Allied Organizations – Page 7 – AIC Blog Archives: Conservators Converse

New Certificate in Digital Curation at Johns Hopkins University

Conservators today, like all museum professionals with responsibilities for collections care and management of cultural heritage, are worried about the ongoing maintenance and documentation of digital artifacts along with the conservation of physical objects in their collections. Johns Hopkins University’s MA in Museum Studies has announced a new certificate program in digital curation starting in January 2014 to address the need for formal education in this emerging field of stewardship.
The Certificate in Digital Curation is a specialized graduate program designed to prepare museum professionals to manage the growing volume and variety of digital assets of long-term value that museums are now routinely producing, acquiring, storing and sharing. Assets that need ongoing management include born-digital media art, research data, and documentation information stored in collections management systems about physical collection objects. And because most museums are now investing significant resources in digitizing collections—new acquisitions as well as for the purpose of loan, pre- and post-conservation treatment, and presentation online—they have a growing need to preserve their digitized assets.
Digital curation is defined as the management of digital assets over their lifetime. While the term is not synonymous with the modern understanding of the role of a museum curator, it does reflect the historical definition of curator as “keeper” of collections. It is also in alignment with the growing international digital curation community dedicated to maintaining access to digital data of long-term value.
The JHU digital curation certificate program consists of six courses, including five online and one on-site internship. Class size is limited to 15-17 students to allow for stimulating discussions with classmates and faculty. The curriculum includes the following 13-week courses:

Digital Preservation, which covers the principles of digital preservation and the basics of developing and assessing digital preservation plans;
Foundations of Digital Curation, which particularly addresses the beginning of the digital life cycle, including topics such as appraisal and selection, metadata standards, and intellectual property issues;
Managing Digital Information, which emphasizes the management of digital objects in museum environments, including format transformation, management of surrogates, and workflows;
Internship in a museum or related organization, including at least 120 hours on-site and completion of a project or paper;
An approved elective chosen from the MA in Museum Studies curriculum, OR a second internship; and
A supervised research project leading to a publishable or presentable paper that contributes to the new literature of the digital curation field.

Admission requirements for the digital curation certificate are:

A master’s degree in museum studies or other relevant field,
A bachelor’s degree and at least five years full-time experience working in a museum, library, archive, or related cultural heritage organization, or
Students enrolled in the JHU MA in Museum Studies program upon completion of 5 courses.

A grade point average of at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale is required for admission (work experience will also be considered). International students are welcome, but please note that TOEFL for students whose native language is not English or who have not graduated from an accredited college or university in the US is required.
The deadline for applications for the spring semester (classes beginning January 22) is December 16.
We are excited about this new program, and we encourage interested conservators and other museum professionals to contact one of us! Our contact information is provided below.
Phyllis Hecht, Program Director, MA in Museum Studies, phecht@jhu.edu
Joyce Ray, Program Coordinator and Lecturer, Digital Curation Certificate, jray16@jhu.edu
http://museum-studies.jhu.edu
http://advanced.jhu.edu/digitalcuration

BROMEC 35 – Call for metal conservation research abstracts

BROMEC, the Bulletin of Research on Metal Conservation, requests research abstracts (max. 400 words) and professional meeting announcements (max. 75 words) for BROMEC 35, to be published online.
BROMEC continues to keep you up to date with metals conservation research activities between the triennial ICOM-CC Metal Working Group meetings.
Submissions can be made in English, French or Spanish – the BROMEC Editorial Team will translate and publish submissions in the three language versions of BROMEC. Refer to BROMEC 28 at www.warwick.ac.uk/bromec, where you can freely access all the previous issues of BROMEC. And for subscription to BROMEC: www.warwick.ac.uk/bromec-subscription.
We trust these simultaneous multilingual issues will increase communication across a greater cross-section of the world’s metal heritage conservation research community.
The final submission date is Wednesday, December 11, 2013, and contributions should be emailed to bromeceditor [at] gmail [dot] com.
–Submitted by James Crawford, PhD student, University of Warwick

American Academy in Rome announces lecture series, featuring past Fellows

The American Academy in Rome is launching a six-part lecture series, featuring former recipients of the Rome Prize. The series will take place in New York City; the first lecture will take place at the Metropolitan Club. The speakers are all Fellows, Residents, or Affiliated Fellows, and will share how Rome impacted their lives during and after their experience.
Home From Rome’s first speaker will be AAR Trustee, C. Brian Rose, FAAR’92, RAAR’12, the James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology and Curator-in-Charge, Mediterranean Section, University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, discussing “Who Owns Antiquity?: Museums, Repatriation, and Armed Conflict.”
This lecture is Thursday, September 12, at 6pm, and reservations are required.
Metropolitan Club, 1 East 60th St., New York City
RSVP by September 5 at https://support.aarome.org/homefromrome-rose.
Visit the American Academy in Rome at www.aarome.org.

