AIC’s Annual Meeting – Page 12 – AIC Blog Archives: Conservators Converse

44th Annual Meeting, Architecture Session, May 16, 2016, "Protecting Stained Glass Windows from Vibrations Caused by Construction Operations" by Dean Koga, Erica Morasset and Michael Schuller

Dean Koga and Michael Schuller gave an interesting and useful talk on the protection of original Tiffany stained glass windows at the Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City during heavy renovation work there. The talk gave a clear outline of what they did and how others can prepare for such events. It should be noted that there was little warning between the time that the Congregation was informed of the work and the start of the work.
They carried out the following actions (which I would strongly recommend):

Look for local engineering expertise in vibrations and the monitoring of vibrations. Michael Schuller represented this company.
Look at existing (inter)national standards for the protection of buildings due to vibrations including those caused by construction work. These included building codes for New York City, international codes for France and Russia, and the vibration literature.
Document fully any preexisting damage in the stained glass windows
Look at the levels of current existing vibrations due to, for example, traffic, wind, opening and closing of the windows or doors. This showed that such events, as well as the opening and closing of the windows themselves were also a source of background vibration and shock.
Determine limits for vibrations including a warning limit, and a limit where work has to immediately stop. These were 0.15 in/sec (3.75 mm/s) and 0.2 in/s (5 mm/s) for the low vibration frequencies expected.
Negotiate with contractors to use more “gentle” construction methods. The contractors agreed to avoid using a wrecking ball for razing the old part of the synagogue, and to use augured piles for the foundation instead of pile driving.

The precautions were successful. No damage was found after demolition work, and only one new crack was found near an operable window. It was interesting to hear that wind pressure on the windows actually increased due to exterior protection. The authors were aware that the vibration sensor they used, a geophone actually designed for earthquake monitoring, was too heavy for the job, but time constraints limited their choices. A lightweight (several grams) sensor placed on the window frame or horizontal supports would have been better.
The authors recommended more studies on systems to protect stained glass windows, and testing to determine how much deformation/displacement such windows can tolerate. I would certainly agree with that.

44th Annual Meeting – Emergency Session, May 17, 2016, “Emergency Preservation during Armed Conflict: Protecting the Ma’arra Museum in Syria” by Brian Daniels and Corine Wegener

I wanted to attend this presentation because I couldn’t imagine what type of emergency response would be possible in a situation as horrific as the one in Syria. When your life is in danger or there isn’t enough to eat, how can you think about saving artifacts or cultural sites? What I learned from Brian Daniels’ talk was inspiring and thought-provoking.
Brian Daniels is the director of Research and Programs at the Penn Cultural Heritage Center of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. A primary focus of the Center is community archaeology, an archaeological practice dedicated to engaging local communities in the preservation of cultural heritage. Could some of the practices of community archaeology be usefully carried over to a conflict zone? How could a response to safeguarding Syrian heritage be local, empowering, and post-colonial? How could Syrian cultural heritage professionals be involved?
This thinking led to the creation of the SHOSI (Safeguarding the Heritage of Syrian Initiative) project where outside experts and Syrian professionals worked together to determine what might be saved and how it could be done. Daniels gave three examples of the work undertaken by the team.
The first was at the Ma’aara Museum where there were numerous large Roman and early Christian mosaics installed into the fabric of the building. Based on protocols developed to protect Leonardo’s Last Supper during World War II, the Syrian team faced the mosaics with a water based adhesive and fabrics readily available at Turkey’s equivalent of Home Depot. Sandbags were placed in front of wall-mounted mosaics or on top of floor mounted ones. The non-Syrian experts helped procure the necessary supplies. The museum was bombed on two separate occasions, but the mosaics survived.
The second example was the intervention at the bronze-age site of Ebla known for a major find of cuneiform tablets in the 1960s. Satellite images showed changes in the excavated structures, suggesting disturbance to the site as a result of looting. The Syrian team confirmed that the mud brick buildings had been tunneled into. They used concrete blocks and a mud mortar to help shore up the walls, and as a result the damaged walls did not collapse in the winter rains.
The last example was not a success story. The 5^th-century Church of St. Simeon Stylites is part of an important early Byzantine complex. Armed groups were operating near the church and looters were digging in the complex for mosaics. As the team was trying to decide what to do, the area was bombed and the church was damaged.
I am not an archaeological conservator, and one of the powerful aspects of the presentation was seeing images of these incredible Syrian sites. And the extreme risks that Syrian heritage professionals were taking seemed much more real when you saw that their faces had to be blurred out in the presentation.
As with many talks at this meeting, Daniels and Wegener have been thinking about how our profession can be inclusive, responsive, and involved in the pressing problems of the 21^st century.

