Category: Collection Care

Posts related to AIC’s Collection Care Network

42nd Annual Meeting – Book and Paper, May 31, Library Collections Conservation Discussion Group

The theme of this year’s Library Collections Conservation Discussion Group was “Options for Sustainable Practice in Conservation”, which tasked speakers to examine how conservators could lessen the carbon footprint of conservation work. Speakers included Brian Baird, from Bridgeport National Bindery, Danielle Creech of ECS Conservation, Julie Newton from Emory University, and Marieka Kaye of the University of Michigan Libraries. The speaker line-up was notably diverse, in that it included speakers from commercial binderies as well as those from labs within academic libraries.
 
Brian Baird had some good points about why conservators and labs should focus more on reducing waste, rather than just relying on recycling, to lessen their carbon footprint. For instance, recycling some items, such as ink cartridges, doesn’t do much good – the cartridges are shipped to China, where they remove the last few drops of ink, and the plastic cartridges still end up in the landfills. His ultimate take-away lesson was that no recycling program can be as efficient or cost-effective as simply reducing consumption of materials.
 

Pile of books that can't be recycled for high-end paper waste, because they have print on them.
Slide from Brian Baird’s talk.

Danielle Creech spoke about the various iterations of ECS Conservation’s recycling program. Over the years, they’ve recycled everything from linotype and monotype waste, old equipment, old book covers, shrink-wrap packaging, and paper dust. They built a relationship with their County Solid Waste Management District, who helped partner them with a business-to-business recycling business called Quincy Recycling. With each iteration of their recycling program, ECS had to come up with creative solutions to reduce consumption as well as find ways to recycle various types of materials. Danielle made a very important point that recycling is NOT free, as it requires time and labor to train employees in the proper recycling procedures. She also mentioned that they have noticed some “recycling fatigue”, as employees constantly have to remember which of the 17 recycling barrels should be used for different kinds of waste.
 
Horse lying down in pile of paper dust bedding
Slide from Danielle Creech’s talk, showing a horse enjoying its new bed of paper dust, courtesy of her bindery’s recycling program.

 
Marieka Kaye outlined how both the library and her lab play a large part in promoting sustainability in the overall University of Michigan community, via the Library Green Team program. This program encompasses more than just recycling bins, by providing avenues for both staff and students to creatively reduce consumption as well as reuse materials within the library. For instance, their library staff intranet has a Craigslist-style office furniture swap listing, and the library sells reusable water bottles which can be used with the recently-installed water-bottle refill stations.  In the conservation lab, they replaced the incandescent bulbs in the overhead lights with energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.
 
Julie Newton started her talk off with the statement that “a box of lab scraps is a hundred tiny art projects waiting to happen”, which will resonate with anyone who loves to collage or make other types of paper-based art. Through her vigorous efforts, Julie was able to extend the life of many materials before they went into the recycling bins. She noted that while conservators are usually very frugal with their materials, such as Japanese tissue, they tend to be less frugal with more plebian materials such as box-making board or paper towels. She encouraged her staff to re-use scraps in creative ways, either within the lab or outside of it. She also acknowledged that you do have to ask yourself on occasion if the effort and time it takes to accumulate and repurpose scrap is worth it, versus just getting new materials. Making scrap useful is again, not a “free” activity, as it requires staff time to sort and organize it in a useful way.
Piece of Japanese tissue torn into smaller and smaller pieces
Slide from Julie Newton’s presentation, showing how conservators can find uses for even the tiniest scraps of Japanese tissue.

 
I’ve made a list of the some of my favorite creative uses for scraps and “waste” that were presented by these speakers:

  • Several thousand pounds of paper dust were repurposed as horse bedding when it was donated to an Amish farm by ECS.
  • Excess rubber bands were donated by ECS to a teacher in Indiana, who is trying to break the record for the largest continuous rubber band ball.
  • Some materials can be composted, such as paper towels, old paste, used tea bags.
  • Scraps of board and paper can be donated to schools or local art programs and clubs.

All in all, the speakers acknowledged that recycling and reducing consumption requires some effort and staff time, but in the end it can make a big difference by improving the environment and providing a positive impact on our society. In addition, contributing to sustainability efforts helps strengthen our relationship with our surrounding community, by forging partnerships with local businesses and environmental groups.
What creative solutions for repurposing “waste” or reducing material consumption has YOUR lab undertaken? Share them in the comments!

