Angelica Isa

Preservation organisations - The Ultimate Table

Angelica Isa — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This article was last updated on: February 4th, 2024

Disclaimer: Please note that the resource presented in this article is neither evergreen nor perfect. Prices and group details may change over time. Some may become inactive while new ones may arise. There may be some mistakes. I will do my best to keep it updated and correct, but please do your own research before making decisions on what to join. Also note that I am obviously not a member or am even personally familiar with all of these groups. Just because a group is on this list does not mean I can openly recommend or endorse them. Again, please do your own research. I am an active member of some of these organisations, but I do not have board or decision-making positions in any of them. I cannot vet the information presented below and have not been paid by anyone to put any group on this list. If you are in the directory of any of the groups in this list and see a mistake, please feel free to send me a message and I will happily update it.

Preservation organisations for success

One of my favourite things to do is compile resources for public use. There are tons of things out there. There is a lot of information. However, if you are new to the field, or simply new to the place you are in, you might just not know what's around. Where do you even look? Are you going to trawl the internet for weeks of your life to figure out what to do next? Will you post on Facebook groups and the distribution lists? Yeah, you could.

I've done that before. Or I could get us all started and do it for you to avoid the constant re-trawling every time you forget. Essentially, I like making stuff I wish I had and then sharing it because why not? It's already done. Maybe one day I will start charging, but until I decide to do that I recommend you take advantage of me haha. It is also my hope and intention that this list will help you find colleagues around the world with whom you would like to collaborate - knowing a group exists may be just what you need to get you started!

After the pretty amazing success of my previous giant table with Masters Conservation programs around the world (with prices, details on internships, employability success rates, links, duration and specialties, etc.), I thought we needed a new table to help us all navigate the world of preservation. This last table was so successful that I had spontaneous volunteers from around the world messaging me asking me to add programs or fix certain details. It became a crowdsourced content table - which is really the best kind because it spreads the load of work. Thank you again to all you cool cats out there who sent stuff in.

So I decided we should try this again one more time and have started us off with almost 70 preservation organisations of all sizes from around the world - just to whet your appetite and see if some of you love this resource enough to help us all make it huge! If we get a super nice list, I can eventually think about turning it into an Airtable or something more sophisticated with tags and filters. Excited? Please share on socials and tag me with your thoughts so I know I'm not the only nerd who likes making Excel tables of practical information.

Why should I join a preservation organisation?

This is a good question, because, you know what? Joining organisations is a budget issue sometimes - especially if you are joining a big, national one. You need to pick and choose who will get your allocated membership money for the year and why, especially if you intend to do this year after year. But the thing is, it's my personal opinion that you should join something. Even if it's only one, even if it's the cheaper, small, local option. Why? Here are some reasons why joining a preservation organisation is important for your career:

You meet people. Networking is essential. There are jobs that are offered first to people you know are available. Just as with every other career in this world, many jobs are never posted or advertised. Why? Because not everyone works together well. If you had a chance to hire something for a very important but short project, would you rather pick from your pool of people you know and trust or find a rando you've never heard of? What if they're unreliable? What if they're unpleasant? What if they're just not what you need now? If you are yourself the rando helping yourself with sidegigs, sidegigs are rarely found in places where you apply for them formally. Sidegigs come through people who know you or have heard of you. Sidegigs come from people who want to work with you directly and for them to do that, you have to meet them first - and they have to know you're on the market.
You get important resources. Of course, the number of resources you get may be tied to how expensive your membership is. Things cost time and money to make - and yes, that includes volunteer time. And yet, even small, free, organisations can have a host of resources if its membership is active and dedicated. What kinds of things will you get? Forums, job boards, newsletters, peer-reviewed journals, conference opportunities, webinars, free courses, discounts to related products and services, etc. Often times, people in organisations have things they are literally giving away and just want someone who is willing to pick the thing up - so they will send a group-specific message offering there first before they open the offer to the rest of the world. Sometimes, jobs show up in forums and newsletters that you would have never found out about on mass internet job boards - I won't name them, but you can guess the typical ones. Wouldn't you like to be in the know about that? So again, people are a resource. When you get connections, you are getting resources. The colleagues you can like, trust, and depend on will be one of the most valuable resources in your toolbox. But we shouldn't talk about people as if they were things, so let me rephrase: you may be making lifelong friends who will be worth so much more to you over time than the membership fee you paid to meet them.
You learn a lot. Especially if you become an active participant in your organisation, this can be as a committee or board member, or perhaps a volunteer for a particular thing or section, you will learn how organisations work. You will learn about whichever particular task you have volunteered for. You will learn about working with others when everybody else has other priorities. You will practice patience and improve your soft people skills - both big deals when applying for institutional jobs. If you are young and starting off, you will learn from your more experienced peers. If you are experienced, you will get updated information from your younger members. If you are the type of preservation organisation that is not specific to particular types of degrees (e.g. only conservators, or only registrars), you will learn a lot about the work of your colleagues. And here's another suggestion from me... if you are a conservator, go ahead and join, or at least keep tabs on, organisations for other people like registrars or archvists. This goes the other way around too. Find out what your peers are doing, what they care about, what worries them in their day-to-day job. This is valuable information.
You give back. Giving back is important. Preservation professionals work in a field where money is neither plentiful nor evenly spread. Getting clients is not easy. Buying raw materials is not cheap. If you are not in a big institution, it's hard to get stuff. It's hard to attend expensive events. You don't have staff, you don't have materials, you don't have access to resources that are not already freely available. When you join an organisation, you can pool your resources and work together to give something back to the community. If you were lucky enough to get into conservation school in spite of the cost and competition, or were skilled in business and set up a private pratice that works well enough to sustain you, or have an instutional job with benefits that pays for resources others can't afford, or have managed an excellent social media brand - you have something to help others. Just about anything you have learned to do can help someone else in some way or another. Although giving your time is, in a way, giving money - it's time you could have been using to make money doing something else, this doesn't mean your contributions have to be strictly monetary. Give what you can when you can, and you will be making a difference for the better. If your field gets better for everyone, that's better for you too. If we all help build what we wish we already had, we'll have a very different field very soon... or... you know, sooner than never.

Other things to consider before choosing the right preservation organisation for you

Depending on where you are in your career or even where you are geographically, different organisations will have different sizes and types of resources for its members. Depending on what kind of stuff you want to get, one type may be better than another. For example...

Are you looking for a local group you can meet for in-person events or a support group where you can exchange material resources and share working spaces? Small and regional is better for this unless your large national group has well-organised regional subgroups that would work for this.
Are you looking for a new job or do you intend to advance your career goals? Perhaps networking at a national or international level will be more appropriate.
Do you prefer large groups with many arms and committees capable of organising large annual conferences? Go big.
Are you interested in publishing your articles in an indexed journal? Probably better to go for the bigger ones but not a bad idea to start with your local organisation bulletins if you are still starting out and building your confidence.
Are you an emerging student? Big or small will work, the wider you cast your net, the more likely you'll meet the perfect mentor - but going big means they probably won't be driving distance from you.
Do you need sponsorship help to join? While smaller organisations may have these, you are more likely to find financial support with bigger groups.
Are you already somehwat established and just need to find colleagues for collaborations? Either will work depending on your specific goals. If you are looking for things like grant information, for example, or access to analytical equipment, you're probably better off going big.

Brief note on exchange rates

For the sake of simplicity and so that you can actually compare on the same footing, I have converted all prices to USD based on the exchange rate around Dec 21st, 2023 - which is when I started working on this table in earnest:

1 GBP - US$ 1.27
1 EUR - US$ 1.10
1 CAD - US$ 0.75
1 AUD - US$ 0.68
1 NZD - US$ 0.63
1 MYR - US$ 0.22
1 BRL - US$ 0.20
1 INR - US$ 0.012

The table of preservation organisations

Without further ado, here is the very incomplete, but hopefully, ever-growing table of preservation organisations. Please don't be afraid to send me messages about mistakes and missing groups. I am sure there will be tons, of the latter, hopefully not the former. You can see I have a specific column at the very end of the table that will indicate whether the information for each group has only been retrieved from the public website or if someone in that group has actually confirmed the info. This will help everyone be sure which information is fully correct and which is an educated guess.

Unless otherwise specified, all membership fees are annual.

Link to the full spreadsheet.

What did I miss?

Naturally, I've probably only just scratched the surface. If there is anything wrong and you know you know the correct information, let me know! If your organisation is not there at all, let me know! Have things changed since I first released this post? Please reach out to me through any of my social media or through my contact form on this website and let me know. I will happily update when I get a free minute. As you must be aware, I run this website on my free time. Thanks for your support and patience!

A couple updates and acknowledgements

For those of you wonderful, generous souls who would like to contribute to growing this table, I have created a new editable Excel sheet where you are free to add, edit, and update information for everyone's benefit. Please be aware that this is not the original file. I have done this to prevent the original information from being corrupted or accidentally deleted. I will copy the information in this editable sheet to the master sheet presented above periodically

I want to explicitly thank all of you who have reached out to me in one way or another with encouraging comments about this article and its associated table. I am grateful for your patience where I may have got information wrong. I am happy to correct it where necessary. I am very pleased that this article will save a lot of you a lot of time and I feel proud of our profession - so many of you are selflessly offering me your time to add more groups to the table.

So thank you again, and let's keep making resources for everyone! -->

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The Climate Museum - At the intersection of climate and culture

Angelica Isa — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

In March 2023, I had the opportunity to talk to Miranda Massie, founder and Director of The Climate Museum. I had never really looked at non-profit funding before, so this was a great chance to find out what’s going on behind-the-scenes.

How do climate and culture intersect on a day-to-day basis for an organisation focused on the climate crisis? The following is a summary of that interview.

Limited funding for all

When she began, Miranda expected that if you work for something in the middle of the Venn diagram of both climate and culture, this would mean that you’d be able to access funding streams from both sectors. She was wrong. She thought fundraising would be easier. It was the opposite.

It turns out that funding is very siloed. There are institutional funders for both climate funding streams and arts streams. You’d think they’d be perfect for an organisation doing both, but most of the time, you end up getting sent back and forth between the two programs.

Oh, you have a museum? You should go ask for the arts funding, we are doing climate change policy support.

Oh, but you’re doing climate change stuff. Yeah, no, we are focused on the arts. You should go check out the climate change funds.

Climate funding has been a challenge because, in global philanthropy, all forms of climate work are being funded at a level of 2%, which does not reflect the urgency of the matter. This means that only 2% of funds are allocated to any and all work on climate.

The other 98% goes to other causes, many of them religious and educational (such as alumni solicitations). For cultural work on climate, you’d expect an important amount to be available, but this isn’t really the case. Miranda believes that’s starting to change, although we’re not there yet.

Where does the 2% go?

The lion’s share goes to climate policy research and advocacy. You see smaller sums going to frontline activist organisations and various climate justice leadership projects such as environmental justice groups, youth climate movements for intergenerational justice and other questions at the center of the climate crisis. Until recently, almost nothing had been identified as a philanthropic fund for the intersection of climate and culture/arts.

The politics of funding for climate and culture

There seems to be some resistance by traditional art funders to see art being mobilised for climate action because it can be interpreted as an instrumentalisation of the arts and a diminishing of artistic intrinsic values as humanistic expressions.

Although art has been often used by many artists and movements to make political statements, some art funders appear to feel that using art to drive policy and mobilise people for climate protagonism is vulgar or inappropriate.

This does not mean that things are not changing. The Climate Museum recently got a generous donation from a foundation that recognises the critical role that arts play to create the cultural shifts necessary for climate change policies to affect realities.

Forget the money for a bit. What about the public? Do people really care?

Yes, they do! Funding or not, Miranda experienced a positive reception to The Climate Museum from the general public from the very beginning. Attitudes today are so extraordinarily positive, that they have exceeded expectations. They have had young children insisting on having their birthday parties there and the Google visit reviews are amazing: 4.9 stars with 104 reviews.

Recent excited Google reviews on how we need more spaces like The Climate Museum.

Another of The Climate Museum's many 5-start Google reviews applauding the work being the done and the staff.

This overwhelming support makes the gap between the public response and philanthropy action even more glaring, although this is not surprising as philanthropy is traditionally conservative to change. While Miranda senses a more stable and normative funding stream in the near future, she feels lucky to have had individual supporters at the beginning. Certainly, relying on your friends and personal network is not a workable business model, so it’s great when bigger institutions and complete strangers start showing up on your doorstep.

The journey to sustainability

Miranda left her job 9 years ago to found The Climate Museum and exhibits started 5 years ago. In spite of promising signs of change, the biggest surprise was how many problems there are in philanthropy. Although there are exceptions, it is normal for major foundations to spend their amounts by statute in a business-as-usual way which does not necessarily reflect global realities or needs.

This means that there may be little you can do, as an organisation, when asking for funds. It’s not up to you. It’s up to what the philanthropy wants to fund.

It’s hard to communicate that making exhibitions and cultural programming is neither free nor cheap.

While there are some funding streams, like the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, with a 10 million grant for the intersection of climate and culture - specifically carbon neutrality in museums - there is no established funding line for cultural programming.

In this context, Miranda has some advice if you work in nonprofits and heritage. Don’t give up.

Whenever you have a chance to reach philanthropic streams, take it. Talk about the topic with everyone. You never know who might know about something or someone who might be able to help you. Many things never happen because no one talks about them. Many processes are hampered unnecessarily because no one knows enough about the issues.

So let’s talk about things. Leave me a comment and share the article if you enjoyed it.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Miranda Massie for her time and her honest insights into the world of cultural and climate philanthropy for nonprofits. I write this article in the hopes that Miranda’s shared experience will help us in some way or another. Are you interested in collaborating with her? Let me know!

This article is part of the Founders in Heritage series. Read about the experiences of other founders and entrepreneurs in the heritage world through the links in the main blog.

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AKCIJA Sarajevo - A non-profit art organisation's story

Angelica Isa — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Aida Kalender founded AKCIJA Sarajevo with some friends in 1998. Akcija means “action” in Bosnian, and they began by organising large cultural music events for young people after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This article is a result of an interview made in March 2023. I hope you enjoy reading Aida's fascinating tale as much as I enjoyed hearing it.

On financial sustainability of non-profits and government support for museums

The large cultural institutions in Bosnia had collapsed during the war, and smaller and more flexible independent initiatives seemed to work well in the late 90s. There were many non-profits in the cultural sector in Bosnia during those early years after the war and there was significant international aid and donations as culture was recognised as a strong vehicle for youth reconciliation, peace building, and democracy.

However, international funding never lasts forever and around the year 2000, there were other fresher conflict zones around the world and international foundations withdrew their financial aid.

Once these international actors were gone, the funding dried up. The withdrawal of international foundations created a huge funding gap which many non-profit organisations could not survive.

Professionalisation of non-profits and leverage of civic support

In this context, AKCIJA Sarajevo began to look to find its new place in this new social context through the profesionalization of the sector by bringing in new skills in communications, management, cultural management, and policy.

The group identified laws in Bosnia and tried to engage with them through stakeholders from the cultural sector and mobilisation of citizens. They started organising a network of cultural staff and independent operators. This provided a platform for discussion about problems such as arts funding and gave them a collective voice.

“We did some initial research in the form of interviews with the people from the cultural sector, both from the institutional sector and from non-profits, to see what the biggest problems were, the obstacles and needs of the sector at that moment. Based on these interviews, we created a list of crucial issues in the cultural sector.”

One of the biggest issues was the lack of a Ministry of Culture at the state level. The lack of top-tier organisation created problems even for the largest national cultural institutions, among them The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was closed from 2012-2015 due to lack of structural funding. You may see some of the international coverage of this event from October 3rd, 2012 in The Guardian.

The Museum had attempted to make a symbolic stand by locking the doors and placing bars on it thinking it would encourage a reaction from political bodies or society, but no one reacted.

The importance of cultural policies and media exposure - communication is everything

In 2015, AKCIJA visited the Museum by invitation of one of the employees. The general media had reported that the employees were unprofessional and lazy and did not know how to run the organisation. What Aida found in the Museum was shocking.

There were about 45 employees coming to work every day and guarding the collections. The Museum didn’t have electricity or alarm systems anymore. The staff realised they were alone. They organised themselves into 8-hour shifts to guard the Museum. They had been doing this for 3 years with no salary, health insurance or any kind of benefit.

AKCIJA realised this story needed to be shared publicly. They called in a friend who was a professional photographer to create portraits of the museum’s employees and Aida ran a series of small interviews.

AKCIJA used this material as the basis for a public campaign/exhibition with video clips and photos of the staff called I am Museum. They invited citizens and cultural organisations to the opening of their exhibition and to participate in the guarding shifts as an act of solidarity with the employees.

The success was unprecedented. Citizens and personalities of the cultural sector showed up, hundreds of them every day to support the Museum. Some of them brought equipment to donate. Professors from the universities gave free lectures. Cultural organisations organised programs free of charge such as film nights, concerts and debates. Then the celebrities showed up, and with them, the media. The pressure on the political elites increased.

After 45 days of strong media coverage and social media marketing with images of citizens coming to support the Museum, politicians agreed to find the money to backpay the employee wages and re-open the Museum in September 2015.

Several months later, AKCIJA won the Europa Nostra award, and the Museum expanded its international connections with large European and American museums abroad.

Culture as a medium for Activation and Integration

You would think this is the happy ending to the story. The non-profit organised civil society and saved the big Museum. Unfortunately, this is not the end.

The small AKCIJA team worked for over a year to make this project happen, but once the battle had been won, a new gap appeared. The work and power dynamic in the official public sector for culture was not the same as the non-profit sector.

The old balance of power relationships were re-established. You’re not part of the institution? Then you’re not part of the team. Thank you. We don’t really need you now. Goodbye. Business as usual now.

What had seemed the beginning of a seed for public and civic collaboration, a partnership between State and non-profit art organisations, a model for sustainability, was gone.

“I saw this as a kind of public-civic collaboration, partnership, which could also be a model for sustainability for the non-profit sector because we basically share the same mission. We see culture as a public good. The state cultural institutions such as the Museum are also non-profit. They are a public organisation, and we are an independent organisation, but we are not commercial. I was thinking, okay, maybe we have the same mission. We can work together. We can share some resources. Maybe they have space we don’t have. We have other skills that can be of help. For example, the Museum didn’t have a website. We found the money to build them the website. Somehow, this collaboration didn’t work long after the Museum's opening, unfortunately…”

Aida feels there was a kind of prejudice on the side of the public cultural sector that people who work in non-profits are not professional and are nonconventional. It opened up a lot of new questions.

How do you work in a country with no core funding for non-profit organisations in the arts? Basically, you live project to project. You find things that are interesting and worth pursuing, but it means you have to switch gears every two or five years.

“Once you are in this sector, it really becomes a part of your life. In countries like the Netherlands, you have four years of funding for non-profit art organisations. This doesn’t exist in Bosnia, but it would be very important to start changing the cultural policies systematically. It means introducing new policy models of funding. To do that, we’d need a strong coalition again, a very good campaign, a lot of media support. I’m still trying to recharge and generate some energy to maybe return and start some projects again.”

The Sysyphus challenge

“It’s really like ups and downs. You have some ups, you get some funding, you create great results, great amazing things. You get some awards, but then everything goes down.”

There is no ending to this story. Yet. Aida is recharging and hopes to begin again in the future.

But how are you supposed to build upon previous results? Aida feels like the current model’s problem is that, in many ways, you are always at the beginning. As soon as one project finishes, you are at the beginning again. There is no recognition or evaluation of your work. It matters little if your non-profit was founded yesterday or if it’s been around for 25 years, like AKCIJA - everyone is in the same pool competing for the same funding.

“Maybe we need a non-profit sector for culture with wider recognition by the cultural sector in general. We need to recognise that you can be independent, non-governmental and still be professional and talented. You don’t need to work within the framework of the public institutions - which can limit you in many ways.”

Final thoughts on cultural non-profits outside the public institution

Personally, I found some interesting differences with my experience in Latin America. Although both Peru and Bosnia had come out of more controlling political histories in the past years, the role of the State in both and the perceptions of the public are completely different.

While Bosnian society seems to expect strong services from its civil servants and is more likely to judge professionals in the private non-profit sector as less capable, the opposite has always struck me to be true in Peru. State institutions there are organisationally weak and the general impression of civil servants is that they are either lazy or mediocre or both - the kind of people who wouldn’t be able to get a job in the private sector because they’re not competent or hard-working enough.

Both of these views are generalisations, of course, but it was interesting to note that they were seemingly born from the local political structure. I would expect neither is quite the case for other countries, so I can’t speak for them - so please do share your thoughts and impressions on how cultural non-profits fit in the cultural sector of your area of the world.

Can we draw more parallels? Are we more similar than we thought at first glance? Or are we very different still? Are there any strategies we could share across borders to try to change cultural policies or are we all doomed to push the Sysyphus rock forever?