It still is better in person

One of the benefits of living in a large city which has many museums and a sizeable community of conservators is that there are opportunities to attend lectures, programs and other events that would be unimaginable in smaller communities. One recent event that New York metropolitan area conservators had the privilege of attending was the conversation between Tom Learner, Senior Scientist and Head of the Modern and Contemporary Art Research Initiative at the Getty Conservation Institute and artist De Wain Valentine about the creation of Valentine’s “Gray Column” (1975–76) and other poured resin sculptures that was organized by INCCA-NA at the Guggenheim Museum on July 11th. Pod casts, webinars, and videos posted on the Internet may provide excellent content, but the exchange of ideas that takes place before and after programs in casual chats with colleagues cannot be duplicated on-line.

Collections Care Network Preservation Planning Discussion Session Round 2: Prescriptive Standards versus Performance Management

Part two of the Thursday May 30th collections care session started with a brief recap of Round 1 by Collections Care Network Chair Joelle Wickens. Introducing Round 2’s speakers, Kristen Overbeck Laise of Heritage Preservation and James Reilly of the Image Permanence Institute, CCN editor Rob Waller presented the session’s aims to offer opposing views on the role of standards in guiding collections care decisions.
In her talk titled Importance of Standards and Guidelines to Inform Preventive Conservation Initiatives in Museums, Kristen Overbeck Laise underlined the importance and benefits of collections care standards as ways of focusing performance goals, educating and motivating museum staff, and highlighting conservation’s role as part of a larger museum context. Laise provided a compelling argument in favor of the adherence to standards by pointing to guidelines cited in the American Alliance of Museums’ core documents, which include a collections management policy (http://www.aam-us.org/resources/assessment-programs/core-documents/documents). She also pointed out that museums accredited by AAM tend to have stronger collections care policies. However, Laise did note that the committee who oversees AAM accreditation is made up primarily of museum directors, rather than other museum professionals such as conservators – a surprise to me and I am sure others in the audience. Laise cited two other organizations who promote collections care standards, including the American Association for State and Local History (see their Stewardship of Collections Standards workbook online: http://www.aaslh.org/), as well as Collections Trust, a UK charity whose goal is to be a leader in the management and use of collections and technology in museums, libraries, and archives by 2015 (http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/). In all Laise made clear that collections care standards are valued by the professional organizations that write the guidelines for best practices, and are considered important points of credibility and accountability for cultural institutions.
In his talk titled Standards Make us Myopic: We Focus on Specific Values at the Expense of Real Issues, James Reilly of the Image Permanence Institute argued that such prescriptive standards do not necessarily reflect the real needs of collections. Reilly provided an amusing analogy in the form of a Gary Larson cartoon (http://s173.photobucket.com/user/spn_imgs/media/blahblah.jpg.html), alluding to the fact that we tend to oversimplify the statements that are made in environmental standards publications such as Thomson 1978, 1986. The resulting De Facto standards we set for ourselves, Reilly argues, have not evolved over time, and have been applied to collections where they might not be appropriate. He also pointed to the fact that these publications were made before certain measurement technologies –like digital dataloggers – were available. Reilly points to what is important – actual documents, measurements, and the known vulnerabilities of specific collections – and to future trends such as risk management, and more active environmental management. Reilly offers PAS (Publicly Available Specification) 198: 2012 as an example of how standards are being increasingly used; in this specification, the manager is asked to prioritize from a list of risks and mechanisms of decay, based on their understanding of the needs and vulnerabilities of their collection (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/environmental-standard.htm). In short, according to Reilly, standards are meant to inform us, but it is up to us to determine how to interpret and apply them.
The afternoon round of talks and subsequent group discussions were quite engaging, thanks to the compelling arguments made by both Laise and Reilly. I came away with a sense that there is truth to both sides – that standards do keep us focused on the fundamental importance of collections care, but that the decisions we make on how to care for collections are, with good reason, based increasingly on data and observation.