42nd Annual Meeting- General Session, May 30, "Using Webinars to Tackle Conservation Misinformation in Ontario's Community Museums" by Fiona Graham

“Conservation is an elusive practice just outside of budgetary reality.”  Fiona Graham, a conservation consultant in Kingston, Ontario, received this comment in a survey filled out by a small museum in Ontario, and it made her take notice.  Museums believing that conservation only equates to (costly) treatment leaves no room for implementing best practices, taking vital preventive measures, and leads to a general misunderstanding of the basic principles of preservation.  Graham set out to change the perceptions of these museums and chose webinars as her format.
Who: Ontario’s Community Museums–roughly 300 institutions that range in size but are not art galleries, private collections, or national museums.  Only 14 have in-house conservators (in one case, 9 museums share one conservator!).  The collection care for the remaining 286 falls into the hands of non-conservators.
Why: 185 of those Ontario Community Museums receive operating grants from the Ministry’s Museum Unit to survive economically.  In order to receive these grants, the museums must meet regulatory requirements, including a conservation standard.  To assess the state of conservation and preservation in the museums, a questionnaire was distributed to the museums, and Graham and her team discovered some startling misunderstandings.  For example, many respondents believed that light damage was caused only by UV, that pesticides are still needed, and that cold temperatures are always bad for collections.  (Since they are in colder climates, it’s especially disconcerting to think of the expenses paid to raise temperatures in these museums.)
What was done:  To debunk misunderstandings at as many of the museums as possible, the Ministry funded two 1.5 hour long webinars.  The webinar format was chosen because it can reach a targeted audience, has wide accessibility and the ability to be interactive, is inexpensive to produce, and has been successful through the Ontario Museums Association (an organization that provides training in museum work).  After institutions answered preliminary questions on their registration forms, webinars were conducted as powerpoint presentations narrated live by a conservator using the icohere platform.  The first webinar, Conservation 2.0, was a “good practice” refresher course meant for non-conservators, while the second, Climate Control: what do you really need?, focused on misinformation hot spots.  Participants used their own computers and sent questions to a moderator who passed them to the conservator to answer.  The Ontario Museum Association posted the slide deck and audio to their website after the webinars ended.
More details?  The prep questions: Define what conservation means in the context of your museums? What question about conservation would you like answered in this webinar? What do you think relative humidity and temp levels should be in your museum’s collection areas? Do you monitor RH and/or T; do you actively control RH? (The webinars included a disclaimer that “this webinar is not a substitute for proper training.”)
Results:  The webinars were open to all, not just the Ministry-funded institutions, and 55 organizations participated during the live broadcasts.  The prep questions from the registration forms informed the content of the webinars.  There was positive feedback overall, with requests for more programs.  The negative feedback regarded the amount of detailed information on conservation.  Graham recommends being very clear on expectations.  The webinar team will be able to gauge the long-term results of the refresher courses during the next audit in 2018.
(Author’s comments: This talk was part of the general session on Engaging Communities in Collections Care.  The U.S. Heritage Preservation organization also offers webinars to help smaller institutions with collections care.  Their webinars are part of their Connecting to Collections (C2C) online community.  Past programs are available in their archives.)

AIC’s 42nd Annual Meeting – Opening Session, May 29, “Precaution, proof, and pragmatism: 150 years of expert debate on the museum environment” by Foekje Boersma, Kathleen Dardes, and James Druzik