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Aida Kalender for her time and her honest insights into the world of cultural non-profits in Bosnia during the early turn of this new century. I write this article in the hopes that Aida’s shared experience will help us in some way or another. Are you interested in collaborating with her? Let me know!

This article is part of the Founders in Heritage series. Read about the experiences of other founders and entrepreneurs in the heritage world through the links in the main blog.

Art and sustainability - Reducing the sector’s environmental impact

Angelica Isa — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Banner image courtesy of The Gallery Climate Coalition.

Early in March 2023, I had the lucky opportunity to talk to Heath Lowndes, the Managing Director for The Gallery Climate Coalition. What does it take to organise the art world at a global level to reduce our sector’s environmental impacts? We talked about ethical fundraising practices and a balanced funding model for the intersection of art and sustainability. The following article is a summary of that interview. All quotes belong to Heath.

The Gallery Climate Coalition - The Beginnings

GCC formally launched in October 2020 after about 10 months of development research, building the tools hosted on the website, and commissioning an environmental advisor to build the carbon calculator.

Their original intention was just to serve London’s commercial galleries and, somehow, 3 years later, they find themselves serving the entire visual arts sector at a global level. Heath credits it all to the demand and the interest. Serving just London felt ambitious at the beginning, but GCC soon started seeing members from around the world showing up. There were all different types of organisations and individual professionals, and GCC realised they needed to change tactics. They couldn’t just cater to commercial galleries in London, but align everyone towards the same targets using the same strategies to avoid duplicating efforts.

When the cofounders of GCC first started speaking about this, there was no such thing as COVID. We intended to do an in-person event, gathering people from the community to talk about issues, see who had done what already, and what we could do collectively. We wanted to ask a lot of questions. We sent out the invitations the week before the first lockdown and immediately realised later that an in-person event wouldn’t be possible.

Things had to change, so instead of asking the questions, GCC ended up giving the answers. They realised they had a bank of information that could help people. All the people who had received their invitations now came to GCC virtually with offers of support and insight. They all offered their lockdown time to help out with the projects. It was like jet fuel for the movement.

And then the conversation about environmental responsibility and climate action has gone mainstream in the last few years, so GCC was able to surf the waves. They have been able to provide all the information that everybody else was hoping to find for free. For the commercial gallery sector, GCC became the default place to go. Julie’s bicycle has been providing this information for the cultural sector as well as Culture Declares Emergency, but GCC’s model of providing free services through a coalition membership is unique.

Art and sustainability from a non-profit perspective

I asked Heath about funding. How does a non-profit working in the art sector for sustainability secure an income? He mentioned an initial amount of luck and overwhelming support for the cause from the sector. The increasing demand for GCC’s services every month is creating new challenges.

How do you provide a high level of quality and expertise if your membership system is free?

One of the things the founders of GCC were clear on from the beginning is that all the information had to be available for free. There should be no barriers to entry.

Everyone should be able to access the resources they need to take climate action and reduce their environmental impact. The issue is that the demand for this information is increasing every month - and the quality and expertise provided by GCC need to remain high. GCC is committed to providing updated information on best practices as informed by scientists and environmental consultants.

So the challenge remains, how do you fund that?

GCC accepts small voluntary donations, but they also have a Supporters Circle made up of three tiers of giving: Patron £10k, Donor £5k, and Supporter £2k. The majority of the support coming from the Circle is from commercial galleries.

The idea is that the biggest earners in the art industry tend to be the biggest polluters as well (think about the environmental costs of putting up expensive exhibitions and auctions). In order to make up for that, the big earners can subsidize the access to the information for other smaller organisations and individuals in the sector who can’t afford private consultancy.

It’s a sort of environmental data crowdfunding which allows everyone to have the same information regardless of their size or income. Are you a small museum or a huge commercial gallery? You still get the same advice so you can take climate action at your level.

Some of the larger member organisations can afford a private auditor or a consultation with an environmental advisor to reduce their waste, so this is a way of sharing that information with everyone else. This model has allowed GCC to support its operations for the first few years, but it will continue to evolve as the demand grows.

How are for-profit and non-profit GCC members different?

There seems to be a certain reluctance from non-profits in museum settings, a certain feeling like money is a bad thing which you’re not supposed to get, or you’re not supposed to ask for even though you need it.

There is a big point of contention in art funding regarding where the money comes from. There can be uncomfortable conversations about dependencies. Is it possible to find “good” money? Is there “clean” money?

Heath has heard a lot of weary people in the art world say, “All money is dirty, just take it,” but he prefers to believe that there is good money out there. It’s just harder to find.

Money that seems clean today may not be clean anymore tomorrow. How do you navigate the pitfalls of securing funding for your heritage or art institution? Your reputation is always at stake.

The GCC has an ethical fundraising policy and ethical partnership policy which they put together specifically to guide their decision-making about who the GCC will and will not work with.

As a new organisation, the GCC does not have a questionable history of funding which many old institutions grapple with, so they have the lucky opportunity to use a policy that delineates which money they can take and which money they should not accept. However, this does not mean that there are no potential traps.

15 years ago, the majority of UK cultural institutions were being funded by oil money, and, today, this is a source of shame. It is no longer considered acceptable for the arts to take that money.

It was very difficult for many institutions to wean themselves from that kind of stable funding stream. Then the Sackler Family scandal in 2018 meant yet another philanthropy funding stream was no longer considered clean or morally acceptable.

So how do non-profits in the arts function? How do they do the work they need to do without falling into these funding traps?

Honestly? You just try your best and hope for the best. You put systems in place like policies. You can’t check every $50 donation you get, but you try.

In the case of GCC, you say no to some organisations that take their funding from certain banks that have funds tied up with hydrocarbon fuels because that would make no sense. By the way, if you want to see what this fundraising policy looks like, you can find it on the GCC website.

Setting personal boundaries and getting advice

What kind of advice would Heath give someone working in a similar non-profit organisation situation?

Starting something from scratch that feels very personal to you and becomes woven with your identity is probably not a healthy way to go about it in the long term.

You might end up giving it evenings and weekends, far beyond what is a healthy work-life balance. It’s tempting to throw everything into a project that you want to succeed in, but it’s also important to take a step back and rest sometimes.

Get other people’s advice. You might be cautious about feeling like you can reach out to certain people to ask questions, but whenever you find someone who is even slightly interested in your topic, they will be incredibly generous and supportive.

“It’s just like reaching out to people you don’t necessarily know, but they’ve got something to offer you and love to do it. It has been an incredible experience. If I had known earlier that I could, I would have had the audacity to ask more questions from people in positions of power or knowledge.”

So who are these people? Directors of institutions, leaders of other climate initiatives, people working in the same cross-section of art and sustainability.

Don’t consider them your competition, but rather your allies. Collaboration and support are not only possible but also hugely rewarding and beneficial.

How easy or difficult was it to set up the GCC as a charity in the UK?

There is, as usual, government paperwork if you want to set up a charity. There are regulations which you probably know nothing about. Some of the colleagues in the GCC were able to sort out some of it, but eventually, they had to find an accounting firm that supported them with the official paperwork. Some of this was pro bono, and some of it was covered by a small donation to cover the administrative costs before they were even set up.

The fee to become a charity is not much, but the accountancy work to get there is not cheap. There is a monthly cost for accounting as well as bookkeeping. It will be different for everyone, but by the time GCC officially launched, they had already spent about ₤8,000. This is just to set you up before you can even receive donations.

What is your best advice for someone starting a non-profit in the heritage sector?

If you start something, it’s probably because there is either a need for it or because you are personally passionate about it (or both), so remind yourself of that as your purpose. When you get lost in the minor details and then forget you have a purpose because you are so busy managing an organization, you can lose sight of your original vision.

You know it’s not the best-paid sector in the world and a lot of people expect free work at some point, so you really have to care about it. Unfortunately, it can’t be a 9-5 job that you switch off. In order to make it a success, you have to really, really, really believe in it and care.

Climate is a very emotive topic. There’s pressure to do the work because of this massive thing hanging over us, but that’s a motivating factor. Find what motivates you and make sure it keeps you ticking. That’s very crucial.

And don’t forget it’s all about collaboration. If you are a small team with big ambitions, you can’t do it without teamwork. You can’t do anything without it, whether it’s sharing a building, resources, or a project. Forget working alone or having rivals in your sector. We don’t have time for that and it’s not going to make any of us better at what we do.

Working together makes you stronger, makes you more informed. Things are changing every day, every week, month to month. If you are working by yourself, how are you going to stay up to date? Be open.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Heath Lowndes for his time and honest insights into funding non-profits for climate and culture. I write this article in the hopes that Heath’s shared experience will help us in some way or another. Are you interested in collaborating with the Gallery Climate Coalition? Let me know!

This article is part of the Founders in Heritage series. Read about the experiences of other founders and entrepreneurs in the heritage world through the links in the main blog.

How to create participation certificates fast for conservation conferences and courses

Angelica Isa — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Conference organisation and event woes

Whether you work in a gallery, museum, archive, library or any other kind of institution related to collections care (or not), chances are you have, at some point or another, organised a conference, course, webinar, event, workshop, you name it!

And as you may know, many of us really want that certificate. In some cases, it's to justify spending the time to our institutions. Sometimes, we need to show it as proof of participation in order to get reimbursed. Other times, we need to have it to be able to prove that we are participating in Continued Professional Development (CPD).

Or maybe you're in the Education Team and you just need these certificates to hand out to the kids or other participants of your workshops.

So you've had to make certificates. Depending on your expertise, you may have used Power Point, Google Slides, Photoshop, InDesign,Figma, Canva, or any other kind of software that would allow you to make simple certificates.

However, chances are that regardless of which of these platforms you decided to use, you were still making your certificates one by one and changing people's names or participation types manually. And it probably took you forever.

So here I am again in my attempt to make your life easier! The following post will show you how to create participation certificates fast, and I mean FAST - I recently spent less than one hour for 60 certificates - and that's because I was working the learning curve. But just so you don't have to, here are some simple instructions.

Leverage Canva to bulk-create participation certificates fast

Step 1. Ditch whatever you are using and go to Canva. Unfortunately, this particular bulk create mode is not available to regular free accounts. Personally, I have found Canva to be so useful to me that it has become one of the few subcriptions I actually pay for.

For your purposes, however, you should note that Canva has a Canva for Nonprofits account. This means that if you are working in GLAM and are a registered nonprofit institution, all you need to do is talk to the Canva Team and they will give you a pro account for free.

Now, since none of us should be reinventing the wheel, I have found you the following YouTube video that already exists which shows you how to make certificates in Canva's bulk-create mode step-by-step.

All you need to have is all your participant names in a simple Excel table, and, if you wish, any other information that is likely to change by participant on the second column.

Canva will then take this information and create as many certificates as you need with the press of a single button.

Split the PDFs and you are done

And now you find yourself with a problem I had. I made 60+ certificates and I ended up with a 60+ page PDF file that I downloaded from Canva. Here are some general instructions on how to download files from Canva.

Option 1 is to individually download each Canva page as an independent PDF. This took FOREVER and you should not even attempt it unless you are bored and have time to kill.

Option 2 is to download all the certificates as a single PDF from Canva and then find another service to automatically split your 60-page PDF into 60 PDFs instead.

If you or your institution are paying for Adobe Acrobat, you can just do it in there. Here's a YouTube video to show you how.

If, like me, you don't pay for Adobe Acrobat, there are several free services where you can do this online. For example, you can try Adobe Acrobat's Split PDF or Split PDF by smallpdf.com. I will note that Adobe's online Split PDF version only allowed me to try once before it gave me an error screen and stoped me from using it again. This could be due to them or to my computer, but I didn't have time to troubleshoot this, so I went looking for other solutions.

Now, you may feel iffy about uploading your certificates with people's names to these online services, so you also have other options.

If you are on a Mac you can separate the PDF into individual PDF files by opening it in Preview and manually dragging each page out into a folder of your choosing. This is okay, I guess, but not fully automatic.

If you are on Windows this is what I am using myself. It's called PDF Merger & Splitter - and you can download it from the Microsoft Store as you can see in the YouTube video below.

Here's a quick screenshot. Once you select all of the PDF pages, choose Extract each selected page to a PDF. The program will then open the file saving window asking you where you want your files. Once you click Select Folder, this will automatically create however many pages you have in your PDF into individual PDF files which you can then send to your participants.

Choose to extract each selected page to a PDF to get each page to become its own file that you can now send participants.

This is not all

Once you figure out that you can use this bulk-create thing, you will never need to make individual letters for the same thing one by one again. The world is your oyster. I have used this same feature to make all kinds of letters and abstract templates. What will you use it for? With great power comes great responsibility, so use it wisely and let us all know about it so we can copy you too!

A compilation of important heritage conservation charters

Angelica Isa — Wed, 17 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Charters and conventions are extremely useful to conservators and managers of cultural heritage. In them, we can find valuable guidelines on how to manoeuvre complicated matters such as when to conserve or restore and when to remove old restorations.

In some cases, conservation work and investigations can even lead to finding out that certain objects have dubious, possibly illegal provenances. Charters and conventions help us navigate the various aspects of dealing with cultural heritage at the international scale. They can also be used to justify grants and funding requests at both external and internal institutional levels.

I will not be including documents on intangible cultural heritage here. I hope this list on the main heritage conservation charters and documents helps you in your research and goals.

Content

Conventions
Charters
Declarations and manifestos
- The SPAB Manifesto: The Principals of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings as Set Forth upon its Foundation
- UNESCO Declaration concerning the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage
Recommendations
Principles
Professional organisation codes of ethics and/or practice
- American Alliance of Museums (AAM)
- American Institute for Conservation (AIC)
Association of Registrars and Collections Specialists (ARCS)
Other documents
Did I miss any?

Conventions

Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict

1954
Set out a minimum level of protection for cultural property regardless of conflict and occupation.

First Protocol for the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict

1954
Prohibits the export of movable cultural property during territorial occupation and forbids the retention of cultural property as war reparations.

Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property

1970
Encourages States to prevent the illegal transfer of cultural property by enforcing appropriate documentation of items, procedures for legal transport of objects and criminal inditement of transgressors.

Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage

1972
Signing countries pledge to defend and protect their cultural and natural heritage.
It determines the uses and management of the World Heritage Fund.

Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological, Historical and Artistic Heritage of the American Nations (Convention of San Salvador)

1976
To "identify, register, protect, and safeguard the property making up the cultural heritage of the American nations in order: (a) to prevent illegal exportation or importation of cultural property; and (b) to promote cooperation among the American states for mutual awareness and appreciation of their cultural property."

UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Ilegally Exported Cultural Objects

1995
Sets out the application of laws for stolen or illegaly exported cultural objects.

Second Protocol for the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict

1999
"The Second Protocol further elaborates the provisions of the Convention relating to safeguarding of and respect for cultural property and the conduct of hostilities; thereby providing greater protection than before."

UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage

2001
"Sets out basic principles for the protection of underwater cultural heritage
Provides a detailed State cooperation system
Provides widely recognized practical rules for the treatment and research of underwater cultural heritage."

Charters

The Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monuments

1931
International organizations for Restoration on operational and advisory levels are to be established.
Proposed Restoration projects are to be subjected to knowledgeable criticism to prevent mistakes which will cause loss of character and historical values to the structures.
Problems of preservation of historic sites are to be solved by legislation at national level for all countries.
Excavated sites which are not subject to immediate restoration should be reburied for protection.
Modern techniques and materials may be used in restoration work.
Historical sites are to be given strict custodial protection.
Attention should be given to the protection of areas surrounding historic sites.

The Venice Charter: International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites

1964
Foundational document
Provides guidelines and an international framework for the conservation of historic buildings.

The Florence Charter for Historic Gardens

1982
Guidelines for the preservation of historic gardens.

The Washington Charter: Charter for the Conservation of Historic Towns and Urban Areas

1987
"This charter concerns historic urban areas, large and small, including cities, towns and historic centres or quarters, together with their natural and man-made environments."

Charter for the protection and management of the archaeological heritage

1990
Icludes guidelines for policies for the protection of archaeological heritage.

Charter on the protection and management of underwater cultural heritage

1996
Intended to "encourage the protection and management of underwater cultural heritage in inland and inshore waters, in shallow seas and in the deep oceans."

The Burra Charter for Places of Cultural Significance

1999
Foundational document
"...provides guidance for the conservation and management of places of cultural significance (cultural heritage places), and is based on the knowledge and experience of Australia ICOMOS members."

Charter on the Built Vernacular Heritage (Mexico)

1999
For the protection of vernacular buildings as expressions of the local culture of a community.

The Charter of Krakow: Principles for conservation and restoration of built heritage

2000
Relates to architectural conservation.

ICOMOS Charter – Principles for the analysis, conservation and structural restoration of architectural heritage

2003
Relates to architectural conservation.
"Conservation, reinforcement and restoration of architectural heritage requires a multi-disciplinary approach."

ICOMOS Principles for the preservation and conservation/restoration of wall paintings

2003
Contains articles on protection policies, investigation, documentation, preventive conservation, maintenance and site Management, restorations, emergency measures, research and public information, professional qualifications and training, traditions of renewal, and international cooperation.

Declarations and manifestos

The SPAB Manifesto: The Principals of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings as Set Forth upon its Foundation

1877
Foundational document in the conservation of monuments and historic buildings
Recommends protection and preservation rather than thoughtless restoration (which the Victorians loved to do)

UNESCO Declaration concerning the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage

2003
States should take all appropriate measures to prevent, avoid, stop and suppress acts of intentional destruction of cultural heritage, wherever such heritage is located.

Recommendations

Recommendations of the Madrid Conference

1904
Aimed at architectural conservation.
Emphasizes minimal intervention, functional use and restorations in line with original style.
For citation purposes, review the original document: The Architectural Journal. Being the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Vol. XI. Third Series, 1904. pp. 343-346.

Recommendation on International Principles Applicable to Archaeological Excavations

1956
Most importantly for conservation activities, these Recommendations include making conservation of the site and its associated objects part of the deed of concession to excavate. It also recommends supervising the restoration of archaeological remains and prohibiting removal of monuments without consent.

Recommendation Concerning the Safeguarding of the Beauty and Character of Landscapes and Sites

1962
Considers the beauty and character of landscapes and sites as "necessary to the life of men for whom they represent a powerful physical, moral and spiritual regenerating influence, while at the same time contributing to the artistic and cultural life of peoples, as innumerable and universally known examples bear witness"
"Measures taken for the safeguarding of landscapes and sites should be both preventive and corrective"

Recommendation on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Export, Import and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property

1964
Recommends members states to have national inventories of cultural property, establishing national services to prevent illegal exports, and developing certification processes for authorised exports.

Recommendation concerning the Preservation of Cultural Property Endangered by Public or Private works

1968
Recommends creating and maintaining inventories of cultural properties.
States should protect/salvage cultural property through: (a) Legislation; (b) Finance; (c) Administrative measures; Procedures to preserve and to salvage cultural property; (e) Penalties; (f) Repairs; (g) Awards; (h) Advice; (i) Educational programmes.

Recommendation concerning the Protection, at National Level, of the Cultural and Natural Heritage

1972
Includes sections on: National policy, general principles, organisation of services, specialised public services, advisory bodies, cooperation among the various bodies, competence of central, federal, regional and local bodies, protective measures, scientific and technical measures, legal measures, financial measures, educational and cultural action, and international cooperation.

Recommendation concerning the Safeguarding and Contemporary Role of Historic Areas

1976
Includes general principles, national, regional and local policy, safeguarding measures, legal and administrative measures, technical, economic and social measures, research education and information, and international cooperation.

Recommendation concerning the International Exchange of Cultural Property

1976
Includes a section on Action against Illicit Trading in Cultural Property.

Recommendation for the Protection of Movable Cultural Property

1978
Includes: prevention of risks for museums and other similar institutions, private collections, movable cultural property situated in religious buildings and archaeological sites, international exchanges, education and information, control measures, measures to improve the financing of risk coverage, and international cooperation.

Principles

Principles for the recording of monuments, groups of buildings and sites

1996
Recording of the cultural heritage should be seen as a priority.

Principles for the Preservation of Historic Timber Structures (Mexico)

1999
Includes sections on: Inspection, recording and documentation, monitoring and maintenance, interventions, repairs and replacements, historic forest reserves, contemporary materials and technologies, education and training.

Principles for the Conservation of Wooden Built Heritage

2017
Includes sections on: Inspection survey and research, analysis and evaluation, interventions, present-day materials and technologies, recording and documentation, monitoring and maintenance, historic forest reserves, and education and training.