9th Biennial NATCC registration now open

Conserving Modernity: The Articulation of Innovation

The 9th Biennial North American Textile Conservation Conference (NATCC)
November 12-15, 2013

San Francisco, California
Registration for the conference, workshops, and tours is now open! Go to http://natcconference.com for a glimpse of the papers and posters to be presented and to register. Keep in mind that space is limited for workshops and tours, so be sure to sign up now!
Full conference registration includes:

Entrance to all paper and poster presentations at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park on November 14^thand 15^th, as well as refreshments and lunches.
The opening reception, which will take place in Jackson Square and is being co-hosted by the Lotus Gallery and Peter Pap Oriental Rugs.
The closing reception at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum.

For questions, please contact Yadin Larochette: yadinl [at] gmail [dot] com

Collective energy: harnessing the power of community

If you ask me if I’m connected, I might at first think, well, I have a smartphone where I can access my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts, my family and I share a Google calendar, so sure, I guess I’m connected. But what does it really mean to be connected? With all of these devices, apps, and programs, I find that it is becoming increasingly easier to never leave the comfort of my home or desk in order to feel like I’m an active part of a community – whether it be my neighborhood, my family, or the conservation field.
But nothing replaces the experience of connecting with other people face-to-face. Our field is experiencing some big changes, and making the effort to go to conferences each year, and even venturing a bit outside of our close-knit community, may be more valuable than ever before. By attending allied professionals meetings, I believe that we will find that this not only benefits us as individuals, but our field as a whole.
Last week I spent 2 very full days at the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) annual meeting in Baltimore and I returned feeling inspired and energized with new ideas.

AAM attendees filing into the general session in the ballroom at the Baltimore Convention Center

This was my first time attending this meeting, and as Chair of the Emerging Conservation Professionals Network (ECPN), I went on behalf of our group in an attempt to promote ECPN to the wider museum community, to connect with the AAM Emerging Museum Professionals (EMP) network, and to seek ideas and ways for ECPN to collaborate with other emerging museum professionals. In the interest of supporting the significant work of ECPN, The University of Delaware generously supported my participation.

A shot from the AAM opening reception at the American Visionary Art Museum

I was fortunate to have a meeting buddy – ECPN Vice Chair Eliza Spaulding also attended the conference, and between the two of us, we sought out as many opportunities to take in all AAM had to offer. Some of the highlights included:

A first-time attendees orientation meeting
A one hour speed-networking event
The Emerging Museum Professionals (EMP) reception
One-on-one career coaching
One-on-one resume review
The Alliance opening party at the American Visionary Art Museum
Keynote talk by Freeman Hrabowski, III, President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) about the role of museums in inspiring future generations

And of course we attended several interesting sessions, met many new people, and had a chance to visit the booths at the MuseumExpo.
Eliza and I are excited to share some of our experiences at AAM, and how these have given us ideas for future projects, at the ECPN informational meeting during the AIC Annual Meeting in Indianapolis this week. The ECPN meeting will take place on Friday, May 31 from 5:30-6:30 pm in the JW Marriott Meeting Rooms 201-203.
We hope to see you there!

An abundance of College Art Association meeting sessions on conservation, technical art history, and the material aspects of works of art

In a typical year, one or two sessions at the annual meeting of the College Art Association focus on conservation or the material aspects of works of art. The 2013 meeting which took place in New York City on February 13-16 included seven sessions on these subjects– “The Proof is in the Print: Avant-Garde Approaches to the Historical Materials of Photography’s Avant Garde”, “Destruction of Cultural Heritage in European Countries in Transition, 1990- 2011”, “Collaborative Understanding through Technical Investigations: Art Scholar, Conservators and Scientists Research in Tandem”, “Between Maker, Agent, Collector, Curator and Conservator: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Islamic Tilework”, “Technical Art History and the University Curriculum”, “The New Connoisseurship: A Conversation among Scholars, Curators and Conservators”, “Artists and the Manufacturing of Art Materials”– with a number of them stressing collaboration. Some day in the future will we look back to this meeting and see it as the beginning of a golden age of conservator-art historian collaboration?

From the Bench: Team Pachacamac Triumphs, Making Peruvian Collections Accessible

This post is part of the “From the Bench” series celebrating the work of conservators. Part scientist, part detective, they work to preserve the past for the future. This series features the voices of conservators who are working on IMLS-supported projects in museums across the United States. For more information about IMLS funding for museums see www.imls.gov/applicants/available_grants.aspx.