Foekje Boersma, along with Kathleen Dardes and James Druzik, provided an informative summary of the debate regarding environmental standards in their presentation “Precaution, proof, and pragmatism: 150 years of expert debate on the museum environment.”  The presentation began with a historical review, based in part on information obtained from AIC’s Conservation Wiki.
The Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Cleveland Museum of Art were the first museums to set specific humidity recommendations, in 1908 and 1915, respectively.  It is often stated that the development of environmental standards arose as a by-product of the storage of artworks in salt and coal mines during World War II, so I was interested to learn of earlier attempts at environmental control.
In 1940, Harold Plenderleith and George Stout said there was not adequate information to fix an “absolute standard” but suggested 60 – 65% relative humidity, chosen because it was easiest to maintain with stability.  Later, Plenderleith, now working with Paul Philippot, prescribed a “region of security” of 50 – 65% RH.  According to Boersma, these early conservators were pragmatic: although a set temperature and RH were specified, a greater emphasis was made on avoiding extremes.  The local climate and historical conditions of the objects were also to be taken into account.  Garry Thomson, who is often assigned either the credit or blame, depending on whom you ask, for the 50% RH/70° F standard, is misinterpreted according to Boersma.  He was also pragmatic.  Rather than endorsing the 50/70 rule, he merely predicted the increasing number of museum loans would lead to museums adopting that rigid standard.
Boersma attributes the widespread implementation of the 50/70 rule to the museum building boom in the 1970s.  Architects and engineers wanted numerical targets, and conservators were happy to specify safe conditions.  Sustainability was not much of a concern given cheap energy costs.  But already by 1979, CCI was advising seasonal variations with gradual fluctuations.  Boersma then skipped ahead to the 1990s and the controversial research of Charles Tumosa and Marion Mecklenburg at MCI, which said that materials aren’t as sensitive as previously thought.
Today, the debate on the museum environment has moved from conservators to museum directors and administrators.  The Bizot Group, concerned about environmental and economic sustainability, pushed to broaden environmental standards by adopting new Guiding Principles and Interim Guidelines, influenced by those developled by the NMDC (the National Museum Directors’ Council). In response, guidelines were published many other groups, such as AIC, BSI, AICCM, and the Doerner Institut.
In order to clarify the debate, Boersma divides prevailing views into three categories: precautionary safety, proven safety, and pragmatic risk management.  Precautionary safety, embodied by the Doerner Institut’s Munich Position, centers around the belief that “stable is safe.”  Not enough research has been done on the response of objects to wider environmental conditions.  To eliminate risk, objects should be kept under a narrow set of conditions.  Supporters of the proven safety approach acknowledge that actual conditions are wider than 50/70 because tight standards are impossible to maintain.  The proofed fluctuations of 40 – 60% RH and 50 – 70˚ F are acceptable.  Pragmatic risk management reflects ideas of risk assessment developed in the 1990s.  Resources should go to the reduction of the biggest risks to collections, which may or may not be climatic fluctuation.
In conclusion, Boersma wonders how conservators can function as a profession given such different views on a central topic.  She references her ongoing research as part of GCI’s Managing Collection Environments Initiative, which is working to answer questions generated by the debate.

42nd Annual Meeting – Collection Care & HVAC, May 31, "Some trends in examining six years of utility and climate data at the Museum of Modern Art" by Jim Coddington

Jim Coddington, the chief conservator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York,  presented some trends that were found from analyzing the environmental data that was collected at MoMA over the past six years. This was particularly interesting because it compared two relatively new or newly renovated buildings with different types of usage/functionality and HVAC systems. The building on 53rd street, Jim admits, is very leaky from a number of sources, including the many doors through which thousands of people pass, and has a steam and electric HVAC system. The building in Queens (QNS) on the other hand is mostly concrete with very little glass and has a gas powered HVAC system. The data that Jim presented was collected from across the museum including finance, operation, conservation, and vistor services. Needless to say there are a lot of people invested in this.
Jim showed mostly graphs and charts. These included data showing the temperature and %RH outside, inside the buildings, dew point, and comparing this energy usage. I’ve included images of the graphs that I found most interesting or informative.

NYC average monthly temperatures (6 year average) showing periods of cooling and heating inside the buildings.
NYC average monthly temperature (6 year average) showing periods of cooling and heating inside the QNS building. Most graphs showed what the temperature was at 1 PM each day.

Indoor RH
This graph shows the indoor RH from fixed outdoor dew point to variable indoor set-point Temperature.

In QNS there is a large expenditures of gas in august and dips in winter. This is because that are able to use free cooling to extract excess heat for 8 or9 months, or 3 out of 4 seasons, through a heat exchanger on the roof. In this process, heat is absorbed from the condenser water by air chilled water. The length of time they are able to use free-cooling is based on set points of T and RH (see second image) and is affected by air temperature, relative humidity, and water supply temperature. Non-free cooling with the RH set at 50% happens over the summer and is longer at lower temperatures. So during the summer the temperature set point is allowed to drift to 22 degrees C. Jim mentioned that having a narrower set point may actually equal cost savings, but they have no data for that.
On the analysis for the 53rd street building, Jim highlighted that this is a very different situation. It is a high use building, with lots of leakage points and demand on the systems- steam and electric principally. Therefore, the energy usage is much higher.
It has been asked whether heat from visitors is significant? In Chris McGlinchey’s calculation, the 360 kJ/hr given off by the visitors with a typical stay of 4 hours, this is not a huge contributing factor.
The combined energy usage in kJ/m2 at the 53rd street and QNS buildings.