Professional organisation codes of ethics and/or practice

American Alliance of Museums (AAM)

Adopted 1993, amended 2000
Code of ethics for museums
Revised 2021 PDF for Code of Ethics and Professional Practice for Collections Professionals

American Institute for Conservation (AIC)

1994
Includes supplemental commentaries with governance documents, declarations, defining documents and meeting minutes.

Association of Registrars and Collections Specialists (ARCS)

Approved 2016

Australian Institute for Conservation of Cultural Materials (AICCM)

Last amended October 2002
Downloadable PDF document

Canadian Association for Conservation of Cultural Property (CAC-ACCR) and Canadian Association of Professional Conservators (CAPC)

2000 (Third edition)
Downloadable PDF document

European Confederation of Conservator-Restorers Organisations (E.C.C.O.)

Adopted 2003
Used as a base code in Europe. Example in Spain by Asociación Profesional de Conservadores Restauradores de España - ACRE

Institute of Conservation (ICON-UK)

Adopted 2020
Includes downloadable guidelines for creating a personal statement of ethical practice written by Jonathan Ashley-Smith

International Council of Museums (ICOM)

1986, Revised in 2004, Reviewed in 2021-2022
Available in 38 languages
Includes standards for accession, deaccession, and fundraising
Includes a code of ethics specifically for Natural History Museums
Includes a checklist on ethics for cultural property ownership

International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)

Adopted 2002. Adopted again 2011?
"The text concerning the ethical commitment of members is being revised."

Museums Aotearoa Te Tari o Ngā Whare Taonga o te Motu (New Zealand)

Adopted 2013
For Governing Bodies, Managers and Staff of Museums and Art Galleries in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Museums Association (UK)

Original year unclear

Society of American Archivists (SAA)

Approved 2011, Revised 2020
Includes the Archivist core values statement and Archivist code of ethics

Did I miss any?

This list was pretty extensive, but I am sure I must have missed a few charters here and there. Do let me know if there are any in particular that you think I should have included and I will make sure to add it.

There is also a slightly different list that exists in the Getty website which may not be entirely represented here.

Please consider signing up for my newsletter with the button below to find out when my latest resources and articles get published.

Art Conservation - Frequently Asked Questions

Angelica Isa — Fri, 05 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

As an art lover, it's important to understand how to properly care for and preserve your beloved pieces. Here are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about art conservation, based on Google search questions and some curated knowledge from reputable conservation sources. The following Q&A is being constantly updated. I am open to edits and corrections as long as they come from a place of kindness :)

What is art conservation?
How do I care for my art collection?
What is an art conservator?
What is an art conservationist?
How do I find an art conservator?
What is a preventive care conservator?
Do you need to be a conservator to work with collections?
Can all art be conserved?
What should I do if my art becomes damaged?
How do I become an art conservator?
Do I need to learn other languages to become an art conservator?
How much does it cost to study art conservation?

What is art conservation?

Conservation is the process of preserving and restoring works of art to their original condition. This involves a range of techniques, including cleaning, repairing damage, and stabilizing the piece to prevent further deterioration. Conservators are trained professionals who specialize in this field and work to ensure that art is preserved for future generations.

If you want to dig deeper, the term "art" conservator is highly misleading as it will mostly apply to conservators working in the fine arts - such as with paintings and sculptures.

However, conservators around the world specialise in a broad range of materials, each with its own difficulties and challenges. Thus, it is not uncommon for conservators to consult each other based on the materials they find on particular objects.

Some of the specialisations you may find (certainly not all) are:

Stone
Architectural
Natural history
Photograph
Book and paper
Textiles
Contemporary art
Digital media and audiovisual
Plastics
Ethnographic (generally related to historical and indigenous collections from around the world)
Archaeological
Metals
Preventive
Wood (even just waterlogged wood)
Glass and ceramics
Murals and frescoes
Mosaics
Furniture
Industrial machinery, trains, airplanes, tanks
Things as niche as clocks, globes, and model ships

How do I care for my art collection?

There are several steps you can take to properly care for your art collection:

Keep art out of direct sunlight, as UV rays can fade or discolor the piece.
Use LED lighting to avoid exposing your art to Infrared radiation.
Avoid placing art near sources of heat, humidity, or moisture, as these can cause damage.
Dust and clean your spaces regularly using a soft, dry cloth or a feather duster.
Handle art carefully and gently to avoid accidental damage.
If at all possible, keep your spaces clean to avoid pests. Pests such as moths, various beetles and other insects like silverfish will damage your objects, and in some cases, eat them completely.
If you need to move or transport art, do so with caution and use proper protective materials such as bubble wrap or acid-free tissue paper.

What is an art conservator?

An art conservator, or just a conservator, is a trained professional who specializes in the preservation and restoration of works of art. They use a range of techniques and materials to clean, repair, and stabilize art, with the goal of preserving it for future generations. Art conservators work in a variety of settings, including museums, galleries, and private conservation studios.

What is an art conservationist?

Beware the term "conservationist" as it is not the correct term to describe professionals who work in the care of heritage and art - and it will annoy conservators greatly.

Generally speaking, a "conservationist" is a person who is concerned about the environment, climate change, and pollution.

Conservationists and conservators are not the same career. In fact, in 2022, conservators spent a significant amount of time cleaning up after conservationists.

Terms for conservators will vary depending on countries and general usage. In general, correct terms for conservators are:

Conservator
Conservator-restorer
Restorer (Although this term is sometimes shunned in some countries as it may denote a more liberal, and often frowned-upon, approach to removing original materials.)

How do I find an art conservator?

When searching for an accredited conservator, it's important to do your research and ask for recommendations. Look for conservators who have received proper training and accreditation, such as those who are members of professional organizations like the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works or ICON UK. You can also ask for references from previous clients and check for reviews or testimonials online.

What is a preventive care conservator?

There is a specific branch of conservation these days which does not focus on a type of object or material, but rather on the conditions that surround objects.

You may also find it as Preventive conservation, also called preventive care, collections care, preventative conservation/care.

Preventive care and management focuses on evaluating and monitoring the 10 agents of deterioration framework as developed by the Canadian Conservation Institute.

The 10 agents are:

Physical forces
Thieves and vandals
Fire
WAter
Pests
Pollutants
Light, ultraviolet and infrared
Incorrect temperature
Incorrect relative humidity
Dissociation

It is the job of a collections care professional to evaluate the ways in which the 10 agents may be causing damage to a whole collection in order to implement protective measures that minimise damage over time.

In the case of preventive care, a professional will not be directly treating objects, but rather improving the conditions in which those objects live.

For more guidance on how to apply preventive care, check out this resource from English Heritage

Do you need to be a conservator to work with collections?

Nope, you most certainly don't have to be. People who work with collections may come from a diverse background and training programs. In Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM), you may find:

Registrars and database specialists
Conservators
Archivists
Librarians
Preparators
Exhibitions officers
Curators
Facilities management and operations
Mountmakers
Educators
Biologists, chemists, physicists and other conservation scientists
Etc.

Can all art be conserved?

Not all art can be conserved, as some materials or techniques may be too fragile or unstable to be restored. In these cases, the focus may shift to preserving what remains of the piece and preventing further deterioration. However, with the right techniques and materials, many works of art can be successfully conserved and restored.

Some types of damage, such as fading due to light, are completely irreversible, so they once done, such damage cannot be undone even by the best practitioners.

What should I do if my art becomes damaged?

If your art becomes damaged, it's important to act quickly to minimize further damage. If the damage is minor, such as a small tear or scratch, you may be able to repair it yourself using conservation-grade materials.

This is not generally recommended and most conservators will discourage you from doing so as there are many physical and chemical reactions that you may not expect and which you will not be able to control. Many conservators in both private practice and museum jobs spend significant amount of time undoing previous treatments gone wrong. The damage is not always fixable.

If the damage is significant or you are unsure how to properly repair it, it's best to seek the assistance of a professional conservator who specialises in the material you have.

How do I become an art conservator?

For a more in-depth discussion on how to become an art conservator, please read this article Where to study art conservation - The ultimate guide.

Do I need to learn other languages to become an art conservator?

Not really, no. Programs will only require either the local language of instruction, and in some cases, English as well. Other than that, you do not need to have foreign language qualifications to study conservation at post-graduate level.

How much does it cost to study art conservation?

In my article Where to study art conservation - The ultimate guide, I have included a very long Excel table with over 70 programs around the world and as much information as we could get regarding pre-requisites, costs, location, etc.

If you liked this post, sign up for [my newsletter](http://bit.ly/3XYqzrt) so you can get the latest articles straight into your inbox.

Behind-the-Scenes with Ki Culture: Financial Sustainability & Climate Change

Angelica Isa — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

An introductory note on sharing challenges
A conversation with Caitlin Southwick, Founder of Ki Culture
What does Ki stand for?
What does the Ki Culture logo stand for?
How do we address climate change with Ki Culture?
How has Ki Culture changed since it began?
How is Ki Culture sustainable in the financial sense?
How does a non-profit get money?
- Ok, then, what do you need to get a grant other than the actual application?
What happens if you become a for-profit company instead?
Why is change scary?
Where can someone start with Ki Culture?
Where can I learn more about Ki Culture?
How can I contact Ki Culture for partnerships and interviews?
Some other articles on Ki Culture
Thank you

The following article is framed in a way that highlights practical challenges and although all the content came from an interview, it is not presented in interview form. The reason I did this is that I believe it’s important to be able to talk about the day-to-day difficulties we face during our projects, the stuff that makes us sigh and want to give up every day - except we don’t. Sharing these experiences makes us all stronger.

I started noticing Ki Culture showing up in an impressive amount of places in 2022. I went to their website and it looked clean and modern. I checked out their Ki Books and they looked so well put together. I read the articles and I listened to the podcast interviews.

Everything looked great, Caitlin is fun to listen to, Ki Futures looked promising and well-thought out.

But I wondered… How did Ki Culture actually start? Not in the idea sense, but in the practical sense.

How is it making its money? How are they paying for this lovely website?

If I were cynical, as some of us have learned to be, how is this being funded? Who is paying for its services? Is it sustainable?

If it’s a for-profit, where is the profit going after it has been made? What kind of challenges is this organisation facing and how is it solving them?

These are the types of serious questions which can break an organisation if the information is not shared transparently. Even if that organisation is doing its best and there’s nothing weird going on.

I wanted to make sure we all knew the answers because I believe Ki Culture (among others) deserves a chance to carry out its mission without us throwing shade around because we are not sure about how something works.

So when I got the chance, I asked outright. How does Ki Culture work? How does it work today and how did it work when it began in 2019? What changed and why?

Here is what came out of this conversation. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

A conversation with Caitlin Southwick, Founder of Ki Culture

Early in January 2023, I was lucky to be able to have a Zoom with Caitlin Southwick, Founder and CEO of Ki Culture.

I will be honest, I was extremely excited about this, having seen Caitlin in several online conferences in 2022 (over 50 by her own count!) and itching to talk to an entrepreneur in culture who decided to tackle the issue of sustainability and climate change in culture head on.

Before we started, I made sure to check out some of her previous interviews and podcast appearances.

I didn’t want to end up asking the same questions all over again, so here we are today, and I have some behind-the-scenes info on Ki Culture which you will not be able to find anywhere else.

Full disclaimer: This is not a sponsored article. I wrote it out of interest because I started seeing Ki Culture everywhere and wanted to know what was up. I wanted to know their goals and, probably like you, I wanted to know where their money came from and how it was being used. So here are some answers!

What does Ki stand for?

In case you have been wondering too, I made sure to ask Caitlin why Ki Culture is named as it is. Let’s see if you guessed it.

[Ki is the ancient earth goddess of Sumerian religion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ki_(goddess). She was the chief consort of the sky god An or Anu.

If we go further afield, Qi is also the concept of vital energy in traditional east Asian medicine.

In some circles, Ki or Chi is also the pronoun used for nature.

And I’ll just throw my own in here from my long-ago slightly-remembered Japanese lessons, a ki is a tree or wood. So that applies too!

AI-generated Ki earth goddess by Midjourney.

So the name Ki transcends boundaries. It is connected to earth, to the environment and to our own vital energy - which we could say in a way depends on the earth and our environment. We certainly couldn’t keep going if the earth and environment didn’t support us!

I appreciated this joining of archaeology, ethnography or traditions, and linguistics behind the name of Ki Culture. It transmits the idea that all things are interconnected and that sustainability in culture is essential for our general wellbeing.

What does the Ki Culture logo stand for?

Originally, I thought it was some sort of eye. Then I looked closer and thought it was a section of the DNA helix.

However, the Ki Culture logo is directly associated to the goddess Ki, as it is the cuneiform for “earth” 𒆠.

How do we address climate change with Ki Culture?

Ki Culture embarked on a multiannual four-part project.

Create a survey to look at the current status of climate control conditions the cultural sector. We can’t know what we need to change or how until we know what we’ve got or how we are doing things today. This survey took place between October 5th and December 1st 2022. You can see the results of it here.
Run a conference where all interested parties can discuss and get on the same page. What are we all working for? Are we willing to do it? How will we do it? The International Conference for Climate Change took place in December 2022 and you can now watch the full recording of it on YouTube.
Collect signatures to sign a declaration that will commit to changing climate control conditions. This is currently underway and it’s very challenging! It’s one thing to feel you want to change things and it’s another completely to make the changes. Just like New Year’s Resolutions, no?
The final step of the project is to create a pilot program that walks museums through the whole process of changing loan agreements to be more sustainable and committing to reduce carbon footprints. This step is ongoing and due to launch in March 2023! You may have gotten a recent email about it if you are signed up for Ki Culture’s Newsletter.

How has Ki Culture changed since it began?

Ki Culture began addressing climate change only in museums. However, since then, it has expanded to address the cultural sector as a whole.

Why?

Because we are all involved and we have not been communicating with each other as much as we ought.

It’s not just about galleries and museums. We must involve artists, packers, vendors, shipping companies, suppliers, art handlers, foundations, municipalities, etc.

There are so many key players impacting each other. What’s the point of a museum trying to be sustainable if it thinks its vendors are not providing sustainable alternatives?

One of the most interesting things Caitlin mentions is that during her talks with different actors in the museum world, one of the most mentioned issues to explain difficulties of reducing carbon footprint was that shipping companies did not have sustainable options.

Caitlin then went to the shipping companies and asked them about sustainable options.

They were surprised museums wanted this. Nobody had actually asked them for it. They said if they had known there was demand for sustainable shipping, they would be offering it.

When it turns out, all you had to do was ask for sustainable shipping options.

So it turns out, the only thing stopping us from getting sustainable shipping was us.

We literally weren’t asking for it.

We may have been talking to each other about it, but we somehow weren’t telling the people who could actually solve the problem for us.

Are we afraid of asking the wrong questions? It seems that many museum professionals have not actually asked for what they want.

Is it because we are used to getting a no for an answer so we’ve given up? Or is it that we mistakenly assume we have no options? I wonder!

Let’s all now go and have a think about the things we want from our suppliers and museums.

Have we actually asked for it?
If not, is it because we think they will say no? Why do we think the answer will be no?
If we know for a fact the answer was no in the past, are we really 100% sure it will be no again? Times change. Let’s ask again.
If it still doesn’t work, let’s talk about it publicly and see why not. Until we make it work. How does that sound?

It seems to have worked for many of the wage strikes in 2022!

How is Ki Culture sustainable in the financial sense?

Another interesting way in which Ki Culture has changed since it began is in its business model.

Ki Culture began exclusively as a nonprofit. This meant it was run almost completely by a dedicated team of volunteers from around the world. This allowed it to create the Ki Books, a free downloadable resource that anyone can get to start off their sustainability journey.

However, this does not mean that an organisation does not have costs and bills that need to be paid every month. So where did that money come from?

I was surprised to know that Ki Culture began with Caitlin’s life savings, a move she does not recommend!

Talk about putting your money where your mouth is, right?

Between its birth in 2019 and 2020, there was only one paid, full-time employee in Ki Culture, and it wasn’t Caitlin. Caitlin was full-time unpaid and has only just managed to begin paying herself a salary in 2023.

So…

one paid employee,
one free employee,
and a small army of amazing volunteers.

For a non-profit about sustainability, this was, ironically, not sustainable.

The original business model had to change. It turns out doing things for free 24/7 with mostly yourself and a group of volunteers just doesn’t work if you want something to grow.

And you know what else turns out doesn’t work very well sometimes? Being a non-profit. Why? What does that mean?

How does a non-profit get money?

Many people have mentioned that Ki Culture should just be all free and, in an ideal world, it would be. I agree.

However, being a non-profit means that you are limited regarding the number of places you can get funds from.

You either go to foundations or you write grant applications.
You can ask for donations and run fundraisers.
You can set up membership fees (but you have to find members first.)
You can try to sell some goods and services (but some people will complain that you’re a non-profit in culture so you shouldn’t be charging anything at all.)

That’s it. That’s all your potential sources of money as a non-profit.

All of these mean time - and someone’s salary too, which in Caitlin’s case was her own… for 3 years. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’d be able to go many months without a salary, nevermind years.

So anyway, you're a non-profit, so you spend someone’s time writing a project and/or a grant application.

And then you go to a foundation and they hug you for your efforts and give you your money and a brassy medal. NOT.

Turns out you cannot just show up at a foundation’s door who has never heard of you and expect they will give you money for your project.

No, you have to spend the time building a relationship with a foundation before you are trustworthy, which can take years if you do it from scratch. I guess it's the equivalent of asking your first date for a small loan. Can't do it. Not successfully anyway. (Please let me know if you've ever gone on a date that asked you for a loan. Because I want to hear that story.)

Ok, then, what do you need to get a grant other than the actual application?

3 years of financial records or someone to match your grant
A project someone else wants to pay for, which is not necessarily the project that you have written.

I have heard many colleagues complain about this second point when looking for grant funding.

You need to do the project that the granting institution wants and fulfil their goals and their quantitative results based on how they wrote their grant guidelines. You know the drill. And if we don’t like it, then we can complain that funding institutions better make some changes… but it’s not our money, so it’s not our call, is it?

And on top of all this, you know what doesn’t have 3+ years to wait for the perfect non-profit funding? Maybe the planet - especially when your non-profit is about climate change and global sustainability.

And that’s basically it.

Since you can also ask people for donations directly, that’s what Ki Culture tried in the beginning.

In the summer of 2020, in the middle of the COVID pandemic, a small crowdfunding campaign managed to get €7,500, which got Ki through the first month.

This might seem like a lot of money for one month, but think of these costs: web development design and maintenance, email listing subscription, digital platforms, social media management, lawyer advisory, accounting fees payroll, taxes, office spaces and personnel salary - because you really want to give people fair living wages too - even if there's only one of them at the beginning.

Oh, and don’t forget you have to spend money to screen/audit your donations too, because you’d better know where that money came from in case the law comes asking.

In 2021, Ki started offering paid training courses, which helped it get through the year, but it was pretty clear that this was simply not growing fast enough, so Caitlin began investigating.

What happens if you become a for-profit company instead?

As it turns out, a bunch of other options open up… think startup money, angel investors, venture capital, regular investors, government programs for small businesses, accelerator and incubator programs, etc., etc., etc.

Once people know you intend to actually make money somehow rather than just spend it, they are more willing to give you theirs. Imagine that!

via GIPHY

*Investors, when you become for-profit... okay maybe it's not that easy, but still easier than grants.*

Fine. Lesson learned. Ki Culture has decided to become 2 legal entities in order to be able to support itself without having to rely on rare grants, unknown foundations and screenable donations:

Ki Culture will remain a non-profit entity. It includes the Ki Books, which are free to download. It also includes all of its social accounts and all the advocacy work for sustainability.
Ki Futures is the necessary for-profit side which will fund Ki Culture. It is a coaching and training program for organisations seeking to implement sustainability into their practice. Ki Futures charges organisations for an extended network of both coaches and peers to help an institution achieve sustainable practices. The coolest thing about it? The price you pay actually depends on your carbon footprint today, so the better you get, the less you will pay over time until you reach your goals. Ki Futures includes access to the network, to peers with example cases of how they managed different problems so you can emulate them, and to an online platform for interaction. (This all costs money to maintain, as you well know. Developers are not cheap.) As it is, the price you pay as an institution is only €1500 a year in exchange for 10 participant seats in the program. The bigger your institution, the less such a sum should honestly worry your budget.

Why is change scary?

One of the most interesting things that came up in my conversation with Caitlin was after I asked what the biggest BUTs were when she encouraged institutions to sign the declaration or join the Ki Futures program.

Was it money? Is it “too expensive”?

Yes and no.

The first BUT is always money. However, the larger the institution, the more money they are likely to save by joining the Ki Futures program. After an initial investment of, say, $20,000 to implement some changes, a large, established institution can literally save** hundreds of thousands of dollars per year** in energy bills. (See this recent New York Times article for an example.) So it can’t be money for the big places, really, can it?

What about the small institutions? Yes, for them it can certainly be money. They can’t afford it - but then again, their carbon footprint is probably way smaller too. They can probably make good improvements by making small, conscious changes.

