of these initiatives help ensure the long-term preservation and accessibility of Georgia’s legal and cultural history…”

Read the full letter

ALERT— Plan Ahead Now for ILMS & NEH Conservation Grant Support!

Institute of Museum & Library Services
As we have previously reported, funding for projects that were supported previously under the Conservation Project Support (CPS) Grants program will now be included as part of the Museums for America (MFA) program. In the last two fiscal years, $2.675 million was appropriated for Conservation Project Support Grants. The good news is that even more IMLS support for conservation is possible if there are enough excellent applications.

While final guidelines have not been posted, the draft guidelines indicated that:

  1. Final guidelines will be posted as soon as approved by the Office of Management and Budget. A projected date of October 15, 2012 was given. We will alert you as soon as a firm date is available.
  2. The deadline for submitting applications for FY 2013 funds is January 15, 2013.

Given that the late fall through the end of the year is a particularly busy time, we encourage everyone to begin planning now for applications for conservation support.

IMLS will open the Grants.gov portal and begin accepting applications as soon as it receives OMB approval. We will alert you to this as soon as we know. Additionally, IMLS staff will be offering webinars throughout the fall season to assist applicants with application preparation and to answer questions about the new guidelines.

IMLS has indicated that “applications submitted under each of these program areas will be reviewed by subject-matter experts.” And further that “in 2013, there will be no restrictions on the number of applications a museum may submit to MFA. We encourage you to read http://blog.imls.gov/?p=1590.

National Endowment for the Humanities
The deadline for Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections is December 4, 2012 for Projects Beginning October 2013. This program helps cultural institutions plan and implement preservation strategies aimed at mitigating the greatest risks to collections in ways that pragmatically balance effectiveness, cost, and environmental impact. For information and guidelines see http://www.neh.gov/grants/preservation/sustaining-cultural-heritage-collections and http://www.neh.gov/files/grants/sustaining-cultural-heritage-dec-4-2012.pdf

While this is a continuing program category, we wanted to alert you to the deadline.

Baker Fellowships in Paper Conservation awarded

The University of Michigan (U-M) Library is delighted to announce the first Cathleen A. Baker Fellows in Paper Conservation. Lauren Calcote and Aisha Wahab started their fellowships in early September and will remain in residence with the U-M Library Conservation Lab through August 2013.

Lauren Calcote is a September 2012 graduate of the New York State College, Buffalo, master’s degree program in art conservation, specializing in book conservation. During her fellowship she will be focusing on historical binding structures and book conservation treatments ranging from batch treatment of nineteenth-century cloth bindings to individual treatment of complex vellum books.

Aisha Wahab is starting her final year in the Buffalo program. The Baker Fellowship is helping to support her third-year internship at the University of Michigan Library Conservation Lab. Specializing in paper conservation, she has particular interest in the conservation of Islamic and Middle Eastern manuscripts.

The Cathleen A. Baker Fellowship in Paper Conservation was established in 2011 by a gift from Dr. Baker, Conservation Librarian in the Department of Preservation and Conservation at the University of Michigan Library. The fellowship provides financial support for conservators at various levels in their careers to enable them to spend time in the U-M Library’s Conservation Lab to increase their knowledge about the conservation of paper-based collections.

Applications for fellowship projects starting in Fall 2013 are due January 31, 2013. Information about the fellowship and application forms are available at www.lib.umich.edu/preservation-and-conservation/cathleen-baker-fellowship-conservation-2013-2014

Shannon Zachary
Head, Dept. of Preservation and Conservation
University of Michigan Library
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Recognize Your Colleagues-Nominate them for an AIC Award!

At some point in every career the guidance, support, or encouragement of a peer makes a world of difference. Every year AIC gives awards to exemplary conservators and other professionals
for their outstanding and distinguished contributions to the field. AIC members nominate the candidates for each award and the AIC Awards Committee selects the recipients.

Which of your colleagues deserve recognition in the following award categories?

AIC Publications Award—recognizes excellence in a non-AIC Journal article or book on conservation published during the preceding two years (October 1–September 31).

Robert Feller Lifetime Achievement Award—recognizes exceptional contributions to the conservation profession over the course of one’s career.

Sheldon and Caroline Keck Award—for excellence in the education and training of conservation professionals.

Rutherford John Gettens Merit Award—for outstanding service to the American Institute for Conservation (AIC).

Conservation Advocacy Award (formerly the University Products Award)—for the accomplishments and contributions for conservation professionals who, through substantial efforts in outreach and advocacy, have advanced the field of conservation and furthered the cause of conservation.

These AIC awards are truly special and meaningful to their recipients, especially because they represent peer recognition and distinction. Nominate someone special today!

Many institutions, organizations, and individuals support the care of collections and the field of conservation in a variety of ways important to us all. To which award category below can you
submit a strong nomination?

Forbes Medal—for distinguished contributions to the field of conservation by a nationally prominent figure whose work on a national or international platform has significantly advanced the preservation of cultural heritage.

Special Recognition for Allied Professionals—in recognition of the work and contributions by professionals in other fields to the advancement of the conservation profession. Distinguished Award for Advancement for the Field of Conservation—recognizes institutions for vital and longstanding support of professional development activities of conservators.

Ross Merrill Award for Outstanding Commitment to the Preservation and care of Collections, a joint AIC and Heritage Preservation Award—recognizing an organization large or small whose commitment to conservation has been sustained and exemplary.

For more information and award applications, please visit www.conservation-us.org/awards. The nomination deadline for all awards is December 15, 2012.

Budget Cuts Force Georgia Archives to Close to the Public after November 1st

The Georgia Archives are slated to be closed to the public as of November 1. Georgia will then be the only state not to have archives for the public. The citizens of Georgia will no longer have access to these primary, historical resources unless action is taken now.

Please sign the online petition and like and share their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/GeorgiansAgainstClosingStateArchives.

Ancient Egyptian mummy at Fitzwilliam Museum saved by engineering and LEGO

David Knowles, Sophie Rowe and Andor Vince positioning the cartonnage in the purpose-built frame Credit: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-ancient-egyptian-mummy-lego.html#jCp

The conservation of the cartonnage mummy case was undertaken with the assistance of the Department of Engineering, who helped construct clever frames to support the delicate case during conservation and a new display case with internal supports using LEGO. The mummy case was found in the Ramesseum at Thebes in 1896. The gilded wooden face had been torn out by robbers and the mummy removed. Cartonnage is a uniquely Egyptian material, often only a few millimetres thick, consisting of layers of plaster, linen and glue. It is remarkably rigid but also very sensitive to humidity. At some point Hor had been exposed to damp conditions and had sagged dramatically around the chest and face. This caused structural problems and also serious cracking and instability in the painted decoration. There had been some attempts at repair and restoration, most probably in the cartonnage’s early years in the Museum.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-ancient-egyptian-mummy-lego.html#jCp