In Jim’s summary and conclusions- The expected was stated that they are consuming more energy in the 53rd St building than QNS. This is mostly in winter (see the third image). The QNS building is more efficient because of the free cooling, lower set point temperature and equates to lower energy usage thanks to an efficient building design. Online Resources:

  • Steam- natural gas utility converter: http://www.coned.com/steam/default.asp
  • NIST Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI) 2008: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/pdf/sp811.pdf
  • Humidity converter: http://www.cactus2000.de/uk/unit/masshum.shtml
  • Dewpoint calculator: http://www.decatur.ed/javascript/dew/index.html
  • NOAA, National.ncdc.noaa.gov/

42nd Annual Meeting – Opening Session, 29 May, "Being a Gallery in a Park – balancing Sustainability, Access and Collection Care" by Nicola Walker and Ann French

This talk revolved around the Whitworth Art Gallery, part of the University of Manchester in the UK. I was interested in this talk in particular because I was interested to see the differences between UK and US approaches to sustainability, and to see how sustainability measures against other principles such as access and recommended storage conditions.
One of the central themes of this talk was that “access is central to all of the gallery activities”. This resulted in some interesting decisions, which strike a balance between practical and ideal. One that stuck out to me personally was the presence of an IPM working group which meets weekly, to discuss what needs to be done in order to ensure that events like festivals and those involving food can be pulled off. Their maintenance of a ‘can do’ attitude is inspiring, and ensures that the museum works with it’s surroundings – a park, which families want to be able to visit and enjoy in tandem with the museum.
The process which the museum went through in order to add an addition to the building was also discussed. A few points stood out there, as well:
– A new route was introduced to separate catering delivery from art movement and delivery (which is also related to the IPM working group).
– A green, bio-diverse roof was put into place on part of the building.
– Stores were relocated into a basement, where the environment can be controlled with passive techniques rather than air conditioning.
– Solar panels were added to the roof.
– Daylight was introduced into some galleries.
– A ground source heat pump was installed.
The idea of the green, bio-diverse roof was fascinating. In order to prevent it from drawing unwanted pests into the museum, they worked with entomologists to ensure that they only attracted specific insects – those who don’t want to eat their lovely textile collection. The introduction of daylight into galleries as discussed here formed a funny comparison to another talk given on sustainability and environmental consciousness.
Another aspect to sustainability was also discussed: the development of working patterns which allow the collection to be feasibly managed and kept in the best condition. One of the theories they work under is known as the Pareto 80:20 principle, which says that 80% of results come from 20% of issues, or in this case, 20% of objects. They use this principle to target their work-flow, focusing on the 20% which give the most result and working on the other 80% on a “modular” basis.
This cross of sustainable environment and sustainable work practices extends to the methods they use to package their 2D objects, as well. This category of object is packaged in a way that it can be easily switched from storage to display or vice versa, and the packaging provides a buffering layer that reduces the need for strict environmental control.
I would have loved to hear more about these storage/display procedures, as I think they could be useful for other museums. I’m also curious to have a more specific list of the plants they used in their bio-diverse roof garden, because that too could be useful in other places. Their practices seem to be very widely applicable, and their attitudes towards having a museum that works for the public and within its environment are admirable. I would love to see other museums adopt these approaches, to be environmentally friendly and to sustain the working environment of conservation professionals.