What is another BUT? Turns out, it’s not an excuse as much as it’s just bureaucracy - the number of people who need to see something before a decision is made. The number of people who need to review, approve, sign, and stamp before anything can be bought or sold or moved or opened or closed. (I've had to sign to be reimbursed for items less than a couple dollars before, so I know what I'm telling you.) Small institutions don’t have this problem as much.

And another big BUT? The good ol’ “Who else is doing this?” We don’t want to be the first to jump into the pool just in case everybody else decides that pool was gross and we shouldn’t have done that.

Can we afford to be ostracised by our peers?

Can we afford to be criticised by the public?

It’s much harder for a smaller museum to be a pioneer in making changes than it is for a big museum. It might be harder to weather a fall if you're small.

So the feeling can go along the lines of, if the big museums are doing it, it must be right, so we should/could do it as well! Right?

So here we are. Trying to help the smaller institutions get the funding and resources they need and trying to get the bigger institutions to move past the committee stage.

It’s hard work, but it’s slowly coming along.

Where can someone start with Ki Culture?

This depends.

Are you just an individual looking to learn more about sustainability in culture?

Then your best bet is following on social media to keep up with the latest events, signing up for the newsletter to get info directly into your email inbox, and downloading the free Ki books.

Are you working for an institution?

You can start with the same steps as the interested individual, particularly with downloading the Ki books, which have actionable tips on how to start making changes at your institution today. This is also free. You can also start finding out whether your institution is interested in making significant improvements.

Are you an institution with a serious commitment to making big foundational changes?

Then you can sign the declaration, get some commitments down and join Ki Futures! Your involvement will encourage smaller participants to start making changes too. You can even decide to sponsor institutions around the world who can’t afford to start off by themselves.

Where can I learn more about Ki Culture?

You can of course check out their official website.

However, like I said, Caitlin participated in over 50 conferences in 2022, many of which are now online to watch. Examples include NICAS, ICOM-CC Metals Conference, AICCM annual meeting, ICOM Triennial in Prague and the NEMO conference, among others.

If you’d rather listen, she has also spoken in various podcasts since 2019 such as the Green Museum and Stories for the Future.

How can I contact Ki Culture for partnerships and interviews?

If you are interested in talking to Ki Culture for a partnership, an interview, a podcast or any other purpose not directly related to becoming a participant in Ki Futures, you can contact Communications Director, Nur El-Mahrakawy at nur.elmahrakawy@kiculture.org.

Some other articles on Ki Culture

Thank you

I would like to thank Nur El-Mahrakawy and Caitlin Southwick from Ki Culture for giving me this interview and for being so open and transparent about how Ki Culture works and what its biggest challenges are. It was delightful talking to both of them and exchanging our thoughts on how change happens in our strongly institutionalised field.

If you are interested in writing an article with me about your group, institution or project, please reach out to me through my contact form! I will be happy to discuss and help you share your content.

If you liked this post, please consider signing up for the newsletter with the button below so you can get the latest articles straight into your inbox.

2023 Mental Health Tips for Heritage Professionals

Angelica Isa — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

This article is based on the book Hardwiring Happiness by clinical psychologist, Rick Hanson, PhD.

Table of Contents
A resource for GLAM professionals (GLAM stands for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums)
The theory behind Hardwiring Happiness
How does the brain work?
How does our brain process events or feeling?
What are our two main states of mind?
The TLDR (Too Long, Didn't Read) Summary
The HEAL exercise
- How does the HEAL exercise work?
- The right antidote
How this works over time
Hardwiring Happiness for museum professionals

A resource for GLAM professionals (GLAM stands for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums)

Why in the world was I reading a random book called Hardwiring Happiness? Straight up curiosity. I'll have you know it was followed by the audible rendition of Penguin's Book of Hell and Book of the Undead too, in case you're interested.

I have very eclectic reading habits. So if you want a new crazy article later on how historical renditions of hell and ghosts are related to museum work today, I'm sure we could have a lot of fun doing that too. Let me know, hey?

In any case, I wanted to be able to give you this fantastic resource, especially at the beginning of a new year.

While rewarding, most of us can also agree that working for heritage and culture can be stressful, frustrating, and difficult.

It is not the same in every country. Our challenges are similar but not always the same. In some countries, we are frustrated by the lack of high quality education or access to materials and knowledge.

In other countries, the profession has been going for long enough that we may feel we are considered redundant after having put in so many years and money into training. Or perhaps we see our field as being inaccessible and difficult.

In many countries, we feel we are not recognised or valued as we should be.

So I'll just say it now before you think I'm about to drop a Holy Grail: Doing these mental health exercises is not going to solve the big ticket items.

It is highly unlikely that you will solve entrenched problems of toxic environments, accessibility or diversity.

These exercises are also not going to increase your budget or your salary. Unless, of course, their practice means everybody becomes just a little bit nicer to each other and makes problem-solving into a team effort.

Let's be clear that I am also not negating the bad things. They are real. They are there. Being a chill, calm sort of cookie is not going to change that at all. We must all make our own decisions on whether we stay or leave or [insert choice here].

However, this article is intended to give you some tools to face your everyday challenges with a sunnier disposition for the sake of improving your own quality of life and mental health. We can't control what other people do or how they treat us, but we can control how we react and what impact things will have on our own days.

So, for your benefit, here are my personal notes on the book Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence by Rick Hanson, PhD. This is not an affiliate link.

Quick annoying but necessary disclaimer: You know this, but I'll say it again just to be safe. I am just a humble conservator, everyone. The following are nothing more but my own notes on a book I read out of personal interest for your benefit because I thought it would be great to share. I am, obviously, not a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist or anything like that. Except for the final examples for GLAM professionals, I didn't come up with any of this myself. Please take things with a grain of salt and critical thinking. I am also not saying that you can address diagnosed mental health illnesses or past personal trauma with a few exercises on your own. I would, in fact, advise against that. Please seek professional help if you think you need it. All I hope is for this to give you a new way of looking inwards and finding peace on your hectic days. If you like these notes, I strongly recommend you read the full book.

The original pages of my book journal where I made the first notes and tables you are reading about here.

The theory behind Hardwiring Happiness

I will now attempt to give you the theory behind the book as briefly as possible so you understand the point when the exercises come in. Please bear with me. There's a fair bit of fancy biology science coming up.

Matt Damon in The Martian, via GIPHY

How does the brain work?

"Neurons that fire together wire together."

This idea posits that our mental states slowly become neural traits. The neurons that are constantly reacting together when we are feeling our different emotions become used to connecting to each other so that if you are repeatedly experiencing specific emotions and reacting in specific ways, the brain will wire this in for the long run.

In other words, your most common thoughts/feelings are literally building your brain, which also means that, to a certain extent, you can make conscious decisions on what kind of brain you want to have - as in, a Zen brain that keeps you calm and drinking tea or a brain that messes with you and makes you want to jump into the void.

This is called experience-dependent neuroplasticity. Keep this concept in mind!

How does our brain process events or feeling?

Warning. This is a bit technical, so here we go.

First, there is a trigger - for example, someone says something we dislike - like the exhibition schedule you had just got shorter.
Then, the amygdala in our brains sends an alarm to the hypothalamus and the sympathetic nervous system.
The hypothalamus freaks out a bit because, hey, you just got an alarm, and it requests your body to start releasing adrenaline, cortisol, norepinephrine and stress hormones.
Your hippocampus checks everything that is going on like a manager, forms a neural trace of the event and consolidates the response in your cortical memory networks. In other words, your hippocampus goes ok, cool this is how we react when we are told the exhibition schedule just got messed up.
Over time, your amygdala (step 2) becomes over sensitive to negative things and since we are lazy office humans these days and don't run around as much as we used to, all the cortisol that gets ordered into our system by an alert amygdala ends up hanging around longer than it should instead of being metabolised away quickly - which, unfortunately, overstimulates the brain and weakens/kills the cells in your hippocampus.
This is really bad because your hippocampus is the chill little person in your brain telling you to put things in perspective and settle down and carry on and have tea. The last thing we need is to be shrinking our hippocampuses. Hippocampi?

My attempt to turn brain science into a meme.

Little side tip: Apart from that amygdala-hypothalamus-hippocampus network going on, you have another part of your brain called the insula.

The insula of your brain is continuously monitoring your health and central functions and tells your brain that everything in your body is okay so even just consciously thinking about:

how you don't feel pain
how your breathing is nice and deep
how your heart is beating regularly
Etc.

can sensitize your brain to notice the good things. Noticing positive experiences like this gives the amygdala more dopamine.

This makes the amygdala more reactive to good experiences (as opposed to mostly bad ones) and tells your hippocampus to remember the good stuff too. Again, this is called self-directed neuroplasticity and it's real.

via GIPHY

What is the negativity bias?

You can divide your memory into two types: explicit and implicit.

Explicit memory has to do with declarative knowledge: things like phone numbers, shapes, ID of objects.

Implicit memory holds procedural knowledge: how to cook/drive/read, what to expect from people or situations, your values, your emotions, your likes and dislikes. Your implicit memory is negatively biased.

What does it mean that it's negatively biased?

Our brains have evolved to focus on the bad things more than the good things because we have spent several hundred thousand years running away from animals that wanted to eat us or fellow groups who maybe wanted to kill us because our cave looked way better than theirs (3 bed +2 bath + open concept - can you tell I'm flat hunting these days?).

It is much better for you to think there is a tiger hiding in the bush when there is none, than to think there is no tiger in the bush when there most definitely is.

Focusing on the negative would literally save you from becoming the next meal or being the next victim of an aggressive neighbour.

So, people who survived were people who expected the worst.

And here we are, the lucky descendants of a bunch of paranoid hominids.

What does the negativity bias mean for our modern lives?

Now that we're mostly out of the food chain (except maybe if you live in Australia? - I love you guys), the negativity bias affects us in emotional ways.

It means our brains will naturally focus on bad things that happen. We may overnanalyse our conversations looking for insults or attacks.

If you get 10 compliments and 1 piece of negative feedback, you can guess which one of those will be weighing on your mind over the next few days. And no, it likely won't be the bit that said you are amazing 99.9% of the time.

What is "taking in the good"?

In the face of this negativity bias, the author advises "taking in the good" which means that we attempt to develop happiness and inner strengths by using our good mental states and consciously turning them into neural traits.

In other words, we deliberately internalise positive experiences into our implicit memory to counteract the negativity bias.

We train our brains to see the good and then "install" this feeling permanently into the brain by taking a few seconds to actually enjoy the feelings. This, way, the next time we get a bad trigger, we can consciously pull up a good feeling to calm ourselves down before our amygdala runs away with us.

What are our three core needs?

But how will we know what kind of memories to pull up when we need them? Let's start with a bit of theory here too.

We can divide our brain into three sections which are loosely associated to our evolution:

Brain section	In charge of	Needs	Related behaviour
Brain stem	Basic breathing and life-related functions	Safety	Avoids harms
Subcortex	Emotions, motivations, bonding	Satisfaction	Approaches rewards
Cortex	Abstract reasoning, reflections over time, empathy, language, cooperation, planning.	Connections to others	Attaches to others

What are the characteristics of our three core needs?

Characteristic	Avoiding harm	Approaching rewards	Attaching to others
Needs	Safety	Satisfaction	Connection
Is challenged by	Threats	Loss	Rejection
Attends to	Risks	Opportunities	Relationships
Prioritises	Prevent decline	Promote improvement	Sexuality, intimacy, self-worth
Capabilities	Freeze/Flight/Fight	Forage, sustained chase	Empathy, bonding, language

What are our two main states of mind?

Each of these three core needs with associated wants has two states of being:

Reactive --> Stressed, ready for bad stuff to happen. Kicks off when we are triggered.
Responsive --> Chilled, relaxed, content. Default mode.

Our default mode of being is the responsive state and it is the mode of being we want to be in for as long as possible. When our bodies/brains feel that the three core needs are being met, the system remains in the responsive mode.

How do our core needs feel when you are in the responsive state?

Characteristic	Avoiding harm	Approaching rewards	Attaching to others
Sense of self	Safe	Satisfied	Connected
View of the world	Protection	Sufficiency	Inclusion
Stance	Confident	Fulfilled	Relate
Copes through	Asserting	Aspiring	Caring
Related actions	Dignity, gravity, restraint	Generosity, creativity	Empathy, compassion, kindess, cooperation
Central experience	Peace	Contentment	Love
Related feelings	Strong, calm, chill, empowered, efficacy	Grateful, glad, enthusiastic, accomplished, successful	Seen, liked, worthy, appreciated, special, cherished

According to the author, increased time spent in the responsive state, makes the neurobiological causes for stress, fear and frustration actually disappear!

How do our core needs feel when you are in the reactive state?

When you are in reactive mode, your body literally stops caring about long-term functions because it thinks it's saving you from potential immediate death. It will not prioritise long-term health until you come back down to the responsive state.

This means that the more time you spend in this "urgent emergency" mode, the more your long-term health will be impacted.

The reactive state depletes your resources.
Your immune system is put on hold because, hey, if the tiger eats you today who cares about the flu season next week or cancer next year, right?
Inflammation increases.
It wears down your cardiovascular system.
It atrophies neurons in your prefrontal cortex.
It impairs myelination (the insulation of neural fibres) and reduces brain connectivity.
Chronic stress reduces neurotrophin, which is needed for learning.
Adrenaline and cortisol rush through your blood. Your three core needs feel fear (avoiding), frustration (approaching) and heartache (attaching).
The already existing negativity bias heightens the experience and enriches the bad memory. Being in the reactive state can promote vices such as eating disorders, drugs, alcohol and even excessive gaming. Over time, it can lead to or worsen already existing mental health problems.

Characteristic	Avoiding harm	Approaching rewards	Attaching to others
Sense of self	Unsafe	Dissatisfied	Disconnected
View of the world	Dangerous	Scarcity	Exclusion
Stance	Aversive	Coveting	Separated
Copes through	Resisting	Grasping	Clinging
Related actions	Appease, freeze, flee, fight	Drivenness, addiction	Reproach, quarrel, prejudice
Central experience	Fear	Frustration	Heartache
Related feelings	Angry, immobile, defeated, weak, overwhelmed, helpless	Disappointed, failed, sad, grieving	Hurt, dismissed, abandoned, envious, mistreated, jealous, provoked, lonely, aggrieved, rejected, ashamed, unworthy, inadequate
Associated long-term mental illnesses exacerbated by the reactive mode	Generalised anxiety, agoraphobia, PTSD, OCD, dissociative disorder, panic attacks, social anxiety	Substance abuse, addictions	Insecure attachments, narcissism, borderline disorder, antisocial behaviour.

Summary table of Responsive vs. Reactive state

Characteristic	Responsive	Reactive
Sense of self	Safe, satisfied, connected	Unsafe, dissatisfied, disconnected
View of the world	Protection, sufficiency, inclusion	Danger, scarcity, exclusion
Stance	Confident, fulfilled, related	Aversive, coveting, separation
Coping mechanism	Asserting, aspiring, caring	Resisting, grasping, clinging
Metabolism	Replenishing	Depleting
Health effects	Salutogenic (promotes health)	Pathogenic (promotes disease)
Central experience	Peace, contentment, love	Fear, frustration, heartache

The TLDR (Too Long, Didn't Read) Summary

Okay, now we have all the theory we needed to get to this point. If you couldn't be bothered to read, I don't blame you. Here's the executive summary:

Your brain is pre-wired to focus on negative things.
Your brain remembers your reactions after every trigger and wires them into your brain to make it "easier" to react that way next time. This is called experience-dependent neuroplasticity.
Your state of mind can be divided into a positive or neutral responsive state and a negative reactive state.
The reactive state is conducive to bad long-term health, so you want to avoid as much as possible.
It is actually possible to re-wire your brain by consciously focusing on good experiences, thus reducing your overall time spend in the reactive state. This is called self-directed neuroplasticity.

The HEAL exercise

HEAL stands for:

Have a positive experience and notice it.
Enrich it. Consciously enjoy the experience for at least 5-10 seconds because that's what it takes for your brain to wire it.
Absorb it. Imagine the feeling physically sinking into you. Do this for as long as you can.
Link positive and negative material. This step is considered optional, especially with traumatic or embedded negative material. You make yourself aware of the negative feeling but don't allow it to take over.

Cool note: Your brain has a "window of reconsolidation" which lasts as least an hour. This means that after activating negative material, you have at least an hour during which you can trigger some positive and neutral feelings. This disrupts the brain's reconsolidation of the negative associations!

How does the HEAL exercise work?

You can...

Appreciate the little things (like, really really little too)
Find the time in a busy day to notice something good
Be grateful for X
Enjoy the X
Feel like you're on your side, not in a pedantic way, just in a supportive sense
Make the HEAL exercise into a daily habit.

Cool note: The greater the duration, intensity, multimodality (using various senses) and personal relevance of a trigger, the greater the memory retention.

The right antidote

But why did I give you all those intense tables? Because we need to find the right positive feeling for the right negative trigger.

For example, if you have scurvy, you don't expect it to be solved by taking Ibuprofen, right? Ibuprofen is for pain, not scurvy. You'd have to get Vitamin C.

Similarly, if we are feeling frustration, this belongs to our approaching rewards system. So if we tried to fix it by actions or memories related to the attaching to others system, it would be like taking ibuprofen for scurvy.

So instead of thinking that we're frustrated, but hey, other people love us! - which wouldn't work at all, we have to think that we're frustrated now but focus on all the things we've accomplished in the past and may accomplish in the future.

For your Avoiding harm system

If you feel	Call up feelings and memories of	Example of noticing something
Weakness	Strength	I can carry my own luggage around. I got over a very difficult situation in the past. I am strong.
Helplessness	Efficacy	Check out this awesome Excel table I just made. My colleagues trust my organisation skills.
Alarm	Protection, safety, calm	I am safe in this room in my house, in my block, in my country.
Anxiety, fear, worry	Reassurance, relaxation	Notice that you are alive and well, breathing, you're okay right now
Dirty, contaminated	Cleansing, health	I have access to a hot bath. It feels amazing. The air I'm breathing is fresh and clean. I had all my vegetables today.
Sensitive, fight/flight	Soothing, calming, resting	I am lying in on a Sunday. I am relaxed. I feel content.
Immobile, frozen	Physical activity, venting, exercising	I love running/biking/swimming/yoga. It feels good to be out of breath. I can feel my muscles getting toned.

For your Approaching rewards system

If you feel	Call up feelings and memories of	Examples of noticing something
Disappointment, sadness, loss	Gratitude, gain, gladness, beauty, pleasure	Look at this beautiful flower. I love my dog. There is a funny face in my toast today. My sister called today, we had a nice chat. The museum I work in is in a beautiful place/building.
Frustration	Past accomplishments	I just made something out of nothing. I sent everyone handmade Xmas cards last year. I wrote a book once. My paper got accepted to a conference. I made my own conservation tools and then other people copied them. My colour matching skills are out of this world today.
Drivenness (meaning unhealthy desire to attain more things out of a sense of lacking)	Satisfaction, fulfillment	I love this sofa I have at home. I have the perfect setup in my small apartment. My car is such a smooth drive. I just had the juiciest orange I've ever had. I am going on holiday soon/now.
Boredom, apathy	Rich fullness of this moment	This is a gorgeous view. This is the best sunset. I am having the best chocolate chip cookie. Check out my collection of pigments on this shelf.

For your Attaching to others system

If you feel	Call up feelings and memories of	Examples of noticing something
Abandoned, neglected	Feeling loved	My cat really loves me. Really! My family want me to come over for dinner. Some friends from out of town want to stay with me.
Ignored, misunderstood	Feeling seen, receiving empathy	I remember this person reading stories to me when I was in bed. Someone made me breakfast today. My mum still does my laundry when I visit her. The clerk at the shop was amazingly helpful. My doctor really nailed it with this medicine.
Left out, excluded	Belonging, feeling wanted	Someone remembered my birthday. The concierge in my building says good morning to me every day. My neighbour offered to cat-sit while I'm on holiday. My colleague took me out for a coffee today. Someone invited me to dinner at their house.
Inadequacy, shame, worthlessness	Feeling recognised, prized, appreciated	Someone is telling me they really like my Tweet. Someone says my preventive conservation program is super good. My boss wants me to share the work I did with my colleagues. My colleagues have complimented my job. A stranger said they loved the visit to the exhibition I worked on.
Loneliness	Friendship, being kind to others, self-caring, receiving kindness	I volunteered yesterday. Someone told me I am a good person. I made breakfast for everyone. I cleaned the house for everyone.
Impostor syndrome	Acceptance by others and by yourself, sincerity	I have killed no plants this year. I wrote our internal protocols and people use them. I do the lab tours for out-of-town visitors and special tour groups, and everyone loves it. I made a really good ---- the other day. I am not perfect, but I'm pretty good at ----! People think I make adorable crochet amigurumi. Someone asked me to make them a ---- because they like the way I do it.
Resentment, anger	Assertiveness, support, self-compassion	I stood up for myself without being rude. Go me! I stood behind someone when they needed it. I supported a friend who lost someone. I cared for myself when I was feeling under the weather and it made things better. I defused a difficult situation today.