By Lynn A. Grant, Head Conservator, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Our IMLS-funded post-graduate fellows, Ainslie Harrison and Fran Baas (collectively known as ‘Frainslie’) have, in one short year, totally transformed the circumstances for Penn Museum’s collections of textiles and ceramics from Pachacamac, Peru. This group of extremely important archaeological materials, excavated by Max Uhle in the 1890s, had languished due to overcrowded storage, inadequate documentation, and difficulties in access. Fran and Ainslie carried out detailed conservation surveys of 3,600 objects and moved them into better storage locations. They created customized storage solutions so the artifacts can be easily accessed and studied. They added over 10,000 images to the museum’s publicly accessible database. And they were able to treat the approximately 60 artifacts most in need of stabilization. In addition to all of this, Fran and Ainslie also blogged about the project and gave frequent specialized tours for students and museum patrons.

UofPenn Blog Picture — Post-graduate fellows Ainslie Harrison (left) and Fran Baas (right).

To have accomplished all this in such a short time is amazing. Perhaps more amazing is how they did it. ‘Frainslie’ recruited, trained, supervised, and nurtured a large cadre of volunteers, work-study students, and pre-program interns to assist them with the process. “Team Pachacamac,” as they became known, was extraordinarily productive and seemed to really enjoy the work. For two recently graduated conservators to assemble and oversee this kind of effort and to inspire near fanatical devotion to the project was incredibly gratifying in an institution that has long prided itself on its contributions to conservation education.

Their work has made a tremendous impact. As Fran wrote in her last blog post, “The primary goal of the grant was to increase researcher access, and I can proudly say that this goal was reached … Many research questions can now be answered just by searching the collections database online through the museum’s website, saving time for the curator, the collection staff, and researchers miles away. Access to the digital documentation also has an important preservation aspect since it minimizes the handling of the object. If a question can’t be answered by viewing its color digital photograph or by reading the newly added collection information gathered during the survey, the piece can be easily retrieved safely and quickly.” We wish Ainslie and Fran well as they move on to new professional challenges. Kudos to Team Pachacamac and to IMLS for making this work possible.

From the Bench: A 400-Year-Old Carpet is Restored to Show Original Persian Artistry

By Joseph Godla, Chief Conservator, The Frick Collection

One of the pleasures and challenges of working at a small museum is dealing with the care of objects which fall outside the area of expertise of the staff. Such is the case with the Frick’s small collection of carpets. The Frick’s conservation staff includes experts in sculpture and decorative arts, but no one specializing in textiles.

A sixteenth-century Herat carpet has decorated the Frick’s beloved Living Hall for almost 100 years. The carpet, purchased by Henry Clay Frick in 1916, is a superb example of Persian carpet making, with a wide range of pile color and a high degree of artistry in its elaborate floral design. At more than 400 years old, however, it had suffered several early campaigns of poor restoration and, though displayed behind stanchions, the edges had been further damaged by visitor foot traffic. It was clear to us that the carpet needed to be restored.

Lacking the appropriate person on staff, the Frick turned to Dierdre Windsor of Windsor Conservation, a long-time colleague of the Frick’s chief conservator. Ms. Windsor has many years of experience in textile conservation, including seven years as director of the American Textile History Museum’s Textile Conservation Center. We also sought the advice of Walter Denny, professor of Art History and adjunct professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Mr. Denny is a leading expert in the field of Islamic art and was an adviser to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the re-installation of its Islamic galleries.

Herat_in progress — Large Persian rug in lab for conservation treatment

The project’s goal was to stabilize the carpet. The level of previous intervention made this a large task requiring the removal of many patches and resins, hundreds of pieces of backing fabric, old repairs, and embroidered repairs with bad color matches or misalignment. Ms. Windsor estimated it would take eighteen months to complete the work required.

The treatment process began with careful documentation of the entire carpet’s specific condition issues. The carpet was then vacuumed and solvent-cleaned. Following the cleaning, old repairs were addressed. For future display and storage, a new dustcover and lining were fabricated and an archival carpet pad made for use when the textile is on display.

There were some minor changes to the original plan. For example, due to the extremely complex restoration history of the carpet, which was discovered only when the lining backing the carpet’s border was removed, the condition assessment and documentation of the carpet took longer than originally planned. While it was tempting to remove all of the early repairs, we decided to take a conservative approach rather than risk causing further damage. Removal of many of the visually distracting older repairs resulted in a much more visually consistent appearance.

Following the eighteen-month treatment, the carpet is now in a much more stable condition and can be safely put on view where viewers can appreciate the carpet’s remarkably vibrant original colors.