“42nd Annual Meeting,” Collections Care Speciality session, May 29th, 2014, "Simple Method for Monitoring Dust Accumulation in Indoor Collections." Bill Wei

“Simple Method for Monitoring Dust Accumulation in Indoor Collections,” by Bill Wei was the first session in the Collections Care specialty section that was given on Thursday afternoon. As a museum technician in Preventive Conservation, dust is something I deal with on an almost daily basis. I thought that Bill’s talk could lend some valuable insight to my work, and I wasn’t wrong.  Bill Wei is a Senior Conservation Scientist at the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, and in his session he presented on a simple and easily implemented way a museum could monitor how fast dust accumulates in an indoor collections space. He used the Museum de Gevangepoort and the Galerij Prins Willem V to demonstrate how the method.
The talk started off with a humorous introduction by Bill about views on dust in museum spaces. How for some people, museum professionals in particular, we can take a defensive stance on dust as if it implies we aren’t doing our jobs. For other individuals, dust adds an element of age that seems appropriate. He also mentioned that when the words “dusty museum” are googled the result is over 12,000 hits. Apparently more than just museum professionals see dust. Bill brought up the fact that dust is not only an aesthetic issue in museums, it can present chemical and health issues, and it can be costly and timely to remove. The two sites were then introduced, both of which house collections and are historic buildings. Construction was being done near the sites, and there was a concern about how much more dust accumulation this might cause, so they provided a good case study. Bill then introduced the question of how do you monitor dust?
Bill explained that dust on the surface of an object causes the light to bounce off in many different angles, as opposed to at the same angle, this makes a surface look matte. The resulting matte surface can then be considered to have lost gloss. This loss of gloss is something that can be measured using a glossmeter. The type of glossmeter used during this test was made by Sheen manufacturers. Bill was careful to point out that this test doesn’t measure how much dust you have, but how quickly it will accumulate. For this run of the test Bill used microscope glass slides, because they are cheap, reusable and glossy. The steps of the test are as follows:

  1. Using the glossmeter, measure a clean slide on a white background (copy paper is suitable. This should be the same background used throughout testing.)
  2. Put slides out at various locations you wish to test, remembering that the more slides you put out, the more work you will have to do. The slides should be placed in out of the way locations and staff should be told about them.
  3. After a predetermined amount of time (ex. one month), using the glossmeter measure the slide on the same background that you used in step 1.
  4. Clean the slide, and reuse, starting over at step 1.

The calculation that is then used to determine the rate of accumulation of dust over the time period is
Fraction change= (Dusty Slide after 1 month measurement – Clean Slide measurement)/ (Clean slide measurement)
Multiply that by 100 to get the percentage.
Bill explained that for every month that you take a glossmeter measurement, you add the value of the new measurement to the previous, since this is cumulative you will go over 100% at some point. You can then use these values and plot them in a graph over time.
If you wanted to test the dust samples, to find out where the dust was coming from and what it was made of, you could incorporate small conductive carbon stickers on the slides. Since this talk focused on the accumulation, not the source of the dust, this topic was not discussed in detail.
The placement of the slides was at one point done both vertically and horizontally surface. The vertical placement was done to mimic how much dust a painting might accumulate. However the vertically placed slides needed a much longer period of time to really show a loss in gloss, so it was not considered as necessary to run both types of slide placement.
When it came to analyzing the results of this test one thing that was found was the fact that the slide nearest the entry had the most dust. When it’s results were plotted onto a graph it produced the steepest slope over time. The more visitors a museum has, the more dust accumulation occurs. During peak tourist times there was a correlating peak in dust accumulation. One thing that was also noticed at the Museum de Gevangepoort was that during construction periods there was also a rise in dust accumulation. The results confirmed a long held thought that visitors are one of the main sources of dust in museums.
Bill then talked briefly about the chemistry of dust. When the dust was analyzed it was found to contain salts, iron, chalk, sand, clay and concrete among other things. When the makeup of the dust was looked at, it was possible to notice trends, for example during the winter months, February in particular there was a noticeable rise in the amount of salts found. Looking at what the dust was comprised of could allow scientists to identify the source of the dust.
Bill pointed out that the idea of too much dust isn’t really something that is definable in terms of science. It’s more defined by people’s perception of it. Different surface types can be just as dusty as one another, but if the dust is more visible on one type of surface, say plexi, the viewer read’s that surface as being less clean.
In discussing an action plan for dust monitoring Bill said you have to determine why you are doing it, i.e. to see if your new HVAC system is producing better results, and it’s important to define “too much dust” as a difference in gloss.
The questions asked after Bill’s presentation included, how many/ what angle should a gloss measurement be taken, to which Bill answered one measurement at 85 degrees was sufficient. He was also asked how often one should be taking measurements. He said that three to four weeks at most will produce good results, if you measure too soon a change won’t be seen.
Bill’s presentation was informative and lively. He presented a system for testing dust accumulation that could easily be implemented and followed. Thanks to Bill for a great talk!
 