44th Annual Meeting – Paintings Session, May 15, 2016, “The History, Technical Study, and Treatment of Francis Bacon’s Painting 1946” by Ellen Davis, Michael Duffy, Chris McGlinchey, and Lauren Klein

I am interested in artists’ involvement with the conservation of their pieces, and I love Francis Bacon’s paintings so I was happy when I saw that this presentation needed a blogger.
Francis Bacon considered Painting 1946 to be a break-through work. It was purchased by MoMA in1948 two years after it was painted. Because Bacon used pastel ground in water as well as oil paint, the painting almost immediately had issues with the media flaking and fading.
In 1959 and again in 1971 Bacon proposed scraping down the pastel and repainting the background. In 1959 the museum was interested in this option, but for unclear reasons, Bacon did not end up reworking the piece. In 1971 before Bacon’s retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris, Bacon again offered to repaint the background. This time MoMA did not want the artist to address the issues with his piece, but agreed that the painting needed conservation.
Before the Paris retrospective, conservator Jean Volker consolidated with gelatin and inpainted with crushed pastel. Francis Bacon was thrilled with the results and believed that the painting had been given a new life. He decided that he even liked the faded colors better.
Over the years, the pastel inpainting faded and no longer matched the original, gelatin consolidation residues turned gray, and there was continued flaking. The painting again needed treatment. Given Bacon’s satisfaction with the 1971 results, it was decided that the goal should be to return the piece to its post-1971 treatment state, but using more stable materials.
Ellen Davis’ treatment involved removing the gelatin aqueously through tissue followed by silicone solvent cyclomethicone D5 (to avoid tide lines). Lifting paint was consolidated with TRI-Funori. Where possible the faded inpainting was reduced mechanically. The new inpainting was carried out with more light-fast pastels.
As Davis noted at the end of her presentation, this painting can only be as stable as its original materials. It is fortunate that it is in a collection where it can be carefully monitored.

44th Annual Meeting, Book and Paper, May 17th, “TEK-Wiping Out the Competition: The Ideal Reusable Absorbent Material,” by Kaslyne O’Connor

This amazing material is made up of 55% cellulose and 45% polyester. It is formed by the process of hydroentangling, so it is a non-woven material. It does not contain any binders and its pH is naturally at about 6. It resists solvents and does not leave behind any residues. It has amazing wet strength, unlike blotters, and is dimensionally stable, so it won’t stretch when wet either.
Tek-Wipe is absorbent, reusable, sustainable, and economical. It costs significantly less than blotters. It is available for purchase in either sheets or rolls and in both a lightweight and heavyweight form.
It can be used for many things such as in disaster salvage kits as an absorbent material, for Gore-tex humidification in place of blotters, for capillary washing, with the suction table in place of filter paper, and in phytate treatments for books written in iron gall ink because it is so thin it won’t put stress on the binding. Tek-Wipe can also be used as a support for transporting wet objects and can be used for dry cleaning glass plate negatives.
Kaslyne’s first case study example was the treatment of a print that had been coated in varnish. The Tek-Wipe was soaked in ethanol and placed on the face of the print along with a sheet of Mylar and even weight for 15 minutes. This was repeated twice to make sure all of the varnish was removed from the paper. From the images that were shown in the presentation it appeared that the varnish was solubilized by the ethanol and absorbed by the Tek-Wipe and thus removed from the print.
The second case study was about a hand colored Audubon engraving that had been trimmed and mounted to a pulp board. They determined that the adhesive was strong and mechanical removal was too time consuming so they used a combination of humidification and mechanical removal using Tek-Wipe. For this treatment, sheets of Tek-Wipe were soaked in water and laid out flat. The print was placed back down on the Tek-Wipe and a sheet of acrylic was placed on top with weight added to ensure even contact. Once the pulp board was humidified it was taken out of the stack and the board was removed mechanically with ease. After the board was removed the print could be washed and light bleached.
Since Tek-Wipe is very absorbent and good for washing and varnish removal it gets stained. Don’t worry though, it is washable! It can be washed by hand or in the washing machine and you can reuse it! Kaslyne did warn not to scrub it because it can break the fiber bonds and cause fibrillation. Tek-wipe can be dried on a rack, but it will dry in the shape of its support so Kaslyne recommended flattening it on a table with a brayer with no weight or restraint needed.