How this works over time

The author recommends practicing HEAL every day for an indefinite period of time and stressing the fact that you are, essentially, a good person.

As you become conscious of the positive feelings you are "collecting", your brain will slowly file them away so that when you are then faced by a negative trigger, you will be able to open this filing cabinet and pull out the correct feeling to counteract the negative trigger and lessen the time spent in the reactive state.

Remember the goal is to reduce the amount of time spent in the reactive state and go back to the healthier and happier responsive state.

Over time, you won't even need to do this consciously. Your brain will automatically pull out the positive feelings you need to counteract the negative triggers. You won't even necessarily remember the exact positive memories, but will just feel the good backup feeling supporting you through the bad stuff.

I also happen to believe that if I find I am not recognising enough positive opportunities to save in my brain, then I am perfectly capable of creating them myself.

I feel lonely? Well, let's start saying hello to the neighbours. I don't feel accomplished? Let's take up a free YouTube drawing class! Do I wish I saw more kindness in my life? Let's go volunteer! Etc.

Hardwiring Happiness for museum professionals

So, let's imagine a few examples that are relevant to our field for a bit just so you know where to start. You can then go off and be free! Make your own! If you don't work in the museum field, it's not hard to extrapolate these to your own situations.

Example negative trigger	Main system affected	Examples of antidotes that could work
I feel my supervisors don't appreciate the work I do.	Attaching to others	Remember other supervisors, colleagues, clients, friends, family. Think of the times when people told you your work was amazing. They think your job is interesting. They wish they did what you do. They think you have magical hands.
I am stressed by this tight exhibition schedule	Avoiding harm	Call up past exhibitions where things worked out just fine. Be grateful for the colleagues you have that make things work. Be glad that the printer is working really well today - not everybody has one! Be thankful for your really good registrar who fixed up that TMS package just right.
I am afraid of losing my job in the field	Avoiding harm	Think about how you got this job. Why wouldn't you be able to get a new one? Remember feeling reassurance. Be grateful for your family, your friends, people who support you. You are alive, you are breathing, you have a home. You have skills. How did it feel when you were told you got jobs in the past?
I don't think I'm good enough to get into/stay the field	Attaching to others	Think of past achievements. They don't have to be big. Remember times when others told you they believed in you. Have you won any prizes in anything? It means you are an achiever.
I will never get promoted	Approaching rewards / Attaching to others	Appreciate current achievements, feel the fullness of this moment and be grateful for the things you have already achieved. Remember past times when people appreciated your teamwork or leadership. Recall past achievements and visualise them happening again.
Whatever, I stopped caring	Approaching rewards	Feel the richness of this moment. Are you working on an object no one else has touched in a hundred years? Are you in an area of the museum most people are not allowed to enter? Is the building you work in beautiful? Was your commute easy today? Did you see any cute animals on your way in? Will you get a cake you want later? Are your friends or family or pets waiting eagerly for you to get home?

The next time something good happens, don't let it go without taking at least 5-10 seconds to HEAL it and impress it into your brain.

As you can see from the above examples, it really doesn't have to be much because what you are doing is just collecting positive feelings and putting them into a mental box.

The author talks about some of patients imagining being bathed in a golden shower or having a jewel that you place on an ornate box or placing a flower in an imaginary garden.

The next time you have a negative trigger, you'll be able to browse your box/garden, bring up a positive antidote and come back to the responsive state.

I hope you have enjoyed what turned out to be a ridiculously long article / book review. I really do recommend reading the original book.

If you get the audiobook, the author reads it himself and guides you through some HEAL exercises, with pauses and a gentle therapist voice that leads you through like a meditation.

Happy HEALing!

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Where to study art conservation - The ultimate guide

Angelica Isa — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

This article was last updated on: Dec 5th, 2022

Disclaimer: Please note that this article is not evergreen. Prices and program details may change over time. I will do my best to keep it updated, but please do your own research before making life decisions. Also note that I have obviously not attended or am personally familiar with all of these programs. Just because a program is on this list does not mean I can openly recommend them. Again, please do your own research. I am not affiliated with any of these programs and am not receiving anything from them to put them on this list.

How do I become a conservator?

As you may or may not know, I am one of the moderators of the subreddit for art conservation.

One of the questions that we get most often is

How do I become a conservator or where do I study conservation?

And every time, we have to try to remember which ones there are, in what countries they are in, what specialties they each give people, etc.

For this reason, I have decided to attempt to make a comprehensive list of as many programmes in conservation as I am aware of. Many of these have been taken from the list that we have in this Reddit group.

If I have missed any, please don't hesitate to let me know so that I can add them to this continuously updating list and I will also try to add as many programmes I'm aware of. In both the global North and South.

Wherever possible, I will actually also add how long the programme takes and how much it costs.

If you have attended any of these programmes and would like to be available to answer questions to potential students, please let me know so that I can note you down for being contacted.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, this is intended to be a comprehensive list of Masters programmes, so if I missed any, please do tell me that I did and I will happily add them and then hopefully we can use this as a future resource for everyone to decide where they want to study conservation.

Please note that I simply did not have the space to list every program's requirements so I have only added certain notes where I thought information was particularly salient.

Do all conservators have masters degrees in conservation?

No, they do not. What degree you have will depend a lot on what country you live in and how the profession has developed in that country. In some countries, you don't need to have studied conservation straight out of high school.

You could have just a bachelors in conservation or a bachelor in something else and a masters in conservation, or you could have both degrees in conservation. It is also possible to become a technician in conservation, which, as the name states, is a technical degree - this may either not be available in all countries, or may be the only thing available in your country. It will vary by location. In some countries, there are also apprenticeship paths into conservation through training with a mentor.

This said, in most English-speaking places and the EU, you will most likely be required to have a formal post graduate degree in conservation (and several years of experience in the field even if it's internships) if you wish to work in a museum, library or similar institution.

This does not mean that you can't open your own private conservation/restoration business. Not all freelance conservators have formal degrees. Some of them have just been doing it for a very very long time and know what they're doing very well without, as we say in Peru, the "cardboard" to prove it (i.e. the official degree).

Because of the different paths conservators may take to become conservators, and the huge number of technical and undergraduate level degrees around the world, this article focuses solely on Masters degrees that are directly related to conservation. I have not included courses that relate to heritage management or museum studies.

Unexpected (unpleasant) surprises when researching where to study conservation for a masters

I will admit I began this article expecting to go into all these website pages and easily find the information a prospective student would want to know. Things like, PRICE or even whether I will come out with an MA or MSc or what and after how long. It turns out that this information is not easy to find and is not in just one place, but scattered all over the websites.

In order not to end up with a 3 year research project as I am doing this in my little free time, I am just leaving ?? marks where I just couldn't find things after a fair amount of clicking around. I am not saying the information isn't there. I'm only saying I couldn't find it after several minutes searching.

Yes, I could guess some of these things by asking some colleagues, but it could still be wrong if it's not official info from the program and also, for now, I want to make the point that this information was not easily available.

If you are able to clear up this missing information snafu for a program you are related to, please let me know and I will update the info - and if you are associated with any of these programs, please tell them we really would like to be able to find these things.

Brief note on financial support and other fees

Since almost if not all programs provide some sort of financial aid, either in the form of fully funding the program, loans, scholarships, awards, etc. I have not noted this information because it would be too much. Be aware that rules for these different forms of financial support will vary by institution and also on whether you are an international student or not.

I have also not included other fees or costs such as materials or lodgings. Some programs will explicitly say everything is included while others will say additional costs are up to you.

Brief note on exchange rates

For the sake of simplicity and so that you can actually compare the cost of programs on the same footing, I have converted all prices to USD based on the exchange rate on Dec 3rd, 2022:

1 GBP - US$ 1.20
1 EUR - US$ 1.03
1 AUD - US$ 0.68
1 NZD - US$ 0.64
1 SEK - US$ 0.10
1 MXN - US$ 0.05
1 CLP - US$ 0.0011
1 COP - US$ 0.00021

Other courses

Some of these institutions offer not only masters level courses, but they also have diplomas or professional development courses. I have not included these for the sake of focus. If I find enough demand, I will make another article dedicated to Continuous Professional Development courses, certificates and diplomas.

Okay! Here we go then.

Where can I study art conservation and how much does it cost to become a conservator?

Apparently quite a lot depending on where you would like to study!

Unless otherwise specified, all program lengths and prices are for full-time students.

Link to the full spreadsheet.

Interesting things I found while researching

Pricing is really clear on UK programs, but extremely hard to find on American ones.
UK programs have gotten insanely expensive since I got my degree in 2015.
Asian programs were impossible for me to find, probably because of the language barrier. If you know about Asian programs, please reach out to me so I can flesh out this table.
Most programs have no specific information with hard numbers about your chances of employability after you graduate.¹
Pre-reqs are extremely varied globally and reflect the expected conditions of the local applicant pool.
Many of the Latin American programs don't have anything online but expect you to send a request for information. Not even price.
Latin American programs really tend towards monuments and buildings more than objects.
Some of the Spanish-speaking programs only open if they get a minimum number of applicants.
Colombia (Not ColUmbia) had an amazing system that ties the tuition fees to the national minimum wage.

What did I miss?

Did I miss any programs or got any information wrong? Have things changed since I first released this post? Please reach out to me through any of my social media or through my contact form on this website and let me know. I will happily update.

A couple updates and acknowledgements

Since this article came out on Sunday, December 4th 2022, I erceived so many positive comments and requests to update and add information to the table, that it became necessary for me to create a new editable Excel sheet where you are free to add, edit, and update information for everyone's benefit. Please be aware that this is not the original file. I have done this to prevent the original information from being corrupted or accidentally deleted.

I will copy the information in this editable sheet to the master sheet presented above periodically - ideally once a year, so we can see how prices and programs change over time!

So thank you again, and let's keep making resources for everyone!

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It was recently pointed out to me that UK programs have vague employment figures because of marketing laws (consumer rights). If you want to know about employability for the UK, please contact the programs directly. ↩

How to get a job in art conservation

Angelica Isa — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Life Changes and Career Moves

November 6th 2022 marked my first full week of official unemployment in the heritage sector after 7 years of permanent employment at a conservation job in a museum.

This is not because it was a terrible job, or because I got laid off because times are tough in heritage. It’s because I recently got married and am now planning a move to Canada at the end of January 2023. Talk about starting from scratch for the chance of a new life (and right before a recession too)!

Anyone in heritage will be able to tell you that finding a permanent job in the field with an acceptable salary is extremely difficult – even more so in conservation, so these are challenging times for me!

Just visit any of the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) communities on Reddit (e.g. r/MuseumPros), and you will see what I mean.

Still, I consider it an opportunity to grow and learn and apply everything I have learned in Peru to a wonderful new job in Canada (or maybe a remote one elsewhere?).

Do you think it's possible? How does one even go about this?

How to get a job in conservation when things look bad

As it is, I can’t apply for a work permit until I apply first for my Permanent Residence in Canada after I arrive at the end of January (while at the same time looking for a place to live).

The work permit takes around two months to be issued. This means that I will not be allowed to work in Canada until at least mid-April or May.

This means I have a number of barriers to overcome:

No Permanent Resident paperwork yet because I will apply for it after I arrive
No working permit
No valid driver's license until I get through the paperwork
No local network in the field (not 100% true, but I will elaborate why further down)
No full awareness of where the jobs are
No place to live
No income or credit score
No car
No fellow student conservators who just graduated with me from a Canadian program
No local paperwork for my degrees
No recent object portfolio because I've spent most of my past 7 years doing preventive conservation, research, education projects, grant writing and area management
Jobs in conservation are few and far between
Did I mention I'm from PERU and moving to CANADA in JANUARY?!

How many of the above list would you tick for yourself when looking for a job in art conservation?

It's difficult to get a job in conservation

At this point, you really could be thinking, if this lady gets something, anyone can. The point I'm trying to make is that when you look at how difficult things can be, it is easy to become discouraged. However, this will be an exercise in tenacity and perseverance - nevermind a challenge to my mental health over a period of time.

You are welcome to make your own list of why finding a job in conservation or heritage will be hard. This is not so that you can feel terrible, but so that you can look at your challenges in the eye and so that you can address them one by one.

But it's not impossible to get a job in heritage - other people do it somehow

Now that we've looked at the negatives, let's look at the positives. In other words, the things that are actually in my/your control. Which of the things in the above list can I try to resolve?

In my particular case, I am currently:

Improving my French so I can apply for jobs in French-speaking Canada as well. I got a C1 grade on the TEF Canada last year, but I could probably improve that, if not on paper, at least in practice. Do you have a language you can work on?
Working towards the Meta Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate through Coursera and reading voraciously about social media marketing because I want to grow my own personal brand and website to continue to cater to the heritage community and those interested in our field. What alternate skills can you grow while you look?
Growing my social media presence through my regular Twitter and an updated Instagram account aimed at people outside the heritage field with an interest in museums and heritage conservation. I literally had 88 followers on my Instagram last week because it used to be private. I have 115 now. Do you think I can get it to 1000 before December 31st? We'll see! Are you leveraging your existing network?
Writing new blog posts like this one and helping out at the Reddit community for people interested in conservation whenever I have some free time. Are you volunteering somewhere in a related post or creating content?
Making events and courses starting with a French-style salon through Interintellect on Thursday, December 1st called The Other Conservation: The Role Of Heritage In The 21st Century Are you looking for like/minded people?
Helping out as a Community Member at Conserv by coordinating social media efforts to communicate the values of this exciting brand for collections environmental monitoring. Have you identified any companies you'd like to work with?
Presenting at conferences related to conservation such as the Facing Climate Change Focus on Conservation on November 29th. How many free online conferences or webinars have you signed up for?
Volunteering with The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC) as a Vice Chair for the Talent & Participation Committee and with CECA-Peru, the education branch of the International Council of Museums (ICOM).
Networking like crazy. I am joining Linkedin groups, Facebook groups, conferences, webinars, Reddit conversations, everything and anything I can find to meet colleagues who work in the field in Canada (and elsewhere because a good network is invaluable wherever it may be located). I am offering courses when possible and meeting people in real life when they are in my area - you'd be absolutely surprised at how many people I've actually managed to meet in person just in the past few weeks and how many meet-ups I am lining up for the next few weeks.

I encourage you to try this exercise. How many terrible things have you identified that challenge your path in having a career in heritage and what could you do, even if it's small, to address them? I can tell you that out of the list I just made for myself up there, nothing (except for the French) is actually difficult.

It has all just taken tons of time and outright effort. Yes, I've worked evenings and weekends for several years now to make it all happen up to now. I am sure you are perfectly capable of achieving this and more too.

You just have to want to do it enough to sacrifice the little free time you might have. And you know what? If you don't want to, there's nothing to feel bad about either. The whole point is to find something that makes you happy.

How can we help each other?

Here are some things that I intend to do right now and which you could do yourself if you are in a similar boat as me:

If you are in the Greater Toronto Area and need a volunteer or a remote aid for anything in your conservation or museum-related endeavours, let me know! I would love to meet and am willing to do what it takes as a new arrival. I can treat objects (although I'll need to brush up a bit) and have experience setting up preventive conservation programs from scratch. I do social media and blogging. I love conservation and heritage outreach.
If you are outside of Canada and need a content creator and writer with +7 years in the museum and heritage field and an international network in conservation who could work for you remotely, I am free now and looking!
Do you need blog posts with Search Engine Optimisation to drive traffic to your heritage-related organisation? I have a 100% organic top-ranking Google result for my dew point article.
Are you looking for heritage funding? I have successfully applied before for $30,000 and $1 million for projects in museum outreach and heritage research and would love to help you achieve your goals.
Do you just want to network with me? I would love to hear from you! I don't care if you're a student, pre-program, collections care manager, museum director, curator, freelance conservator, history buff, etc. I don't just want to talk to you if you can help me find a job. I want to talk to you anyway. If you'd like to have a chat with me, ask me stuff about conservation, do a collab on your podcast or social media platform, I would love to see what's up! Do you want to do an interview or talk or rant about conservation? Do you want to know more about SEO and content marketing? Reach out to me on any of my social media accounts. Linkedin connections are okay too!

The above list applies for me. What would apply for you? What can you offer others before you ask what they can offer you?

Will this even work?

Well, I guess I can't really tell you right now, can I? I won't know until I either get something in heritage in Canada or finally decide to move on - whenever that may be.

All I can do right now is create opportunities for myself and see where they go. If the day comes when I decide it's time to stop, I will do so gladly knowing that I looked at every possible path I could think of and that my happy job must lie somewhere else. I talked to as many people as I found. I volunteered in as many places as I could. I wrote everything I wanted to write. Essentially, I will make sure it is a "That'll do, pig" moment and not a "cry myself to sleep because I failed" moment.

via GIPHY

I do intend to keep track of how this new adventure goes because if it all works out, then I fully intend to use it as inspiration to help others overcome the barriers they are finding to joining the heritage field. If I can make a strong community and network work for me as a brand new immigrant in a new country, then I can try to make it work for you.

Always say thank you

I want to thank all of you who have supported me in my previous and current roles as a museum conservator, communicator, and volunteer.

Whether you are/were/will be a colleague, boss, fellow volunteer, community member, aspiring conservation student, Twitter friend, or Linkedin connection, I am grateful for the things you have taught me and the opportunities you have given me. Thank you for following me on my various social platforms, for engaging with my content, sharing and leaving me comments. Thank you for reaching out to me and building new connections. I look forward to being able to support you in whatever way I can now and in the future regardless of whether I stay in the field or not.

Whether I met you years ago or this week, (you know who you are!) thank you for your words of encouragement and your support. Thank you for letting me work with you, for pointing me to job boards, for flagging out job opportunitites that you saw somewhere, for giving me advice on how to stay warm in January in Canada and for sending me useful links. You are invaluable and I appreciate you. Thank you for thinking of me. I am thinking of you.

Some final advice for conservation job seekers from a fellow seeker

I have received some amazing advice lately, so here it is for you (and me!), distilled:

Don't stop learning, keep moving, keep meeting people. Make your CV the best you can make it with the resources available to you. Use your time wisely and keep your eyes on the prize.
Know what you want, not just "I know I want to work in conservation/heritage/museums" but know when to want to rest, when to pivot, when to stop and when to recognise situations that are too toxic or negative to be worth it. Know when to walk away. I will tell you if/when I reach this point and I will be honest about it. I have seen many sad experiences being shared on heritage communities online and we should all know that we are more valuable than a job.
If you are sad or discouraged, lie down and relax. Think of all the positive things that hold you up. Remember your past achievements as proof that you are capable.
Be grateful. Even if this doesn't work out, I will be thankful to everyone who looked out for me during the job seeking.
Be kind. Many of us are competing with each other for the same jobs. This doesn't mean we should be mean to each other. Maybe you get the job today, but it might be me tomorrow - and heritage is a small world. The last thing we want is to be making enemies when what we need is supportive colleagues.
You don't have to work in heritage to be involved with heritage. If you/we "fail" to get a job in the field, no one said we can't continue to be involved in other capacities. No one said you can't go to museums anymore or write blogs or make podcasts or be a member of the professional organisations or attend conferences. You/We still can. And it's not a failure if you find another job that pays your rent. A job is just a job. It does not define who we are - although it can certainly feel that way. If I end up not working in heritage, I can assure you this website will still be here.
Network like that song by Roberto Carlos that says he wants to have a million friends. Create meaningful relationships with your colleagues and peers. They will help and support you. If you've never heard this 70s gem from Brazil, here's the song!

Thank you for reading! I'll keep you posted on the international journey of this conservator!

How to use Excel pivot tables for collections care

Angelica Isa — Sat, 25 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Contents

Why is this post about pivot tables?
Where to find pivot tables
- Excel
- Google sheets
What are pivot tables anyway?
How to make a basic pivot table
- 1. Make a table
- Make pivot tables from your basic table
  - Excel
  - Google Sheets
How to use pivot tables for Integrated Pest Management
How to use pivot tables for manual environmental monitoring
How to use pivot tables for small-scale collections management
General recommendations
Other uses for pivot tables

Why is this post about pivot tables?

Sometimes, you don't have any budget for nice collections management software of any kind. Or maybe you're just a volunteer, or for whatever reason, nice, paid software isn't an option.

In these cases, you have to make the best of what you have - and you should know that what you do have actually has the possibility of being more powerful than you thought.

For this reason, I am writing this post about pivot tables. You may or may not have heard of them before. If you have, you're probably using them already and love them. If you haven't, I envy you the moment of discovering them for the first time because, I kid you not pivot tables can be a total game-changer if you do preventive conservation or any kind of collections management without the benefit of dedicated software. Without further ado, let's get going.