 

42nd Annual Meeting – Track A: Case Studies in Sustainable Collections Care, May 30, “Boxes Inside of Boxes: Preventative Conservation Practices by Robin P. Croskery Howard”

Robin P. Croskery Howard, Objects Conservator at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, focused on how custom housing, in concert with climate control, can be effective preventative conservation. Three case studies highlighting specific housing solutions for different collection materials were shown.
Case Study #1: The Long Road Home/Speck Collection
Some housings need to provide safety for travel and long term storage. The Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki museum makes it a priority to repatriate any collection items that are not Seminole in origin. These items are returned untreated. The two housings used for this are either stacked layers of Volara cutouts, contoured to fit the object or ethafoam cavities lined with acid-free tissue.
Case Study #2: The Doll with the Broken Neck
The museum has a number of dolls made out of palmetto fibers. These fibers deteriorate over time and the limbs and necks of the dolls often detach. Any treatment would produce only temporary results as the doll continued to age and breakdown. Custom pillows and supports are used to support the dolls and relieve stress on their joints.
Case Study #3: Leaning Baskets
An oversized modern sweetgrass basket that had partially collapsed under its own weight was restored using an adaptive housing. The basket was put in a box with twill ties holding it in place. The ties were gradually tightened over several weeks to support and lift the basket and allow it to gently regain its shape over time. Other modern baskets are stored with ethafoam supports.
These were great, practical solutions for caring for objects by using housing to prevent or control damage. I realized while writing this post how much this session falls in line with Cordelia Rogerson’s “Fit for Purpose” talk. All of the items showcased here were cared for, but in a manner and level appropriate for long view of their “life” at the museum.

42nd Annual Meeting – Collection Care Session , May 29 “Conservation Assessment at Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg, Austria: Promoting Sustainable Choices for the Adaptive Re-use of the Collection and the Site” presented by Rita Berg, Graduate Intern in Paintings Conservation, Brooklyn Museum and Crista Pack, Kress Fellow, Arizona State Museum.

Beautiful landscapes to boot, this talk illustrated how graduate students gained experience in preventive conservation by identifying the collections care needs of a prominent historic site that is also a busy event space/hotel.
In the summer of 2013, four students from New York University and the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation — Rita Berg and Cybele Tom (NYU) and Crista Pack and Emily Schuetz Stryker (WUDPAC)—performed a conservation assessment of the historic collection at the Schloss Leopoldskron, under the supervision of Hannelore Roemich, Professor of Conservation Science at NYU and Joelle Wickens, Associate Conservator and Preventive Team Head at Winterthur. The talk was dedicated to Emily who passed away unexpectedly in February of this year.
Crista and Rita presented by discussing the building’s history, the goals of the project, the group’s workflow and theoretical approach, recommendations for the future, and lessons learned. The Rococo palace was commissioned by Count Leopold Anton Eleutherius von Firmian, and was once owned by Max Reinhardt. It is now an Austrian national historic site, and host of the Salzburg Global Seminar (SGS). The assessment project was co-sponsored by the Kress Foundation and SGS.
The Schloss is not only a magnificent edifice—it is familiar to many as the inspiration for the Von Trapp villa in The Sound of Music—but its historic collection includes paintings, works of art on paper, furniture, decorative arts and sculpture. Unfortunately the collection’s condition has never been systematically documented.
The major goals for the project included developing a long-term strategy for caring for the collection, as well as providing educational training for students who were able to test theoretical approaches in a “real-world” scenario (though it was admittedly hard to think of the bucolic, dream-like setting of this palace as “real-world”). However, major challenges quickly presented themselves to the students: food and beverages could be found throughout the house, candles were lit regularly, there were many open windows, objects vulnerable to theft, chaotic transportation and storage of objects during events, wildlife, dust and dirt accumulation.
The group worked in pairs to assess rooms, and three different types of object groups (prints, paintings and architectural elements) using photography and written survey forms that they had developed. They interviewed staff and local scholars, recorded patterns of use and consulted existing literature from the National Parks Service and the Conservation Assessment Program.
Among their recommendations were that the SGS articulate the presentation of the building and collection directly in its mission statement, appoint a collections manager, establish guidelines for events and handling. They also identified that the paintings, which were among the most valuable objects, are at the highest risk.
Although they found inherent contradictions in the house’s dual function as a historic site and event space/hotel, the students aimed to raise awareness among staff, owners and guests of the collection’s needs. This was done they maintained, keeping in mind the priority of the space’s functionality. This July a new team of conservation students will continue the project following the guidelines established by their predecessors. And judging from the Alpine landscape, lucky them.