44th Annual Meeting – Paintings Session, 16 May 2016, “Bocour paints and Barnett Newman paintings: context and correlations,” by Dr. Corina Rogge and Bradford Epley

Installation view of Barnett Newman: The Late Work, The Menil Collection, March 27-August 2, 2015. Image found here.

Barnett Newman was fairly private about his technique, and until recently, much less was known about his methods and materials than many other artists from the same era. Over the last few years, Dr. Corina Rogge and Bradford Epley have conducted an extensive study of Newman’s technique centered on the 2015 Menil Collection exhibit Barnett Newman: The Late Work, which included paintings drawn from the Menil and collections across the United States and Europe. By analyzing each of the paintings brought together for the show along with studio materials and Newman ephemera, the Menil team were able to learn a great deal about Newman’s working method, and Dr. Rogge’s presentation on the second day of the PSG sessions explored his loyal use of paints produced by Leonard Bocour.

Phillip Pearlstein, Leonard Bocour, 1966. Image from: http://philippearlstein.com/portrait-oil-1960s/wwtb3r20xfzsy40q37iajw3hz8wema — Phillip Pearlstein, *Leonard Bocour*, 1966. Image found here.

Bocour began producing paint in the early 1930s, opening a storefront in Manhattan which quickly became a hang-out spot for AbEx artists. In 1947, Bocour Artist Colors introduced the solvent-borne acrylic Magna, and in 1963, the water-borne acrylic Aqua-Tec, which was a favorite of Newman’s. In addition to these and other lines, Bocour often produced bespoke colors for his artists, and Newman himself often hand-mixed pigments and other additives into Bocour paints, complicating the issue when trying to understand which paints are present on Newman’s various works.
Dr. Rogge highlighted some of the idiosyncrasies of Bocour’s paints, such as the fact that the names of colors don’t necessarily correspond to the actual colorants in the paint. For instance, she found that Bocour Hand Ground Oil Ultramarine Red was colored with manganese violet pigment, while his Bellini Oil Colors Cobalt Blue was actually ultramarine. Generally, these misleading names aren’t too much of an issue, but in certain colors synthetic organic dyes – which Bocour referred to as “toners” – were added, and this is where things get dicey. His so-called cadmium colors like red and yellow contained a mixture of (not necessarily cadmium-based) inorganic pigments and organic dyes, which causes them to be light-sensitive and susceptible to fading or color shifts. She also found that the paint formulas went through changes in their colorants, binders, and additives over their years of production, and offered this handy tip: the address listed on the tube will indicate the period from which it originates – Bocour tubes initially listed simply “New York City,” and then, in 1943, there’s the addition of a two-letter postal zone, and the addition of the newly created five-digit zip code in 1963-64.

Hans Namuth, Barnett Newman in his studio, 1952. Image from: http://henrimag.com/blog1/?p=6402 — Hans Namuth, *Barnett Newman in his studio*, 1952. Image found here.