Where to find pivot tables

Let's start with finding out where pivot tables live:

It is possible to work with pivot tables on both Excel and Google Sheets. The following two screenshots show you where they are.

Excel

Location of pivot tables and charts in Excel under the Insert tab. I have also pointed out that there are pivot charts in Excel, which are charts that are based on pivot tables and are therefore responsive to pivot table changes.

Google sheets

Location of pivot tables in Google Sheets under the Insert tab.

What are pivot tables anyway?

According to Microsoft, "A PivotTable is a powerful tool to calculate, summarize, and analyze data that lets you see comparisons, patterns, and trends in your data."

When I first came across this idea, I didn't understand the point - isn't this what Excel does already? Well, in a way, yes. But also no.

Pivot tables allow you to take a general table full of unorganised data and automatically summarise or filter it in order to make comparisons that are more useful to you than a huge table of information. Don't worry if this still doesn't make sense, we will get there.

One of the cool thing about pivot tables is that you don't have to worry abour organising your information from the beginning. All you have to do is make sure you have a column for every possible type of information or filter which you will be needing to analyse your data and then just start populating the information. Pivot tables will then do all the organising, summarising and filtering for you.

If you look for how to use pivot tables on YouTube, most of the (really good) examples have to do with sales or profits, so I thought I'd write this post to show you how pivot tables can be used for conservation and collections management.

If you still want to check out those videos, here are a couple links that helped me get my brain around the possibilities of pivot tables:

How to make a basic pivot table

1. Make a table

I've been an Excel user since I was taught to use it in school, some 20 years ago. And it turns out I've been using tables all wrong for 20 years.

I don't know if you knew this, but it has come to my attention that just putting data into the Excel grid and formatting it with nice lines into something that looks like a table does not, in fact, make it a table.

Ceci n'est pas une table. It looks like a table, but officially, it is not.

To make a real table, you have to select your not-table and either press the Table button under the Insert tab in Excel, or you can hit Ctrl+T.

Watch this quick GIF on how to make your not-table into a real table. Note that this is not necessary in Google Sheets.

Notice that your real table now looks different. The header has changed colours (in my case it becomes shaded in blues), it automatically shows you filter arrows next to each column, and if you happen to scroll down a lot, you will notice that your header row becomes grey and replaces the A,B,C... names of the columns so that no matter how far you scroll down, you will always be able to see the title of your headers. You are now ready to make pivot table.

Make pivot tables from your basic table

Excel

Now that you have a basic pivot table, all you need to do is select it and click to create a pivot table. In both Google Sheets and Excel, you will find this button under the Insert tab. See the section at the top of this article to find the screenshots.

Choose the base table by either selecting the data or typing in the name of your table. Then choose the location for where your new pivot table will show up. In this example, I have chosen a cell (G2) next to the original table.

Once you have created your pivot table, two intimidating looking things will appear. One is a strange box with the name of your pivot table (pink) and instructions. The other is a right side menu bar. At the top (yellow), you will see a list of all the columns in your original table. Below that (green), you will see four boxes called Filters, Columns, Rows and Values. Don't be afraid, watch the video below for how to use them.

As you drag fields from the yellow section to the green sections, your pivot table will automatically appear, pulling data from your original table. Note that in the Values box, you can change whether you want the number to be a count, a sum, an average, or many other types of numbers.

Important note: Google sheets will automatically update pivot tables as you add information to the base table. However, Excel will require you to fo to the Data tab and press the Refresh all button to update the information.

Google Sheets

Creating a pivot table in Google Sheets works exactly the same as in Excel with the exception that you do not need to "create" a table. You can just select the table you have and create the pivot table from there.

As you will see in the very short video below, the main difference between the Excel and Google Sheets interface is that Excel shows you four squares to drag fields into while Google Sheets gives you a column with subtitles to drag into.

How to use pivot tables for Integrated Pest Management

Now that you have seen the basics of how pivot tables work for random data, let's use it for Integrated Pest Management.

Here is a fake table of Integrated Pest Management information you can download from Google Sheets to play with.

Basic table for IPM tracking in Google Sheets. These are the columns that I have created which help me use this table as the main database for a made-up IPM tracking exercise. Note that the Pest Occurrence Index (POI) column is a calculated number based on Baars & Henderson.

Watch this video on how to create a pivot table from the base table on Google Sheets. The process will be exactly the same in Excel with the exception that for Excel you first need to turn your not-table into a table using Ctrl+T. In both cases, you are just dragging and dropping fields into the right places.

If you use Excel for your pivot charts (and I strongly recommend it over Google Sheets), you will be able to create all kinds of charts and graphs to illustrate your IPM results. Go ahead and check out the fake table of Integrated Pest Management information where I have even left you some example charts you can make.

How to use pivot tables for manual environmental monitoring

Pivot tables will also help you manage environmental monitoring data if you regularly go around with a manual hygrometer. Yes, we know this is a bore, but hey, for some of us, that's all we've got.

For this, I have made you this fake table of environmental monitoring information you can download from Google Sheets to play with.

Notice that just inputting the information of the manual readings you take each day will be enough to give you a table which you can use to create pivot tables specific by spaces, seasons, and any other filters you may decide to use. All you have to do is put the information you will want to filter by as a column in your base table.

This pivot table was easily made by dragging the temperature and relative humidity readings into the Values field, using the Spaces and Seasons as rows. Make sure you check out the Google Sheet with environmental monitoring information to see it in detail.

How to use pivot tables for small-scale collections management

By now, you're probably getting the hang of pivot tables. Check this out. Yet another use for pivot tables is to help you sort your collections. Naturally, this is only the case for those of us who do not have a bespoke software for collections management or who are just managing small collections - even your own books at home or any personal collections will benefit greatly!

I have made you this fake table of object movement information you can download from Google Sheets to play with.

This fake table of imaginary objects in a collection shows some basic ID information for each object plus a location history and a yes/no column to indicate whether the location is the most updated one.

Look at the yellow sections. This particular pivot table allows you to filter out the latest location for an object while allowing the original table to maintain information on object history. Additionally, note that it is possible to identify objects with unknown locations. If you so wished, you could play with the filters available to find objects on loan, or even which objects move around the most.

General recommendations

In general, if you intend to use pivot tables to their fullest, I strongly recommend that you stick to Excel. Google Sheets is very finicky when you start creating cool charts - in short, it's a bit of a nightmare.

For this reason, I only recommend Google Sheets for pivot tables if you want something that is on the Cloud and can be easily shared among a lot of users. It is also fine if you will only be creating pivot tables and not pivot charts. I do not recommend it for intense data analysis or for data visualisation.

Remember that all you need is a base table with all the important information. Once you have that, the world is your oyster. You can make as many pivot tables as you want to show as many things as you require. All you need to do is put them on different tabs and let them pull the information for you from the main table.

When you are first starting out, I recommend just playing around and moving fields around to the Rows, Columns, Values and Filters boxes to see what they can give you. Then push the Make a Chart or Pivot Chart button and see what that gives you. You'll be amazed at the results.

Other uses for pivot tables

Initially, I used to find pivot tables a bit intimidating. I had seen them on Excel but had no idea what they did,and that big fields box that showed up when I clicked "insert pivot table" looked hella scary.

However, since I learned to use pivot tables, I've gone absolutely crazy over them. I now use them at work for collections-related issues such as following up on object locations, Integrated Pest Management interpretation, manual environmental monitoring and even collection surveys. The time saving introduced by this kind of basic automation is absolutely amazing.

I imagine that now you may feel more comfortable with pivot tables, you can think of a million ways they could be useful for you. Maybe for facilities stuff, or any other thing you need to keep track of! In my personal life, I have even introduced them into my personal finances and, believe me, they have made my life so much easier.

Let me know if this blog post helped you out and if you are also a pivot table fan like me! Please share any other amazing uses for pivot tables you may have found for collections care.

If you liked this post, you can follow me on Twitter where I'll be posting more content on how to make it easier to manage collections with few resources and free tools.

Council elections - Open positions at the IIC

Angelica Isa — Sat, 09 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Note: This post is still in the process of being updated. 9th April 2022.

What is the IIC anyway?

The IIC is the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. It is an international society based in the United Kingdom and is registered there as a charity. Along with ICOM-CC and ICCROM, it is a large association with international members who, in one way or another, work towards the conservation of (tangible) cultural heritage.

The IIC is the publisher of a very important journal in the field of conservation, Studies in Conservation and it is also the host of some of the largest international conferences in our field. For example, the 2022 IIC Congress will be coming up this year between 5-9th September in Wellington, New Zealand.

Aside from the publications and events, the IIC also runs international training courses and mentoring programs designed to help heritage professionals with their Continuous Professional Development. There are also grants, prizes and awards available to encourage projects and individuals in their conservation journeys.

Did you know? You don't need to be a conservator to be a member of the IIC. Membership is open to anyone with a professional interest in conservation. This means you can be a scientist, architect, educator, student, art historian, archaeologist, curator, etc. Any person working to preserve cultural heritage is welcome!

In case you're interested, you can read more about becoming a member.

If you are a conservator, the above explanations are probably completely unnecessary for you. Chances are you have published or participated with the IIC in some way or another before. As mentioned before, the IIC is a charity, so most of the roles within the Institute are volunteer roles.

So why are we talking about the IIC?

Positions up for elections

Yes, it's that time of the year again! The IIC Council is made up of the people who manage the day-to-day issues of the IIC. During the Annual General Meeting (coming up this Thursday, 26th May 2022), the Council explains current management actions and projects to the general membership and also takes the opportunity to answer any questions members might have about what's going on, how funds are being used, what the plans are, etc. You know, just questions people ask to those running an organisation.

Apart from all this important communication stuff, the Annual General Meeting is also the time to elect or re-elect Council members for the different positions. Depending on what the rules say, some positions may be up for re-election, while others have to have new people come in (fresh blood!).

So what positions will be free for election this time around? You are, of course, welcome to check out the official instructions for nomination at the IIC website, but I am giving you the quick and dirty run-down if you'd rather that! Important Disclaimer: If you do decide to run for election, please follow the legitimate instructions on the official IIC website, and not mine! I'm just glossing over here for your amusement and encouragement. I warn you some may be dad-level jokes.

Please note that I have not been nor am I likely to be directly in charge of the following descriptions and requirements in the future. In other words, I did not make these myself. If you have any comments or issues regarding the position profiles, please feel free to reach out to the Talent and Participation Committee (TPC) so that we can bring up these important topics with the Council. There will be more info on the TPC at the end of this blog post.

President

Photo of Morgan Freeman by Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This is the big one, innit? Really, no one else will do except Morgan Freeman, especially when he plays God. The President will work with the Executive Director to determine the IIC's general strategy and direction. You will be in charge of promoting key strategic relationships (with Tim Robbins, Jim Carey, Kevin Costner, Imperial penguins, etc.). You shall also represent the IIC and raise its profile at external events. You will be the chair for Council and Annual General Meetings. Naturally, you will be fully committed to IIC's goals of sustainability, access and inclusion and make sure that the IIC delivers and stays true to its values. You will be besties with the Secretary General.

Disclaimer: I honestly can't tell you if Morgan Freeman really said some of these things, but the Google says he did, so let's flow with it.

"Did you just call me old? I really prefer the word 'experienced'."

Specific requirements

Leadership skills. You're gonna have to get Gandalf and Santa to follow you. (If this confuses you, keep reading.)
Well-respected international reputation. I mean... Morgan Freeman.
Ability to represent IIC and speak authorititavely on behalf of the professional body. Ideally, with a voice as smooth as butter.
A good understanding of the profession around the world.
Ability to promote coordination and good cheer between all Council members, committees, staff and volunteers. "Fatigue, discomfort, discouragement are merely symptoms of effort."
Commitment to deliver on IIC's agenda for sustainability, access and inclusion. "If you want to see a miracle, be the miracle."
Ability to ensure decisions are taken and are implemented in time.
Tact and diplomacy: "Is listening important? I can't think of a single walk of life where it wouldn't be."
3-year commitment to the position and to chair Council meetings, have fortnightly contact with the IIC office, keep in touch with your buddy the Sec. Gen., participate in the annual Fellowship, Regional Group and Student meetings. As the big cookie, everyone will want to see you, so you really have to go to all key events such as the biennial Student Cand Emerging Conservator Conference and Congress.

If you feel too intimidated to apply for this role (you shouldn't!) because you don't have a deep narrator voice appropriate to talk about penguins and conservation procedures, don't worry too much. The incumbent President at the moment will be running for re-election and you can just vote for him. Still, here's a Morgan quote about that:

“I’m not intimidated by lead roles. I’m better in them. I don’t feel pressure. I feel released at times like that. That’s what I’m born to do.”

You tell it like it is, Morgan Freeman.

Secretary General

Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Property of Warner Brothers. Image from Wikipedia.

As Secretary General, you will be the Garth to our Wayne, the Garfunkel to our Simon, the Piglet to our Winnie, the Willow to our Buffy. Your role will involve working closely with the IIC Executive Director and Council President. You will be the magic link between the IIC's strategic ambitions and operational capacities. This means that you check that we have all the potion ingredients to pull off what we need to do. You should be comfortable with being the person we can all trust to make sure the IIC is an inspirational group with a distinctive, dynamic and well-managed organisation. The Secretary General is responsible for organising and promoting cooperation and coordination between Council members, committees, and the Executive Director. I trust that Willow's experience of being a sweet, shy witch and a short-lived power villain will give you the breadth of expertise required to fulfill this position.

Other duties include being the Chair of the Talent and Participation Committee and the Chair of the Complaints Committee should it become necessary to have one. You will also coordinate the Annual Review and assist the Executive Director. The Secretary General is expected to lead Human Resources matters including pension administration. You will also have to prepare Council Meetings and oversee the administration of ballots.

Finally, this one is a big adulting one: The Secretary General will be the bank signatory and co-administrator (together withe the IIC Treasurer) of IIC's investment funds, reserve accounts and deposit accounts. This means you will have your hands on our dough and will be expected to take responsibility for all cakes. As the lead magical person in the Council, you will be expected to work closely with all the Chairs of different areas.

Specific requirements

According to charity laws, the Secretary General must be a UK resident.
Be an IIC Fellow in good standing. IIC will not take Dark Willow, just nice Willow.
Be fully engaged with IIC's purpose, core activities, operations and functions. In other words, you can't just let Buffy and Xander go off on their own. You have to be there too. "It's a good fight, Buffy, and I want in."
Excellent organisational, leadership and communication skills. I mean, I am giving you Gandalf, Santa, Yoda, Hermione, Matilda/Miss Honey and Morgan Freeman, so yes... Communication!
Have a a well-respected international reputation in the profession.
Ability to promote cooperation and coordination between members of the Council coven. Your soft skills will be highly valued.
Commitment to delivering on IIC's sustainability, access, and inclusion agenda.
Ability to ensure decisions are taken in a timely manner and are implemented. You don't want to upset Morgan's penguins. It's all about timing for them, you know?
Tact and diplomacy. You can't tell people that they're "going Dumbledore" on you.
3-year commitment to the position and to chair Council meetings as well as the big list of meetings and events as you saw them for the position of President above.

Again, you are very welcome to run for this, but if it feels too much, again no worries, because the incumbent will be running for re-election.

Director, Chair of Fellowships Committee

Will you lead the Fellowship?

As the Chair of Fellowships Committee, you will work towards making the Fellowship a strong, inclusive, international network. I wish you got a Gandalf hat to go with this. (Get ready for all the LOTR references coming up). The Chair of Fellowships will help determine the objectives of the Fellowship growth initiatives and attempt to extend Fellowships to under-represented regions of the world (like Gandalf bringing in the hobbits). The Chair will also lead the reviews for Fellow nominations and present them to the Council, as well as supervise the ballot and voting.

Specific requirements

Be an IIC Fellow in good standing. (No Sarumans need apply.)
Be aware of IIC's purpose, core activities, operations and functions.
Leadership skills (Naturally, if you are to lead the Fellowship).
Have a a well-respected international reputation in the profession. Brownie points if your surname is "The Grey" or equivalent in other languages.
Teamwork, communication and interpersonal skills.
Commitment to deliver on IIC's agenda for sustainability, access and inclusion.
Be good at following up and through on decisions and projects. (People will await your coming at the third dawn and things like that.)
Tact and diplomacy. You can't go around banging people on the head with your staff or saying things like "Save me from the stubbornness of dwarves."
3-year commitment to the position and to attend Council of Elrond things.

Director, Chair of Awards and Grants Committee

You will not be required to fit in a chimney.

The Chair of the Awards and Grants Committee is like... an IIC Santa Claus. You will oversee the administration of the IIC's international awards and grants, as well as being responsible for generating and asking for nominations for specific awards, prizes and Honorary Fellowship status. In other words, you may be making lists and checking them twice. You will want everyone around the world, even the silent mice, to know about IIC awards in order to encourage sustainability and innovation at a global scale. In this case, you will not be allowed to give out any coals.

Specific requirements

Be an IIC Fellow in good standing.
Leadership skills (Or the reindeer just won't listen to you.)
Teamwork, communication and interpersonal skills. (You're not getting an elf workshop, but this is still key.)
Commitment to deliver on IIC's agenda for sustainability, access and inclusion.
Be good at following up and through on decisions and projects. (Nobody likes missing prizes.)
Tact and diplomacy. (Don't need to be a full jolly, happy soul, but you know what is meant.)
3-year commitment to the position and to attend Council of Elrond things (where you will meet and work with Gandalf.)

Director, Chair of Professional Development and Standards Committee

“When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not.” To become a Chair, forever must you not wait.

The Chair of Professional Development and Standards Committee.... let's say they will be like Yoda. Since IIC's core objectives are to advance knowledge and continuously improve professional practice and standards, the Chair of this Commitee will work with national associations and professional bodies around the world building international networks that strive for accreditation, excellence and educational opportunities for all. Yoda quotes ahead.

Specific requirements

IIC Fellow in good standing, you must be.
Recognised interstellar reputation, you must have.
Teamwork and communication, key are.
Commitment to nurture innovative approaches to training and skill development. “Always pass on what you have learned.”
Professional guidance, you will extend. Avoided, the Dark Side of conservation must be. Extra points if you can find opportunities to say: "Much to learn you still have... my old padawan this is just the beginning!"
Highly developed communication and interpersonal skills. Brownie points if you speak Shyriiwook, droidspeak, Ewokese, Huttese or any other intergalactic languages.
Commitment to deliver on IIC's agenda for sustainability, access and inclusion.
3-year commitment to the position and attendance to the Jedi Councils.

Director, Chair of Emerging Professionals Committee

Image by Philafrenzy, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. “She believed she could so she did.”

The Chair of Emerging Professionals Committee makes me think a bit of a strong female lead, so I am picking Miss Honey and Matilda, from the Roald Dahl book. This Chair's responsibilities have to do with nurturing the next generation of professionals, helping them strengthen their personal and professional skills as well as aiding them in finding their networks. You want to be everyone's Miss Honey. You should know that you will not be expected to spend a lot of time looking at people thoughtfully over the rim of your glasses. Matilda quotes coming up for your diversion!

Specific requirements

You don't need to be an IIC Fellow for this one.
We will like it even better if you're fresh and full of cool ideas!

“There aren’t many funny bits in Mr Tolkien either,’ Matilda said. ‘Do you think that all children’s books ought to have funny bits in them?’ Miss Honey asked. ‘I do,’ Matilda said. ‘Children are not so serious as grown-ups and love to laugh.”

Leadership skills and a well-recognised reputation in the profession is important, as your personal journey to success will be an aid and perhaps even inspiration to the next generations. “Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.”
Teamwork and communication, as always, are expected. It will probably be even better if you promise everyone big, gooey chocolate cakes. You got my vote if you promise cake.
Commitment to nurturing the talent of new professionals through innovation for training and skills development. “What she needed was just one person, one wise and sympathetic grown-up who could help her.”
Highly developed communication and interpersonal skills. Extra languages welcome. Be able to avoid telling Gandalf that his book doesn't have many funny bits.
Commitment to deliver on IIC's agenda for sustainability, access and inclusion.
3-year commitment to the position and attendance to the Jedi Council and Council of Elrond meetings. Cakes welcome here too.

Super cute note: For the 30th anniversary of writing Matilda, the amazing Quentin Blake illustrated a few imaginary jobs that she could be doing today. And guess WHAT? One of them is "chief executive" of the British Library. Check out the link to see the adorable cartoons!