Left to right: Rita Berg, Crista Pack, Hannelore Roemich and Cybele Tom at the 42nd Annual Meeting
Left to right: Rita Berg, Crista Pack, Hannelore Roemich and Cybele Tom at the 42nd Annual Meeting

42nd Annual Meeting (Objects Session 5/31/14) – "Testing and implementation of microclimate storage containers for small metals and plastics" by Dana K. Senge

Dana’s talk – the last of the Objects session talks given at AIC’s 42nd Annual Conference in San Francisco – presented the results of multiple tests conducted by the National Park Service (NPS) Intermountain Region Museum Services Program, evaluating several readily available materials for their ability to protect sensitive objects from less-than-ideal climate conditions. Tests sought to identify the best methods for long-term storage of two distinctly different categories of collections materials: archaeological metals and historic plastics. The ideal solutions would be cost effective and easy-to-use, would allow for easy monitoring and access, and could be consistently applied across all NPS sites.
Archaeological Metals
Various storage systems for archaeological metals have been employed at NPS sites in the past, including Stewart boxes, 2-4 mil polyethylene (PE) bags with twist ties, and heat-sealed Marvelseal enclosures in combination with desiccants and/or scavengers.
Following the work done by JP Brown (2010) and Alice Paterakis (2011), Dana did some short experiments to confirm that resealable PE containers with silicone gaskets held a microclimate better than similar containers without gasketing. This being established, she added data loggers and twice the calculated amount of desiccant recommended for the container’s volume, and conducted a longer test in three locations – Arizona, where storage conditions were generally dry (about 35% RH); Montana, where conditions ranged from 25-45% RH; and Texas, where conditions fluctuated around 50% RH. Even under the most humid conditions in TX, the worst-performing silicone-gasketed PE boxes only allowed an increase of 2% RH over the course of the year-long test period. Measurement of the TX test box after a second year registered only another 2.7% increase in RH. Based on this set of experiments, Dana calculates that this particular setup would only require recharging with desiccant every 5 years if a change of less than 15% RH was desired. In addition, Oddy testing of the materials involved in the system confirmed that there was nothing harmful being off-gassed.
Historic Plastics
To find an ideal solution for historic plastics, Dana started by consulting Yvonne Shashoua’s 2008 publication, Conservation of Plastics. She learned that different polymers have wildly varying requirements for safe storage: cellulose nitrate (CN) and cellulose acetate (CA) need ventilated or scavenged environments to slow deterioration, while natural rubber fares better in anoxic environments, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) calls for only non-absorbent glass or Mylar fabrication materials. The deep trays with Tyvek covers that had been in use at NPS since the 90s were not effective, so alternatives were sought.
For use with CN and CA, several box designs were evaluated for their ability to ventilate the space and prevent dust accumulation inside the box. Acid-free board boxes were made with slatted or screened walls and were tested without lids, with Hollytex lids, or with acid-free board lids. Inside the prototype boxes, Dana placed a deteriorating CA shower curtain ring along with a sticky surface to determine how much dust found its way in, and A-D Strips to monitor for the buildup of harmful acetic acid vapors. Findings supported the use of a blue-board lid, as it prevented the most dust over a month-long period. Though screened and slatted boxes did equally well, the screened boxes were found to be easier to construct. No harmful buildup was detected by the A-D strips in any of the boxes.
As a space-saving alternative to ventilated storage, Dana next evaluated several common scavengers in conjunction with the previously described resealable PE containers. In order of their performance (worst to best), they were Kodak Molecular Sieves, a single MicroChamber board, Getter Pak, two MicroChamber boards, and Zorflex. The most effective adsorbent, Zorflex, prevented acetic acid build-up in the container for 18 days. Interestingly, each scavenger tested lowered the humidity in the box to some extent initially, though it did eventually rebound. A second round of tests that doubled the amount of scavenger found no benefit to doing so. Future work will include evaluating activated carbon cloth, and rerunning the above described scavenger tests on boxes containing a larger amount of deteriorating CA to see if the products can keep up with increased volumes of off-gassed acetic acid. She would also like to test resealable glass containers in this capacity.
Although storage for PVC objects was not extensively discussed, Dana mentioned that she has been using and is pleased with heat-sealed 1 mil Mylar enclosures. She prefers the use of a single-impulse heat sealer to a double-impulse model to make the enclosures.
Finally, Dana made a point to address a few limitations of the systems she evaluated for this paper, including size (the largest silicone-gasketed PE containers she’s been able to find only measure 9 x 12 x 6 inches) and the need for a robust monitoring/maintenance plan.
Questions/comments after the talk:

  • One talk attendee mentioned that she had found much larger gasketed PE boxes, but that they didn’t necessarily seal well because of the distance between the clamps, especially on the long edges. She recommended testing the container with water – if it’s not watertight, it won’t be airtight either!
  • A question was posed about the efficacy of these systems compared to non-gasketed PE boxes that were sealed with aluminum tape instead. Dana stated that aluminum tape was not evaluated in this round of testing.
  • Dana, though she didn’t mention brand names, cautioned that some brands of containers definitely held a better seal than others. Test your enclosures first!!!

I really enjoy hearing about research with practical applications. Thank you, Dana, for a well presented and interesting talk!!

42nd Annual Meeting – Opening Session, May 29, "The Long and Winding Road . . . Effective Advocacy, Fundraising, Networking, & Collaboration: Promoting Sustained Preventive Conservation Globally" by Debra Hess Norris

Across the globe, people are united in the desire to preserve tangible and intangible cultural heritage during catastrophic natural disasters, warfare, economic collapse, and other crises. Photographic collections, for example, are considered valuable to many cultures yet traditional photographic processes are disappearing. These collections are incalculable in number, many exist under poor conditions, and only a small percentage of them are inventoried systematically.
As professionals, we are accustomed to evaluating the condition of collections such as these and perform analytical research. While these pursuits are essential to the field, Debra Hess Norris reminds us that we must engage in intercultural dialogue, advocacy, and fundraising in order to effectively care for global cultural heritage.
We must not operate in isolation but rather promote education and training through hybrid and certificate programs. We must build public awareness and advocate for our cause through traditional media, social media, bilingual platforms, and crowd sourcing. We must pursue external support from organizations such as the Giving Pledge, Clinton Global Agenda, Gates Foundation, Luce Foundation, and US Ambassador Fund. The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works and FAIC should facilitate communication with the Institute of International Education, Department of State, and the Alliance for International Education and Cultural Exchange. In addition, AIC and FAIC must participate with ICCROM, ICOM, IIC, and UNESCO.
In closing, Norris reminds us that our projects – small and large, local and global – must be significant. She demonstrates this through a slideshow featuring John Lennon’s “Imagine” and images of photographic preservation projects from the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia.
 
About the Speaker
Debra Hess Norris earned an interdisciplinary B.A. degree in chemistry, art history, and studio art (1977) and M.S. degree in conservation (1980) from the University of Delaware. She has taught more than 100 workshops and seminars for conservators and allied professionals, has authored more than 35 articles and book chapters on the care and treatment of photographic materials, conservation education, ethics, and emergency response, and has collaborated on a series of Worldwide Photographic Preservation Projects with conservation professionals, organizations, and agencies.
Norris has served as chair of the AIC Ethics and Standards Committee (1990-1993), as president of the AIC (1993-1997), on the National Task Force for Emergency Response (1995-2000), and chair of Heritage Preservation (2003-2008). Currently residing as Chair of the Art Conservation Department at the University of Delaware and Professor of Photograph Conservation, she serves on the board of the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) and the Advisory Committee for the FAIC Hermitage Photograph Conservation Initiative.
 
 
Related Lectures/Webinars
ECPN Webinar: “Conservation Education, Outreach, and Advocacy” with Teresa Myers, Richard McCoy, and Sarah Barack. April 2013.
ECPN Webinar: “Self-Advocacy and Fundraising for Personal Research” with Debra Hess Norris. July 2012.