The Menil team collaborated with the National Gallery to analyze the historic Bocour materials in their Art Materials Research and Study Center, and with Harvard Art Museum’s Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art to analyze the Newman studio paints in their collection. They also received a timely gift: sculptor Robert Murray, a friend and sometimes studio assistant of Newman’s, was an invited lecturer and guest at the Menil symposium accompanying the exhibition of Newman’s late works. Murray then donated to the Menil paints from Newman’s studio, including many Bocour products. By analyzing the pigment ratios of Newman’s hand-mixed additions to the standard Bocour colors, Dr. Rogge was able to group certain paintings together as having been created at the same time.
Rogge and Epley’s broad study of Barnett Newman’s work has benefitted from some excellent collaboration and has highlighted the great value of our national study centers for historic artists’ materials. Their study is allowing scholars to understand the chronology and evolution of his late works, many of which were simply found in his studio after his passing. Her presentation emphasized the fact that the apparent aesthetic simplicity of Newman’s canvases belies not only the surprising complexity of his working method but also his fervent commitment to technical excellence and the physical longevity of his work.

44th Annual Meeting- Textiles Session, May 16, "A Biological Disaster to Costume," by Cathy Zaret, Mary Ballard, and Carol Grissom

When we hear the word “disaster,” images of fire or flood and the subsequent damage might spring to mind, but what about the silent, tiny disaster that might be steadily digesting your collection? Cathy Zaret, presenting for Mary Ballard, provided a graphic example of just how damaging an infestation can be in her talk, “A Biological Disaster to Costume.”
The site of this infestation was a townhouse on Vermont Avenue in Washington, DC that housed the Black Fashion Museum. Founded in 1979 by Lois K. Alexander Lane, the museum’s collection is comprised of over 700 costumes, 300 accessories and 60 boxes of archival material; all designed, sewn or worn by African Americans. Notable highlights include the dress worn by Rosa Parks in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, costumes designed by Geoffrey Holder for “The Wiz,” and the wedding dress, designed by Ann Lowe, worn Jacqueline Bouvier when she became Mrs. Kennedy.

The Black Fashion Museum was the life’s work and passion of Lane and after her death in 2007, the future of the collection was uncertain. Lane’s daughter, Joyce Bailey, ultimately donated the collection in its entirety to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, but while its fate was decided, the collection was sealed in a building without climate control and without monitoring. When the Smithsonian conservation team arrived to assess the collection, what they found was a dramatic example of the importance of good housekeeping. The collection was crawling with carpet beetles. Cathy offered the speculation that ground zero, a red dress surrounded by waves of red frass (a slight exaggeration on my part, cue horror movie soundtrack), was in a closet on the second floor, near a walled up fireplace. Left to run riot, what might have been a beetle or two became an infestation of epic proportions.
Carpet beetles (usually referencing genus Anthrenus and the various species including varied, museum and furniture carpet beetles) are ubiquitous throughout the United States (and beyond). The adults feed on pollen and nectar and are attracted to light, but females will seek dark and secluded places to lay their eggs. One female can lay 30-40 eggs on a food source. The developing larva can wreak havoc during their 3-36 month development as they feed on proteinaceous materials. As the infestation of the infamous red dress was undiscovered for some time, larva fed and matured into egg-laying adults, multiplying the hungry mouths with each generation.
In describing the way that Mary Ballard and her team addressed the infestation, Cathy stressed that an active infestation is a disaster that can come home with you. Carpet beetles, though they keep on giving, are not a gift you want to give to your friends (or museum). Quarantine is essential. Access to the site should be restricted and precautions taken to prevent the spread of the infestation. When working in the townhouse, team members were encouraged to wear clothing of cellulosic materials and to wash those clothes immediately after leaving the site. You can never say immediately too many times!
As the insect activity had to be addressed before the collection could be processed, the contents of the townhouse were documented in situ, triage packed and moved by truck to the support center of the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute. At the MCI, the entire collection of the Black Fashion Museum underwent an anoxic treatment using argon gas. In an environment with less than 1000ppm of oxygen for 30 consecutive days (the time for treatment will vary based on gas used, temperature, RH, and species), all life-stages should be rendered unviable. At the MCI, two vapor impermeable bubbles, each 8’x11’x11’ were constructed and the ambient oxygen was slowly reduced.
The bubbles were monitored during treatment (safety first! Always have a partner and monitor the oxygen levels around the bubbles), and the argon was topped off to ensure that oxygen levels were kept below the necessary minimum.
After the completion of the anoxic treatment, a condition survey and surface cleaning was still required for the contents of the 273 boxes moved from the townhouse. Although the treatment should have rendered all life-stages unviable, cast off larval skins and insect remains can provide a food source for future insects. Every surface, every layer of tulle in a massive confection of nylon net, needed to be vacuumed. As at the townhouse, nozzles and brushes needed to be washed after each use.
This massive treatment was absolutely essential in incorporating the Black Fashion Museum into the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I’m looking forward to viewing some of the iconic and historic objects on display when the museum opens this fall!

