A boon for public outreach (and great photos too)

Eight and a half years ago,  I spent four days at Villa La Pietra (NYU’s conference and study center in Florence), never leaving the grounds that entire period after I passed through the gates.  I felt as if I had stepped away from the present into some other time . The surreal images of early 20th century garments by Callot Souers discovered in a trunk in one of the rooms of the Villa not too long ago which accompany Jessamyn Hatcher’s essay, “Twenty-One Dresses” in the March 23, 2015 issue of The New Yorker brought back that feeling to me. However, it is the photos of damages to the garments caused by use,  inherent vice,  and poor storage conditions and the discussion of the garments’ conservation issues which thrill me. Right there in The New Yorker there is a sensitive, well thought out discussion of condition and conservation. What a boon for public outreach and education! And what wonderful images, too.

Statement of ISIS Destruction of Cultural Heritage from AIC Board President, Pamela Hatchfield

It is with great horror and sadness that we learn about the continuing destruction of mosques, shrines, churches, temples, historic sites, and cultural treasures in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. This senseless destruction is fueled by the misguided notion that we are not bound by a common humanity, empathy, and intelligence. These heinous acts cause us to consider the critical importance of cultural heritage – it is our shared history, and the act of destroying it is an attempt to destroy the identities of not only the cultures and religions it represents, but also the rich diversity of the evolution of humankind. Even worse, the treasures not destroyed are being sold to finance the continuing efforts of ISIS. The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage at Nimrud, Mosul, Hatra, and elsewhere is considered cultural genocide. The current obliteration of heritage in Iraq has been described by UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova as a war crime which cannot be tolerated. We call to action all the nations of the world who ratified the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in the Event of Armed Conflict.
What can we do? Contact your senators and members of congress and ask them to support the Hague Convention.
– Pam Hatchfield, AIC President

The discovery of two unknown works by Cezanne leads to fantasies of more treasures to be uncovered at the Barnes Collection

On February 21 2015, Randy Kennedy reported in The New York Times ( “Two Unfinished Cezannes Discovered at the Barnes”) that, at the Barnes Collection, during the removal of acidic backings from watercolors by Paul Cezanne, previously unknown works were discovered on the backs of two of them. This occurred at the start of what will be a year long conservation program for the collection. Such spectacular discoveries might well lead one to fantasize about other treasures that might be uncovered by  Barnes conservators  in the months to come

Will conservation suffer the same fate as the kimono industry of Amami Oshima?

In his February 10, 2015 article on the dying art of kimono production on the island of Amami Oshima, Japan (“Old Ways Prove Hard to Shed, Even as Crisis Hits Kimono Trade”, The New York Times),  Martin Fackler describes in detail the labor intensive steps of that  craft. This is very helpful in explaining to the public why such garments sell for more than $3,000 apiece.  He notes that the people who create them make less money than fishermen, farmers and loggers and that few young people now choose to study the techniques.
As salaries for conservators fail to keep up with the increasing cost of living, how soon might we read in the general press about a  situation where there are few people who wish to put in the time, effort and expense to become conservators when there are better paying careers which require much less in the way of preparation?

Is there some object lesson here?

On February 4, 2015, The New York Times reported (“A Crashing End to a Work of Ice a City Had Warmed Up To”, by Mitch Smith) that on February 3rd a sixty-six foot tall ice sculpture in Superior, Wisconsin which had been in construction for three months collapsed a month before its scheduled completion. During construction, the sculpture was monitored regularly for environmental problems such as wind and seismic activity and regularly maintained (using a robotic hose regulated by computer monitors that sprayed water on problem spots). Is there an object lesson here for conservators about the limits of our work as even with environmental monitoring and regular maintenance, this art work fell apart.

In the end is it just a matter of taste?

According to Michael Kimmelman in his Critic’s Notebook piece in the January 28, 2015 issue of The New York Times (“A Chance to Salvage A Master’s Creation”), because of dislike for its style, Orange County government officials allowed Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York to fall into disrepair and the building be scheduled for partial demolition. Although architect Gene Kaufman has made an offer to buy and restore the building and also design a new government center, County Executive Steven M. Neuhas insists that the demolition will go on. It would appear that Neuhas’ decision is based on pure aesthetic dislike. Should taste be the factor which decides whether a work of art or architecture is destroyed or restored?

Be prepared: not just a Boy Scout motto

It’s every museum’s nightmare: an errant spark from construction causes a fire; sprinklers unleash water on some of the most vulnerable objects in the collection.  Luckily this museum had an emergency response plan.  In the Dec. 26, 2014 Wall Street Journal article “After Fire, a Rush to Preserve History,” the conservators at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) faced this all too common nightmare and successfully and quickly responded.  Ironically, the damage occurred in the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians, the recent focus of a multi-year conservation project, described previously on this blog and also presented  at last year’s AIC annual conference.  The conservation department, led by Judith Levinson (pictured in the article), quickly removed the affected objects, catalogued them, and performed triage.  Levinson was also featured in a video by local news channel Pix 11.  This occurrence raises the question: does your museum have a emergency response plan?
 

A new tool for looking into the past that leads to fantasies of reading lost works of literature

In the January 21, 2015 issue of The New York Times, Nicholas Wade writes about the use of x-ray computed tomography by researchers at the Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems (Naples, Italy) to visualize the letters inside of the lumps of carbonized plant material that were, before the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, papyrus scrolls in the library of the grand villa at Herculaneum (“Unlocking Scrolls Preserved in Eruption of Vesuvius, Using X-Ray Beams”). Although being able to see free floating letters is a far cry from viewing full texts, it is hard not to fantasize about reading lost works and original texts of Latin and Greek literature.

Some astounding numbers

The January/February issue of the Library of Congress Magazine is devoted to “The Science of Preservation” and contains short articles written for the non-specialist on such topics as the use of hyperspectral imaging to study Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, the lifespan of digital media, and mass deacidification of paper based items. While all of these articles will be edifying for the publication’s wide audience (it is distributed free of charge to publicly supported libraries and research institutions, academic libraries, and learned societies in the U.S.), the page with the greatest impact may well be “Preservation by the Numbers” which lists the numbers of items from the Library’s collection that are treated in a year. A few of the astounding numbers: 1,098,488 volumes and sheets deacidified, 162,462 items bound, and 37,725 photographs rehoused.

Peek into the past: AIC/MFA Boston's Pam Hatchfield Opens Revere's Time Capsule

Pam Hatchfield appears on WGBH Greater Boston to discuss opening the time capsule.
Pam Hatchfield appears on WGBH Greater Boston to discuss opening the time capsule.

Conservator Pam Hatchfield, head of objects conservation at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and AIC’s board president, had the rare opportunity to excavate and open the oldest known time capsule in the U.S. The capsule was stored in the Massachusetts State House, wedged tight inside a cornerstone, and Hatchfield spent 7 hours carefully removing it. On January 6th, Hatchfield opened the box and removed its contents using a variety of tools, including a porcupine quill.
Hatchfield appeared on a local news show, Greater Boston on WGBH News, to discuss the time capsule and her process, accompanied by Michael Comeau, the executive director of the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum. They talked with WGBH News Arts Editor Jared Bowen. You can watch the video of the interview here.