Director, Ordinary Member of Council

Image by Reilly Brown - reillybrownart - reillybrown.deviantart - twitter.com/reilly_brown, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The position for Director, Ordinary Member of Council makes me think of someone who cares for the rules, but also for the people, so I have chosen Hermione, the girl from Harry Potter - not the girl from the Iliad, in case the picture with the wand got you confused. The way I understand it, an Ordinary Council Member is there to ensure the IIC is carrying out its purposes as a charity and for the public benefit for which it was conceived. This means, for example, that the money should not be used for... say... fighting for the rights of guinea pigs or campaigning for crunchy over smooth peanut butter, etc. - all lofty goals regardless - just not IIC ones. An Ordinary Council Member, like Hermione, is supposed to be like that caring friend who just wants you to do things the way you ought to, but will still be nice about it.

Since Hermione, as far as we know, never got to finish Hogwarts properly? we'll assume that all the fanfiction is correct, and she did indeed become Head Girl in a parallel universe. As such, a Head Girl will aim to support volunteers, employees, staff, and students as well as acknowledge their contributions. She will also protect Council Members (Prefects?) from overextending themselves and stop them from accidentally supporting actions which are not in line with IIC purposes. You will also ensure that people and committees are accountable to the Council, and that the Council, in turn, is accountable to all Members. If it were up to me, you'd get a wand and a robe - just like Gandalf.

Specific requirements

You don't need to be an IIC Fellow for this one either. Woot!
As with all the other positions, it will be important to be a recognised member of the community in one way or another.
Attention to detail. The Ordinary Council Member must examine IIC activities consciously to make sure that charity rules are being followed. “Actually I’m highly logical which allows me to look past extraneous detail and perceive clearly that which others overlook.”
Teamwork, again, key. Nothing surprising there. With all the Wonder Trio experience under your belt, we know you can do this.
Highly developed communication and interpersonal skills. This means no telling anyone that they have the emotional range of a teaspoon.
Commitment to deliver on IIC's agenda for sustainability, access and inclusion. “I’m hoping to do some good in the world!”
3-year commitment to the position as Head Girl and attendance to important meetings with Hogwarts School Board, Ministry of Magic, Jedi Councils, etc.

And since no Hermione Granger profile would be complete without a book or homework of some sort, you should know that all Council Members are expected to have read the Guidance from the Charities Commission, as it contains the obligations of all charity trustees.

Mistaken Requirements

Things you may think you need to be or have in order to run for these positions:

Over 60yrs old
Show 10+ indexed publications
Won 3+ conservation awards
Prove that you have used at least 50lbs of Paraloid/BEVA/swabs in your career

You don't need to be/do any of these!

REAL General Requirements

Declare that you are eligible to be a Trustee and Director to a Company registered as a charity in England and Wales. As far as I understand it, this does not mean you need to be located in the UK, nor does it mean you need to be a citizen of any country in particular. It looks like just a regular "I'm not a horrible human being, I promise." type of form to me.
The only position for which you do need to be a UK resident is Secretary General. This has to do with rules governing charities.
You do need to be a member of the IIC - but you don't need to have Fellow status for two of the positions. Why would you be on the board of an institution you're not even a member of, eh? Hardly an ask.

My recommended general requirements

Be a lovely individual looking to help and support the IIC community through your great ideas and leading qualities.
Be comfortable communicating ideas and working in a team.
Be willing to write up a couple basic things to stand up for election.

I'm ready. I want to direct things. I can do this!

First of all, if you want to run for elections, you are an amazing cookie. Congratulations from me already! So what do you need? Not much, actually! There isn't even a form! You need the following three things:

250-word manifesto of why you want to fulfil the role. (Members will probably read this when deciding who to vote for so make it snazzy!)
CV (Resume). You probably have this one already. Unless you haven't applied for anything in years, in which case it's probably a good idea to update, right?
Reference or statement of support from someone who thinks you will do a smashing job.

Send these three things to iic@iiconservation.org and address it to Jane Henderson, Secretary General, Chair of the Talent and Participation Committee -- unless, of course, you're applying for Jane's posision (that wouldn't be awkward at all), in which case you can address your email to Diane Gwilt, Vice Chair of the Talent and Participation Commitee. Be sure to mind the deadline, which is 18th April 2022 at noon (British Standard Time). If you are easily confused by timezones, like I am, here's a useful link to help you figure out the deadline in your timezone.

The brand new Talent and Participation Committee (TPC)

Why did I even write this? I have recently joined the IIC Talent and Participation Committee!! What will we be doing? What is the TPC all about?

The main goals of the TPC are to:

Help bring in a broader pool of participants and talents from around the world to contribute to the Council and committees
Expand the reach and diversity of IIC.

We will also be happy to take comments and suggestions regarding barriers to participation so that we can address them with the Council.

One thing we definitely do not do:

Pick and choose our friends to fulfill positions. We don't have that kind of power. We can only invite and encourage. It is the role of IIC members to vote for people to fill positions. Naturally, should there ever be a conflict of interests in anything relating to this, TPC members will step away from the process.

If you are interested and want to learn more about the TPC, reach out to me or any of our other lovely members, and we will be happy to talk to you. Based on our current committee members, I think we can talk to you in a variety of languages as well, so don't feel put out by all the English.

I think I want to stand for election... but I have questions!

If you have questions before deciding to stand for election - please email Ellie Sweetnam, iic@iiconservation.org and Ellie will find the right person to answer your question.

And just to be on the safe side, let me write down this disclaimer again: Important Disclaimer: If you do decide to run for election, please follow the legitimate instructions and information on the official IIC website, and not mine!

Second disclaimer, just to be on the safe side, I do not, of course, own any Harry Potter, Star Wars, Roald Dahl or Santa-related anything at all. No one is paying me to advertise them - as if they needed me for that! I am not making any money from mentioning them either. I am not selling anything. Etc., etc., etc. I make no claims whatsoever over any copyrighted content.

If you'd like to read more articles on various other conservation-related topics, please feel free to browse the blog!

If you'd like to continue this conversation, follow me on Twitter where I'll be happy to talk about it some more.

The 11th agent of deterioration

Angelica Isa — Sat, 05 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Photo by Stefan Steinbauer on Unsplash

Contents

The 10 Agents of deterioration
An 11th culprit: Obscurity
How do you know you are suffering from Obscurity?
Why we need to highlight Obscurity
How do you feel about Obscurity?
Read more about public conservation

The 10 Agents of deterioration

Let's begin with the basic ten agents of deterioration. If you've never heard of them, here are a couple super quick and fun resources to get you up to speed:

If you are looking for more legit sources, here are a couple more:

The main point about the 10 agents of deterioration is that they are different ways in which collections are damaged either by natural or human forces/dynamics, accidental or intentional. As conservators or professionals who, in one way or another, work to care for various types of cultural heritage, we come to think of preventive conservation as all the measures we take to make sure these ten agents don't wreak havoc in our collections and sites.

So we take measures.

We put in leak detection systems, fire alarms, sprinklers, security cameras, nylon strings to stop earthquakes from breaking things, acid-free packaging, insect monitoring traps, UV filters, fancy databases and barcodes, digitisation programmes, 3D scanning projects, you name it! We do all this amazing work to make sure nothing happens to our collections, or at least to make sure that whatever happens happens very, very, very slowly.

And yet, I had a feeling we were forgetting a very important and all-encompassing one... What happens if all the work we do is useless because no one knows about it?

Do you feel like this sometimes?

An 11th culprit: Obscurity

The closest agent to the one I am proposing to add would be Dissociation or Custodial neglect. However, this agent focuses on internal documentation, follow-up of processes during staff turnover and database or record-keeping problems. This is not what I mean.

A few months ago, I was asked how come, if I was a conservator, I knew stuff about social media marketing, basic design, SEO and Google analytics? So I had to put into words something that I had been thinking since I began working in 2016.

Public outreach and social media management is an integral part of preventive conservation. I consider it part of my job to make sure all the work I do means something to someone out there who would otherwise know nothing about my museum, our collections, our conservation work. I don't care if it's not in my job profile or description because, sometimes, I think it should be.

The thing is, even if you have the most amazing budget in the world for perfect, stable, carbon-neutral, insect-free storage spaces...

It won't count for much if nobody cares, and what happens when nobody cares? Your amazing budget will go away.

A lot of us, if not all of us, do magic and make do to have the best, creative, innovative solutions for all the things we need to do to keep our collections safe - but we don't always take that extra step to make sure that everyone knows about it.

It's like a vicious cycle. You don't have a budget, so you can't hire social media people or do super fancy things (or sometimes even basic things). People outside your institution, or even inside your institution, don't know what you're up to or why. A lot of outside people don't even know your building is there. So your budget (and your team) gets smaller and smaller and smaller - until you're gone.

And this brings us back to the 10 agents of deterioration. If you and your team are gone, what will happen to the collections then? Well, the main 10 agents of deterioration will make sure to destroy them - and then everyone will be all shock-horror and complain about why nothing was ever done before it got this bad and we will be cranky, old, jaded people saying it was a terrible deal and we couldn't save it, and it's everyone else's fault for not listening to us and cutting our budgets and/or firing us.

It's just a bad deal all around for everyone involved and it happens all over the world regardless of your kind or size of institution.

Let's avoid becoming like Statler and Waldorf.

How do you know you are suffering from Obscurity?

When talking about your collections and/or institution, visitors say things like:

I didn't know you were here!
I live very close by and I had no idea!
How long have you been here?
Why have I never heard of you before?
Are you on social media? Where is it?

Well-meaninged colleagues might still say things like:

Oh? Why do you need to do that?
Why can't x take care of it?
I didn't know we had that in our collections!
That doesn't sound like a priority.
We could probably outsource conservation services just fine.

The thing with Agent 11: Obscurity, is that it does not only apply to the collections themselves (objects get forgotten all the time), but to the people who care for them - and affecting the people will inevitably affect the collections.

Why we need to highlight Obscurity

We must fight against being forgotten. Our collections don't deserve to be forgotten. Those of us who work to keep them should not be invisible.

Obscurity, as its name implies, is an agent that works furtively, clandestinely. It is similar to Neglect and Dissociation in that the effects of its damage on collections cannot be openly observed. Water damage, fire damage, fading, theft, insect attack - these are all things we can see and quantify.

Not so with Obscurity. How do you quantify how visible or invisible you are?

Obscurity is quietly chipping away at your collection's limelight, at your job security, at your institution's position within its community.

I'm not sure if adding an Agent that addresses both collections and collection caretakers would go in line with the original 10 agents. It is the odd one out. What do you think? I like to think adding the people into the agents would help us argue professionally for the importance of sharing collections care work even at the smallest institutions. What are collections anyway if there are no people? I also like to think outreach-oriented themes should be included - or at least mentioned explicitly - in our training programmes, but that's not for me to decide.

How do you feel about Obscurity?

I'll be honest, now that I've given it a name, I find Obscurity to be terrifying. It's even scarier than fires and floods and clothes moths - but in a different sort of way.

Is there any point in fighting the 10 agents of deterioration if we allow Obscurity to take over slowly?

How many of us are concerned about the wellbeing of our collections because we don't know if we'll be here to care for them next quarter?

How many of us are worried because the people in our community don't even know our museum is here?

How many of us have lost hope completely that our voices will be heard to the point where we have stopped trying and just get on with our work, heads down, crossing fingers that it will be okay?

I know communications may not be our strong suit sometimes, but neither was Integrated Pest Management before you learned to do it, was it? Maybe if we start thinking that lack of communication is a preventive conservation issue, then we can start tackling Obscurity properly.

What do you think? Follow me on Twitter to help me share conservation topics with everyone and share your thoughts on this blog post! Let's continue the conversation and fight Obscurity with communication! :)

Training Accessibility in Conservation

Angelica Isa — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Conservation training and experience

A relatively recent comment I saw online is that aspiring conservators-to-be are still finding very high bars and accessibility issues when it comes to entering the profession. I began my journey into conservation 10 years ago, and it still seems the same. The very strange expectation that “to become a conservator, you need to have had experience as a conservator,” while defensible from a standards perspective, is also completely illogical from a reality perspective. Why is conservation training so hard to get?

It felt like a cut-throat competitive approach to getting those few, coveted places in conservation programmes around the world and because I didn’t decide to be a conservator when I was 13 years old and got internships in local museums because that’s not how my country works, I might have missed that boat.

And the worst thing is that for all that competition, if/when you get out, there is always the chance you might not even get a job that pays you back for your sacrifices - and some of us have to make more sacrifices than others.

My personal journey to become a conservator was, luckily, not entirely like that. I chose to go into conservation after I had already finished a BA in anthropology. I had never considered conservation before that. I had never volunteered in a museum. I just happened to have had several courses in chemistry and anthropology to be able to fill the requirements for an MA application. I applied to a program abroad and I was able to get in. In fact, I actually had to get in twice because I was waitlisted the first time around, and by the time I was happily accepted, the visa situation would have taken too long for me to get there in time for the start of the school year, so, with a lot of sadness, I had to withdraw and just try again the next year and hope for the best.

Luckily for me, it worked the second time around without a waitlist, and I was able to get my degree. However, until I was accepted the second time, that feeling that maybe I was too late was constant. Years later, I still get butterflies in my stomach thinking about what would have happened if I hadn’t got in.

There were a number of programmes I didn’t even bother applying for because I knew I wouldn’t be able to compete (or afford them).

My applicant peers, who by this time were a few years younger than me, already seemed to have museum internship experiences that amounted to a number of years! I wondered how this was even possible? The idea that in order to get into a programme that taught me something, I already had to be well-steeped into that something (and even have a portfolio in some cases!) struck me as absurd. Were they mainly there to rubber stamp us and give out a certification?

When I finally got to my programme and met the cohort who have now become a group of very good friends, I noticed that, just like me, they were mostly new to conservation, and this was a relief. I had a fantastic two years of learning things I’d never even heard of before, sharing knowledge with fellow students and even had my very first ever serious internship experience in conservation. This allowed me to move on after my degree and get a conservation job in my own country where I have managed to apply all things learned and even teach some conservation basics to colleagues from other fields. I am happy to say that I was able to overcome the barriers I saw looming ahead - in great part because I am lucky in my family and situation.

That’s my story, and I wonder if yours is similar or completely different. I am very grateful that I was able to join a programme and that I got that official degree from a recognised university - which was absolutely necessary for me to be where I am today.

However, I still wonder about those of us who can’t do that. Either because of money, geography, personal reasons, etc., there are significant barriers to overcome. I can’t advocate for an online conservation degree by anything other than a recognised institution. I also won’t presume to tell programmes how to run their application processes.

What I can do myself is address one of the issues that stuck with me while I waited to see if I would be able to get a degree: the knowledge and experience gap between applicants.

Conservation public outreach, offer and possibilities

Various institutions and individuals are doing fantastic work with conservation outreach for the general public. There are YouTube channels, social media accounts, free webinars, etc. These are all great and serve as a good way for interested people at various levels to dip their feet into conservation. Here are some examples of this:

However, if you are a person interested in going into conservation and realise you just don’t seem to have the basics to even apply to a programme in the first place, where could you start? There are scholarships and things for pre-programme individuals, but again, these will likely be just as competitive as the programmes themselves, so where does that leave you?

Sometimes we might think that we can’t make a difference, that we need to wait for our professional bodies or organisations to do something about things we need to improve - and they’re definitely trying, but we can still help out - and be rewarded fairly for our efforts.

Experimentation

I should be explicitly clear that I am not trying to encourage the independent, online training of full conservators - this would be dangerous and probably outright unethical. Conservation training, as we all know, requires a lot of hands-on experience guided by the watchful eye of an experienced tutor in a laboratory setting. I personally believe we do still need institutional credibility, education, accreditations, internships, apprenticeships, laboratory experience, etc.

That said, there are many aspects of conservation that can be imparted online without any expectation that students or people interested in pre-programme preparation would attempt anything crazy on their own: ethics, preventive conservation basics, risk assessment, documentation management, community engagement, chemistry, software use, sustainability, budget planning, data science, pest management, etc.

Many of these great courses, however, can be expensive for students - especially for those of us who have to deal with currency conversion rates. So what now?

I would like to encourage you, if you are a trained conservator, to share your knowledge in a freelance setting at a price you consider acceptable for your geographical location and based on your own resources and time - unless, of course, you are contractually bound not to. I specifically co-founded Altminster so that we would have a space to do this. It is all running 100% free for now because our costs are very very low, so it’s possible to do.

Soon, I intend to try to make a loosely structured, low fees, pre-programme style curriculum of courses that someone could study independently and mostly asynchronously in order to prepare themselves for the dive - so that they don’t feel so separated from or disadvantaged in the face of their seemingly already professional peers. You can look at a starting example for Linguistics that already exists on Altminster.

Interested? Send me a message if this is something you would like to do and let’s build something together.

If you liked this post, you can follow me on Twitter where I'll be posting more content on conservation tidbits and how to improve your collections at home.

How to care for silk items

Angelica Isa — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Important note: Please read the entirety of this article on how to care for silk before you attempt anything with your objects/items of clothing/etc. I cannot and do not endorse DIY conservation by untrained individuals. If you feel unsure about how to do things, be aware that there is always a possibility that you could be doing irreversible damage. Do not experiment with objects that are especially valuable to you. Read the suggestions carefully and find a commercial or professional specialist to care for your items if you don't feel prepared to risk the consequences of your own actions.

Contents

Think like a conservator
What is silk?
What have you really got?
Why is it important to know what you have?
How are you using your silk?
What does this mean for how you care for it?
Conservation approved resources to find out more about caring for silk (and textiles)
Find out more

Think like a conservator

A conservator, that is, a person whose professional job is to care for material cultural objects or buildings (and not a person who saves whales), will have a very particular way of looking at items and how they degrade.

Before you begin thinking about how to care for your silk, there are some important and fascinating questions that you should think about first. I will only give you some examples, as once you get the gist of this, you will be more than capable of coming up with more questions yourself.

Is this really silk? Where did I buy it? Do I think it's silk because I was told so or because it's on the label? Or is it because it comes from a company I trust, and they have assured me this is silk. If this is indeed silk, what kind of silk is it?
How do I use this? Is it every day, like in a bedsheet or pillowcase? Is this a fancy dress or tie we only wear every now and then? Is this underwear?
How do I normally store this? Do I fold it? Do I set it out straight? Do I put it in cupboards or just on top of a shelf?
How is the climate inside my house or space where I store my silk? Is it dark or well lit? Is it damp? Does it smell mouldy there? Is it dry? Do I see tons of moths flying around?

What is silk?

If we're talking about the real thing, silk is a natural fibre composed of proteins, like your hair. While your hair is mostly made up of a protein called keratin, silk is made up of a protein called fibroin.

As you probably know, natural silk is mainly produced by insects (although arachnids make silk spiderwebs too). In fact, check out this surprising article about an extremely rare cloth made of spider silk.

The real deal. Mulberry worm farm and cocoons. Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh from Pexels.

Rare spider silk aside, the one we commonly use for clothing is made by the mulberry silkworm, which is ultimately a moth larva. The larva secretes the silk slowly as it builds its cocoon. The silk is taken from the silkworm's cocoon, which is boiled (with the larva still inside) so that the silk thread can be unravelled in a single piece - which explains why animal rights activism does not condone natural silk. The cocoons are boiled because having a single piece of thread is important for the strength of the ultimate fabric. If you did not know this and you like animals, larvae included, maybe consider sticking to artificial or plant-based silks.

What have you really got?

The first thing you need to figure out is if what you have is really, actually silk and not synthetic silk. Traditional silk, as we said above, is an animal-made protein fibre.

This amazing blouse with an escape map from the National Air and Space Museum, which you can see here is described as a silk fabric, but in the materials list you will only see rayon, plastic and thread. Artificial silks can be seen from the late 19th century onwards.

Artificial silk, art silk or synthetic silk is, generally speaking, a plastic. That means it will, most likely, be a petroleum or cellulose based spun polymer. Depending on how old or modern your "silk" is, it could be anything from cellulose to rayon (both also called viscose) to nylon to cotton to polyester or a blend of any of these. Lately, it could even be made of cellulose extracted from bamboo, which would effectively make your "silk" a plant-based fibre. Lately, I have seen bamboo viscose used for hypoallergenic orthopedic pillows.

I even found a small article on research into artificial silk made by bacteria. This article is from 2018, so I'm not sure if they've now figured out how to mass produce bacteria-made silk without using the intense corrosive solvents, but maybe they have and you have some now! ? If you do, you can probably treat it as if it were a regular protein silk.

Why is it important to know what you have?

The things that will hurt or help your "silk" will be dependent on what materials we are talking about. As you have now seen, you either have an animal protein, a petroleum-based plastic or a plant fibre. We will talk about this further below.

How are you using your silk?

Aside from knowing what your "silk" actually is, have a think about how you use it.

Wear and tear will obviously be worse on items you use a lot.
On the other hand, if this is an item you only wear on special occasions or it's an heirloom like a wedding dress, then you have to worry about how it's being stored.
In those cases where you actually wear the items occasionally, it is important to remember not to store it dirty since, if you have a real animal protein silk, sweat or other organic stains will only make your silk much more palatable and attractive to pests.

What does this mean for how you care for it?