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the Black Fashion Museum founded by Lois K. Alexander-Lane

If you haven’t checked it out, the NMAAHC webpage has a lot of material to explore and information about the upcoming grand opening.
For additional information, MuseumPests.net is the go-to site for identification and great fact sheets on different solutions.

44th Annual Meeting – General Session, May 15, “Preserving Trauma: Treatment Challenges at the 9/11 Memorial Museum” by John Childs and Maureen Merrigan

John Childs presented the treatment and installation challenges the conservation team faced at the 9/11 Memorial museum.
After 9/11, spontaneous memorials appeared, and the 9/11 Memorial Museum became the permanent memorial for this tragic event. It created a need to save and preserve physical evidence of the attacks, ranging from bits of paper to enormous steel girder and fire engines, not because of what it was but how it demonstrated in a physical way the trauma of that day. As conservators, we recognize where value lies in making treatment decisions, but poor condition itself is valued for the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Three treatments that posed philosophical challenges were explored in this talk.
The first was a Warner Bros. sign, which was saved from the store on the concourse level of the World Trade Center by some workers who found the material evocative. The object included letters as well as portions of the wall it was installed on. The question became how much of the sign to include in exhibition: the whole thing? The letters, cement tile, and mortar? Just the letters? Childs questioned whether this discussion was legitimate. Museums don’t usually select portions of an object but when extracting bits of wreckage, where are the boundaries between one object from another? There were so many layers that they distracted from the letters, so the decision was made to saw off wall board from the letters because that is where the value lies. It was then affixed to aluminum honeycomb and rendered legible as an object but also preserved the trauma it suffered. It takes its place among evocative objects from the site.
The second treatment involved the B2 parking level wall from the garage. The preservation of trauma is the primary conservation goal: the preservation of trauma of specific events, 9/11, but also of February 21, 1993, the truck bomb in the garage of the World Trade Center. Part of the B2 parking level wall, complete with scorch marks, was covered, wrapped, and transported to museum. It arrived during construction of the building and protections against flooding were not in place at this time. Hurricane Sandy flooded the area and seven feet of water went into the museum site, submerging large objects under water. It took five days to pump the water out and clean the objects. Vehicles or steel were primarily the large objects and medium pressure steam was used to clean these objects. The B2 slab was now covered with a layer of silt on its surface, on top of the soot from 9/11. The decision was made to completely remove evidence of Sandy, though Sandy was now another trauma suffered in NY. The value of the collection lies in its history and this would be hiding that history, but the mission of the museum was not to preserve the memory of Sandy. They had to remove the trauma of Sandy while preserving trauma of 9/11. They delayed treatment and found that as the silt dried, it could be brushed off without disturbing the 9/11 soot underneath. They waited until it was installed vertically in the exhibition and brushed the surface into a HEPA vacuum, revealing the soot.
Dust was an enormously significant part of the story, including silica, asbestos, and man-made vitreous fibers, creating a decidedly unhealthy environment. This really amounted to human remains. Dust was all that people had left of loved ones. Dust had a unique place in that story, as both a lethal and sacred substance. Childs stated that there is a palpable and justifiable fear of it in NY still today. Dust was donated to the museum, and one of the most significant donations is a display of Chelsea Jeans, a store on Broadway a couple of blocks from the site. The owner found the store under a thick layer of dust and left part of the store undisturbed, sealed behind glass to protect customers. He donated the storefront to the New York Historical Society, who used asbestos mitigation to deinstall and move it to NYHS. It was put on display in 2006 in a specially designed case and then donated to the 9/11 museum. To install it, the museum had to hire an environmental mitigation company to create an asbestos containment chamber in the galleries. Those working on the display took a course on asbestos training, had medical tests and a respirator fit testing. The containment chamber consisted of crates for objects, crates for glass sealing case, entry chamber (air lock), and a shower for decontamination after exiting enclosure. They all wore respirators and disposable coveralls. Given the situation, they had to make installation decisions as they were working, and they had a window so curators could be involved from the outside. The case was installed in a way that curators thought would best represent the original display. Glazers were installed and sealed the glass. Many people not used to standard museum procedures were very involved in this process, making cooperation and compromise absolutely necessary. This exhibition combines, in one setting, all of the disparate meanings of dust on 9/11 and is in the section on response and recovery of the museum.
For the 9/11 museum, damage and destruction is the story. For conservation, it is critical to appropriately save the evidence of damage that will tell the story effectively. Childs expressed how it can be emotionally charged with horror, sadness, and loss. The museum and experience have a profound meaning for a huge number of people, and Childs ended his talk by expressing what an absolute honor it was to participate.

44th Annual Meeting – General Session, May 15, “When disaster mitigation is a priority: Evidence from risk analysis of rare events” by Irene Karsten and Stefan Michalski

In this talk, Irene Karsten presented a method that CCI has established to quantitatively evaluate risk assessment for an institution. CCI has been using this method, called the ABC method, to conduct risk assessment for heritage institutions. The probability of a certain incident is estimated by answering the following questions:

How often will the event occur?
How much value will be lost?
How much of the heritage asset will be affected?

A score of 5 points is generated for A, B, and C, for a total magnitude risk out of 15 points. A total of 5 points or lower is considered negligible risk and 15 points is catastrophic and unacceptable.

Score	Risk	Loss to collection
5 or lower	Negligible
9 or lower	Medium to negligible	Damage takes millennia. May agree that level of care is adequate and improvements possible but wait till higher risks are reduced.
10-11	Medium – high	Maybe negotiable. Standard of care may be okay but improvements highly recommended
12-13	High	Lost in 100 years, may be unacceptable
15	Catastrophic	Unacceptable. All value lost in decades. Such risks are rare.

In this talk, Karsten is paying particularly attention to level 10-13 risks. Also, this is a logarithmic scale, which allows the authors to graph a lot of risks on each graph and compare them easily. Karsten went through a number of examples, including two historic houses, art gallery, provincial archives, and science and technology museum, highlighting the various risks and how they were evaluated. For all five institutions, disaster risks in high or extreme categories were fire. CCI did not just assess the risks, but also looked at mitigation of risk. For fire, CCI recommends an automatic fire suppression system. This does not eliminate fire risk but substantially reduces the risk of spread. In terms of cost-effectiveness, options that reduce large risks tend to have a better cost-effectiveness, too. When assessing if your collection is at a serious risk of loss, it has to impact storage.

Karsten then went through five types of weather disasters and explained how an institution would be assessed to be at an extreme or high risk for that threat.
For a flood, an institution is at extreme risk if storage is below flood grade or even below grade near the old water main or faulty storm sewers. An institution is at high risk if it is on grade on a flood plain or below grade.
For a fire, an institution is at extreme or high risk if it is a combustible building structure, there is lack of compartmentation, the region is at risk of wild fire, or there is a lack of automatic fire suppression. 1 in 5 fires is expected to spread to the whole structure.
For an earthquake, an institution is at extreme risk if the building is lacking seismic protection and there is a risk of violent earthquakes (7 or higher on the Richter scale). An institution is at high risk if storage is lacking seismic protection and there is a risk of very strong to violent earthquakes (6.5 or higher on the Richter scale).
For a tornado, an extreme risk is EF4 or EF5 tornados in US and high risk of EF4-5 in Canada, depending on the frequency of tornados in the area.
For a hurricane, an extreme risk is if the building is in a region at risk of major hurricanes (category 3-5) and the building is not designed to resist high winds. In Canada, only category 2 hurricanes really occur, and the damage is rarely extensive to be high or extreme risk.

44th Annual Meeting – Electronic Media Group Session, May 15, "Matters in Media Art III: Sustaining Digital Video Art" by Martina Haidvogl and Peter Oleksik

This talk announced the completion of the latest phase of the Matters in Media Art project focusing on digital preservation and assessment of digital video, and marked the official re-launch of the project’s website, mattersinmediaart.org. The website is the product of a collaborative effort over many years by teams of staff members from Tate, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the New Art Trust. In this talk, Peter Oleksik and Martina Haidvogl, media conservators at MoMA and SFMOMA respectively, provided a background and history of the Matters in Media Art project and walked the audience through the new website.

The New Art Trust was founded in 1997 by Pamela and Richard Kramlich, pioneering collectors of media art. In 2003 they approached the three museums with some funds to gather the four institutions together to discuss emerging practices in the care of media art, and the “Matters in Media Art” project was born. The first phase focused on lending and was launched in 2005. The second phase launched in 2008 and focused on acquisitions, and the third phase began in 2011. The scope of the third phase was originally going to be sustaining digital art; however, this proved too broad, as it could have included all digital art (software-based art, web-based/net art, graphics, and more). The effort was instead fine-tuned to focus on digital preservation and assessment of digital video. The speakers explained that the length of the third phase exceeded the other two not only because the original scope was too broad, but because the field was evolving so rapidly that material they were creating ended up in a constant state of revision. To address this, the group made two decisions: first, to launch a new website encompassing all phases of the project at this AIC Annual Meeting (to provide a much-needed deadline), and second, to create a dynamic resource that could evolve with ongoing input from the wider conservation community. They felt that the project should be a resource for multiple audiences and provide a framework for ongoing collaboration, rather than represent a single perspective and a static endpoint.

The new Matters in Media Art website is hosted on Github, situating the content in an open-source environment where anyone can make suggestions for revisions and additions. The group felt that moving away from closed platforms and static white papers would enable these resources to stay current despite the dynamic pace of change in the field generally. The text of the website was written by teams at the partner institutions and collaboratively edited during bi-weekly virtual meetings. The design team created mock-ups and design tests, coordinated user trials, and solicited and consolidated pre-launch feedback from users within and outside the conservation community. All the work on the third phase was done as a volunteer staff effort with no grant or other project-specific funding.

The speakers then walked the audience through the site in real time. They explained that materials from the first two phases required only minimal updates. The teams worked to ensure there is no outdated information from the first two phases on the site. The new “Documentation” section includes cataloging, condition reports, and assessing digital video. The new section on “Sustaining Digital Art” describes how to store digital works successfully. This section is framed by a survey as a first step that guides the reader through the rest of the section, enabling the reader to develop a plan specific to their needs.

The new material speaks to all audiences: individual, collector, and institution. Some in the audience remarked that this made the recommendations less focused and the site text-heavy. The speakers agreed that it was ambitious and emphasized that the teams want, invite, and need feedback to make refinements and speak to multiple audiences even more effectively.

Contribution guidelines were recently finalized on the website and include ways for users to provide feedback via Github or in a simple online survey. The speakers urged the audience to visit the site and provide their opinions. The project was also announced with a flyer provided to all conference attendees, to encourage anyone dealing with media conservation at their institution to consult this valuable new resource.

44th Annual Meeting – Electronic Media Group Session, May 15, "Videotape Deterioration Mechanisms and Conservation Remedies: A Primer" by Erik Piil

Erik’s talk provided a survey of deterioration mechanisms and the evolution of corresponding treatment literature, as well as some novel approaches to condition assessment and treatment.

He opened with a discussion of “sticky shed” syndrome, in which a hydrolysis reaction in an environment with high RH causes the binder layer on magnetic tape to become unstable. During playback, this softened binder leaves a residue on the playback heads, which can damage the tape and clog the heads. While waveform monitors and vectorscopes can’t help diagnose this condition, a less common scope, tracking RF (the unmodulated RF signal put into waveform) can give a kind of “EKG” of the video signal. Erik showed normal vs. abnormal RF envelopes — the abnormal one indicates head-clogging due to sticky shed. This causes loss of signal and eventually complete loss of image. RF monitoring can help differentiate between sticky shed and other issues, such as a transfer done with an overstretched tape, poor head alignment, and deterioration due to tape wear. For instance, abrasive wear (such as that caused by a particulate scraped down the tape) can cause a ripple in the RF but looks very different on the scope from the abnormal RF envelope caused by sticky shed.

Erik also described the damage that could be caused by abrasive wear. He described various surface cleaning methods that can be employed to remove particles that could cause abrasive damage during playback. These include cleaning open-reel videotape by wrapping dusting paper around the playback heads; however, some tapes have a carbon black back-coating that is susceptible to sticky shed, so it is important to verify that neither the magnetic binder nor the back coating are compromised before cleaning. Other cleaning methods have included using isopropyl alcohol to clean the tape during playback, and using Pellon on both the oxide layer and carbon black back-coating to trap loose oxide particles, along with a vacuum to draw those particles away. Surface cleaning machines integrating these methods can be purchased off-the-shelf (such as Bow Systems 432 open-reel videotape cleaner for enterprise-level use). Alternatively, Erik showed a prototype for a cleaning machine that he is presently testing with Video Data Bank (VDB). It uses open-source circuitry (Arduino-based), approximately $1,200 in parts, and custom spindles. The design is available on GitHub: epiil open-cleaner.

Erik discussed the history of thinking on the baking of tapes exhibiting sticky shed. While this may temporarily restore binder integrity to enable transfer of the content, it does not cure the condition, and is controversial. Some maintain that baking damages the behavior of oxide particles, as well as the mechanical behavior of the pack, while others see it as necessary in order to rescue content from deteriorating sources.

In terms of condition assessment, several research projects are underway to advance scientific understanding of deterioration mechanisms. Among these is the University of South Carolina’s development of a non-invasive test for sticky shed using ATR-FTIR. Not only does this kind of scientific research enable the field to develop best practices based on data rather than anecdotal evidence, it also gives practitioners much-needed tools for non-invasive condition assessment. Presently, condition assessment is largely accomplished through observation of playback, which can cause damage before vulnerability can be ascertained.

Throughout the presentation, Erik shared resources to consult that show the evolution of approaches to condition assessment and treatment of magnetic tapes:

Bharat Bhutan, “Mechanics and Reliability of Flexible Magnetic Media” Springer; 2nd edition (May 31, 2000)
Walter Forsberg & Erik Piil, “Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out: Section 108(c) and Evaluating Deterioration in Commercially Produced VHS Collections” Annual Review of Cultural Heritage Informatics 2012-2013, Facet Publishing (July 2014)
Tony Conrad, “Open Reel Videotape Restoration” The Independent, AIVF, Volume 10, Issue 8, Number 8 (1987) – describes what was a pioneering treatment at the time for sticky shed
Charles Richardson, “The New “Non-Baking” Cure for Sticky Shed Tapes” ARSC Journal, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Fall 2013) – makes a case against baking; advocates for adoption of the cleaning machine developed by the author

Erik invited the audience to visit GitHub to follow the progress of his affordable, open-source open-reel videotape cleaner, and to contribute or comment. This is an exciting project that will make a quality cleaning machine feasible for institutions on limited budgets. The novel use of the tracking RF scope and the look at historic as well as contemporary treatment literature for videotape conservation were two other highlights of this talk.