The following information has been obtained from the Canadian Conservation Institute Notes. The Canadian Conservation Institute is a recognised and respected institution in the field of conservation.

If you have a traditional, insect-based silk

Whenever possible, avoid high temperatures. 30°C (85°F) will accelerate the rate of degradation. 20°C is much better to reduce decay over time. If it is difficult for you to artificially change the temperatures in your home, increase ventilation and choose the best space in the house for your storage. Don't put it in the hottest room you own.
The protein will attract clothes moths and carpet beetles. Keep an eye out for cases and insects in your closets and drawers.
Protein-based silk will yellow in the sunlight and is particularly sensitive to UV. Do not let direct sunlight to fall on your silk for extended periods of time.

If you have a plant-based silk ("bamboo silk", cellulose or rayon, or cotton)

Even if your silk isn't protein-based, there will be other insects that like cellulose and will come for your silk as well. Keep your spaces clean and have a look out for frass (insect poop pellets or powders), holes or abraded areas on your silk that could indicate an insect has been grazing on it.
Note that if your silk is being termed "bamboo silk", you can still think of it, in some ways, as a plastic because the bamboo cellulose is being turned into a spun cellulose polymer to make the threads - with the main difference being that instead of getting the cellulose from wood or cotton, it is coming from bamboo.
If what I have read here is true of viscose rugs, you might have to be extra careful when thinking about washing.

If you have a "plastic" silk (polyester, cellulose)

Plastics are a very tricky material. Over time, many of them have proven to be rather problematic when it comes to surviving the ages. You may have noticed this with plastic items at home such as remote controls that become sticky.
If you have a synthetic "plastic" silk, it will not directly attract insects, although if you store it without cleaning, they might still damage your object by grazing on the sweat or other organic stains you left on it.
Plastics are sensitive to UV and light, so just like with the animal and plant based silks, it's best to reduce exposure to sunlight.
Plastics are also very sensitive to high humidity and heat, so although the reasons behind it may be different as for the plant and animal based silks, it is still a good idea to keep your storage cool and not very humid.
Plastic decay can also be accelerated by atmospheric pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. If you live in a city or in an area with high pollution, it wouldn't hurt your items (and your own lungs too) to have an air purifier in the room. You can also look into scavenger materials such as the activated charcoal cloths we use to protect silver items to try to absorb some of these pollutants before they come into contact with your object.
As plastics degrade, they can lose the plasticiser in them that made them soft or pliable by evaporation or straight up weeping. This means that they get more and more brittle over time. If you fold your items, the folded creases may develop into breaking points. Be aware of this when you store.
If you have a "plastic" silk, that is very degraded, any washing with water or even solvents could destroy it, so beware of that before you try it and contact a professional conservator first.
For more information on modern materials and plastic deterioration, read here.
You can also read this article on conservation of plastic objects to get an idea of how tricky plastics can be.

If you use your item a lot

Naturally, there is no reason to expect you to treat your favourite silk scarf or pyjama as a museum object, especially if it's relatively new. This doesn't mean you don't want it to last as long as possible. That's why you're here, after all.

Be gentle with your silk. Regardless of whether it is plastic, protein or plant based, try not to fold it into hard angles. If you like scrunching it up or making very fancy knots with it, be aware that over time, this could create structural damage.
If you decide to wash your silks at home because they are relatively new and undamaged and can take a bit of washing, be very gentle. Don't scrunch it up in your hands and rub it together against itself. See the notes below on washing as is used for museum textiles for the gentlest procedures.
If you'd rather send your silks off to commercial dry cleaning services, make sure first that 1) they know how to treat silk and 2) you know what kind of silk you're giving them. They probably know what they're doing, but making sure it's an explicit thing they know about won't hurt you at all.
Generally speaking, if your silk is a "plastic" based, completely modern, bought-it-last-year type of silk, it's probably okay to wash it at home rather than send it to a dry cleaner. Remember that dry cleaners use mechanical tumblers and sometimes a lot of heat. Plastics + a lot of heat could end up badly. Beware of that with your viscose and non animal silks.
Do not iron your silk. If you have protein silk, think of it as hair. Too much ironing and your hair starts looking like hay. Excessive direct heat will damage the proteins. If you have a cellulose based silk, it will probably be more resistant to heat (a little bit like cotton), but don't overdo it - remember that cellulose is still a kind of plastic. If you have a synthetic, plastic silk, direct ironing heat is probably a bad idea. You could use a steamer at a safe distance.
If you have silk bedsheets or pillowcases, it becomes a matter of finding the balance between overwashing and overusing. This will be a personal choice, but it seems 1-2 weeks is the recommended period, unless you had some serious soiling, in which case, washing is probably in order. Keep in mind that you will not be able to wash your sheets in the same way that you wash regular bedsheets as silk will require more delicate care, separate loads, special detergent, etc. You also don't want to keep sleeping on dirty sheets just because you're scared of damaging the silk through constant washing.
Don't overdo the soap or detergent. More soap does not mean more clean. If anything, excess detergent will require more effort to wash it out, which means more mechanical stress on your silk. Additionally, if you fail to remove it completely, the residual detergent left behind in the fabric can cause long term damage because silk is sensitive to strong alkalis (so avoid bleaches too).
While I would not recommend going all the way with distilled water and conservation soaps for things as big as bed sheets, you might want to do it for smaller items like scarves or handkerchiefs if they are something you really care for.
Make sure you read the instructions carefully. It is very likely that if you are spending the money to buy a silk product, the seller will be giving you washing instructions on the labels. If they are not, maybe wonder about what they're selling you and how much they care (or not) about your product lasting you a decent amount of time.
When hanging out your silks to dry, remember that silk (and plastic) is sensitive to UV. Direct sunlight may feel like the fastest way to dry, but it will also expose your silk to a lot of light damage. Try to dry your silks in a shaded, but well ventilated area.

If you store your item a lot

If you keep your items mostly stored, flat storage will be much better than rolling things up or folding too much. Just like when you fold a piece of paper, when you fold a textile, it may develop wrinkled and weak spots in the folds. These fold areas may eventually become breakages if your silk dries up and weakens over time. Folding also means that you give insects really cozy nesting crannies and that you may miss any damage because you can't see it.
Do not use anything other than acid-free tissue paper to wrap your silk items. Coloured papers could end up accidentally transferring dyes to your objects. Acidic papers will only increase the degradation rates.
If you have any notes or papers with pins or clips or staples associated to your silk object, don't put them against the fabric. Any rust on the metals will stain. Similarly, do not store other metal objects in direct contact with them - think pins, cuff links, tie bars, etc.
If possible, do not stack your silks on top of each other unless they are in separate boxes. The accumulated pressure can damage them over time.
Read more on storage guidelines here.
If your item smells musty or you suspect mould, it probably means that the place you are storing it in is too damp. Dry out your object and ventilate it to prevent further mould proliferation. Do not put it against your nose "to make sure" you are smelling correctly. You don't want to be inhaling active mould spores. Once your object is dry, you can try to vacuum it gently, preferably with a vacuum with a HEPA filter and adjustable speed set to the lowest available. It is best if you put a mesh over the vacuum hose mouth so you don't accidentally suck in your object. Once it is clean, you may look into washing or dry cleaning. See below for information on that. Important: If your item is mouldy and you vacuum it out, remember that vacuums push out the air that goes in. If your vacuum does not have a good HEPA filter, then it is possible that all the mould particles you are vacuuming are just coming out the back and you are breathing them in. Make sure you have the right sort of vacuum before trying to clean up mould. Also, once you have cleaned your item, don't just put it back into the mouldy cupboard. Make sure you sort out the dampness problem in the storage space, or you'll just have to do it all again next time.

Other general guidelines

According to the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) Notes on preventive care for textiles and fibres, which you can read here, generally beware of the following:

UV and light will fade dyed silks over time. They will also break up the structure of the silk. It would be best to keep them in the dark.
Even if your silk is plastic-based, soiling will attract insects. Store your items clean.
Generally speaking, try to avoid relative humidities that are below 40% or above 70%. Too much humidity can foster mould growth and attract insects. Too low humidity will embrittle your silk. If your silk feels brittle and crackly and dry, refrain from handling it a lot. You will probably not be able to wear it anymore as it will just break apart. At this point, and if the item is very special to you, consider finding a specialist to consolidate the object and give you specific guidelines on how to store it properly.

Thoughts on mechanical cleaning

When we talk about museum objects, any type of cleaning or washing is considered a destructive activity which must be approached with care and a throrough decision-making process. This may sound odd, but if you think of cleaning as a completely irreversible removal of potential evidence, then it makes more sense. This, of course, may not necessarily apply to your personal objects. Still, it may be worth considering just in case you think you have something of historical or artistic importance.

Mechanical cleaning means that there is no water or solvent or soap or any of that involved. It's just brushes and vacuums and other mechanical tools to remove dirt.
Mechanical cleaning will work for dust and surface dirt. It will not remove stains including sweat, blood, food, wine, urine, etc.
To find out more about mechanical surface cleaning of textiles, go here.

Thoughts on washing

There is a lot that can be said about washing, but here are some points:

Fragile, fragmented or brittle silks (or other objects) should not be washed. Water is a polar solvent, which means it will just break your object apart even faster. If you have an old heirloom or grandma's wedding dress or great uncle's tie or something along those lines, do be careful and consult a professional before you try anything. Sometimes objects look fine until you touch them and then all hell breaks loose.
Only wash a silk item if it is in sound condition, still feels soft and pliable and does not feel like when you fold it, it retains wrinkles.
Washing is not carried out in the same way in conservation as it is in other contexts. When we say washing, we do not mean grabbing the fabric in your hands and squelching it or rubbing it into itself.
For detailed information on washing, see this note by the CCI. You do not have to follow it to the letter, as you will not be washing museum textiles, but you will get a good idea of the type of care that is required.
Never store your silk wet or damp. Make sure it airs out properly before putting it away or it might get mouldy and attract insects.

Thoughts on commercial dry cleaning

Dry cleaning means that they do not use (much or any) actual water to wash your items. This techincally means that your items do not get "wet" because the word "wet" in a technical sense refers to water. This does not mean that your objects will not be submerged or treated with other liquids - i.e. chemical solvents (Tetrachloroethylene, also known as perchloroethylene, or perc).
If you decide to send your silk to a dry cleaner's to be done professionally, make sure the company you use has experience with silk. Commercial dry cleaning involves a lot of mechanical tumbling and heated cycles to remove the solvents used, so make sure your object is sturdy enough to be able to take that kind of "abuse". Make sure that you are not sending them a painted or dyed silk that will get accidentally bleached or bleed in the solvents used.
Get more information on dry cleaning for silks here.

Conservation approved resources to find out more about caring for silk (and textiles)

Notes on Textile Conservation by the Nautical Archaeology Program Conservation Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University
Notes on stain removal by the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute.
Conserving Textiles: Studies in honour of Ágnes Timár-Balázsy
Caring for textiles and costumes by the CCI.
Caring for your textiles by the Victoria & Albert Museum.
How to check objects for insect infestation
Insect Pests in Historic Houses and Museums by English Heritage.
Crighton, J.A. 1993. Silk: A Study of its degradation and conservation. In N. Tennant, ed, Conservation science in the UK: Preprints of the meeting held in Glasgow, May 1993. London: James and James Science Publishers Ltd: 96–98.
Hansen, E. F. and H. Sobel. 1992. Effect of the environment on the degradation of silk: A Review. In Textile Specialty Group postprints. Papers delivered at the Textile Subgroup Session, AIC, 20th Annual meeting, Buffalo, N.Y., June 1992: 14–30.
Kuruppilai, R. V., S.P Hersch, and P.A. Tucker. 1986. Degradation of silk by heat and light. In H. Needles and H. Zeronian, eds. Historic textile and paper materials: Conservation and characterization (Advances in chemistry series 212). Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society: 111–127.

Find out more

If you liked this article and would like to find out more, here are a few things you can do:

Follow me on Twitter. I will be posting regularly on themes I notice you would like to hear about.
Join the Reddit community for r/ArtConservation. There are conservators there (myself included) who will be able to guide you. Please note that conservation professional bodies consider it borderline or even outright unethical to give out DIY advice on how to fix things because of the high risk of accidental failure by an untrained individual, so the advice you get will be guidance about preventive steps to take or people to contact rather than how to fix things.
Consider taking a course for beginners on preventive conservation, such as the one I have here.
I trained as an objects conservator. I am not a textile specialist. If you would like to talk to a textile or costume specialist, make sure you check out the AIC and ICON lists of conservation professionals to find someone who can help you. AIC is for the US. ICON is for the UK. Your country may also have a local register which is probably Googleable.

If you liked this post, you can follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ConservaLlama) where I'll be posting more content on conservation tidbits and how to improve your collections at home.

Ask a Conservator - No Zoom required

Angelica Isa — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Photo by Cottonbro on Pexels.

Background

I began this year with a small post about why I want to try to make conservation public. If you haven't read it and feel like having a look, you can do so here.

If you don't feel like reading it, which is totally legit, the gist of the article is that nobody knows who we are. Conservation is not a job, it's not something that ought to be paid for, conservators are referred to as conservationists (like Greta and David Attenborough) or, if they go by the word restorers, people think they work in restaurants. In other words, it's a bit of a PR disaster.

Turns out I'm not the only one who seems to feel this way, as I got a ton of unexpected engagement from various colleagues around the world. If you'd like to read something more official, you can look at the Institute of Conservation (UK) Chief Executive's blog here where she touches upon the same topic as she talks about the ICON strategy for the next 2o years.

So it's a thing. Maybe conservators (we) don't get out much, and we apparently don't talk as much as others about our jobs. Or at least not enough to make it into public knowledge beyond our friends and families.

Since then, I began running a Twitter and a new project called Altminster. What next?

The Facebook Page/Group

For a good while, and given the positive feedback encountered, I considered running a Facebook page aimed at the general public. I even had the offer of a very kind and generous colleague in the States who said they would be happy to help me run the page, but that given their experiences, it would be very important to have page rules about what the page was and was not for. So I started writing those down too in a fancy Google doc.

One of the big rules for what the Facebook page would not be for was answering questions about DIY conservation.

Yeah, I thought - obviously! All trained conservators know (or at least are expected to know) it's considered unethical to give that kind of information or encouragement to amateur individuals because of the obvious potential for insane damage that can entail.

Then real life got busy, and I had to leave the Facebook idea in the backburner for a bit because Facebook is a big commitment for someone with no personal Facebook presence and a considerable social media platform to maintain as a fifth side gig.

So then, I decided to pause the big Facebook monster for a bit and make a little incursion into Reddit and see what is going on over there. It sounded like it would be Twitter-style level commitment, so why not? Facebook could wait a bit for now.

I opened an account by the same name as my Twitter one, and started trying to figure out what was going on. Reddit mystifies me. I read a bunch of blogs and articles and rules and found out Reddit is nothing like Twitter. If I have understood correctly, where Twitter can encourage people to be troll-y and mean and spammy and do intense marketing for personal projects, Reddit is the complete opposite.

If you're mean, you're out.
If you self promote or attempt to market beyond the absolute minimum and only contextually-appropriate scenarios, you're out.
If your content is not verifiable or solid, you can be out.
If you don't follow the subreddit specific rules, you can be out.
If the moderators in the subreddit (like a Fb group) you hang out in and post on thinks you're being any of these things, you're out.

Okaaaaay! That wasn't scary at all. I thought I'd continue taking a look and do my best not to break any rules. All subreddits will have different rules, you know? It's important to read them too or you might get banned.

What I found

I looked for subreddits (think of them as group forums) that involved conservation. Not very many, but they were there, and they seemed to have a fair number of trained conservators in them - not thousands (when are we ever in the thousands, eh?), but a few hundred here or there.

And one of the debates/complaints revolved around this:

This subreddit is full of random people asking for advice on how to fix their things. Bother.

And of course this doesn't happen just on the internet. I remember conferences where this topic was talked about for a while with passionate arguments on both sides.

Some arguments I have heard for and against, in and out of Reddit

We should give them basic information so they don't mess it up too bad.
If we don't tell them stuff, they'll go to someone else who will tell them something worse. This also applies to the "If I don't do the job, someone else will botch it up" version.
We are being extremely negative and just frustrating people who will ignore us anyway.
Not all objects are a big deal. You can probably tell them how to fix their Disney-bought Mickey Mouse mug from 1995 they broke because they love it. Why can't they do that? Why are we trying to control all home fixes at all levels?
This is absurd and unethical. You tell them to get a conservator and be done with it. They're not prepared. This is not a hobby. It's a complicated career. They can't and shouldn't intervene.
These people should stop coming here (Reddit/Facebook/etc.) to ask for this kind of advice. You don't ask for advice on surgical procedures on Google so you can do them yourself, do you?

Can I/we find a positive solution?

Generally speaking, I can agree with literally all of the above, both for and against. I am not criticising the above points. I do think there are very valid points on both sides of the argument, so I would like to consider a middle ground. Here are some points I am making for myself. Let me be absolutely clear that I am not targetting anyone else but me in these constructive criticisms.

Patience is a virtue. Breathe a lot. Avoid shutting people down. There is a reason why conservators have a "reputation" for being the nay sayers in the museum world. We have gone through the training and seen or read or heard about so much stuff go wrong that we like to err on the side of caution (which makes sense), and this bleeds into our advice - which, when it comes to amateurs can turn into a jaded:

Don't even try. Take it to a professional. Stop asking. Go away. It's complicated. You are annoying me, and I bet you can tell too by how I worded my response.
Don't just tell people that the reason of my denial is because #chemistry. That probably doesn't mean anything to most of them. It's just an abstract concept about how the world works, just like "science". As we ourselves constantly point out, they are not trained in the subject, so why do we expect a basic gloss-over explanation to convince them of anything?
Go beyond the medical analogy. Yes, we like the medical analogy. Guilty as charged. It makes sense a lot of the time, but objects are not people and not all objects were created the same - would you treat an object that is about to be deaccessioned the same way as the Picasso in your collection? No. So why do you expect a person with a home collection to be as caring about something as we are about a general museum object? Would you allow your conservation intern to practice on the Picasso or the about-to-be-deaccessioned object? Also, you know when we say "Oh you wouldn't take Google medical advice for a disease cure, would you?" - Yes, well, maaaaaybe we could say that before 2020, but COVID has proven a lot of people literally would. Awkward. And guess what? The same thing happened with chloride injecting people as when people mess up their objects: Doctors and "other smart people" told them they were being stupid and cut it out and go find a professional, while randos were telling them it totally worked for them and try it. So they tried it because being told you're (legitimately) inadequate doesn't seem to cut it anymore. Is that cool? No. Were the Dr. and "smart people" correct? Absolutely. Did their advice stop the testers from dying or at least ending up in the hospital? Sadly, no. So am I going to whinge and keep being the person who knows what they're talking about without actual regard to the success of my delivery? Hopefully not, although I'll be honest with you, I might still slip and do it some days if it's a bad day because it's not an easy thing to do when the same questions never stop.

I wish I were joking. We said people wouldn't look for DIY surgical procedures online, would they?! Well, apparently they would... and they would find a WikiHow AND a YouTube video - which is animated, but as terrifying as you can imagine because you do NOT want to go trekking with someone who has watched that and thinks they will save your life by stabbing you in the neck with a pen if you choke on your trail mix.

Maybe try a legal analogy? If you get into a serious legal matter where you will have to appear in court or something, it would be a terrible idea to go on social media and ask a lawyer or "someone who's done this before" to tell you what to do so you can do it yourself to avoid paying someone's fees. If you attempted to pull this off on your own with Google advice, you'd most likely really regret it (maybe from jail). While I'm quite sure no lawyer ought to be giving you step-by-step instructions on what to do, and the natural advice would be "find a lawyer who specialises in this and get them to sort it out for you," that does not mean they could not point out some of the potential issues with your case and try to lead you towards the advice you need so you don't end up listening to the wrong kind of advice. If you're a lawyer and you think this doesn't work at all bc of legal liabilities, please let me know because this analogy breaks down haha.

In defense of the asker

I know DIY conservation questions may have started to feel like some sort of offensive comment for some conservators. Not all, of course. There are plenty of us who are lovely and friendly regardless of what anyone throws at us. But sometimes, it just puts us on edge, and it's understandable. We've all been there and after the 100th time, it's easy to get snappy. Let me address this the following way:

We have a phrase in Spanish that says: "La vaca no se acuerda cuando fue ternera." It literally means "The cow doesn't remember [the time when] she used to be a calf." It refers to those situations when someone who is now in a different position in life seems to forget how they used to be before they reached their current position. So here's a question for us, as professional conservators:

Remember the past - it could be recent or a looong time ago. Before you became a conservator, maybe even before you knew the profession existed, did you know non-conservators were "not supposed" to try to fix things? Did you know that there was a nuanced border of potential ethical malpractice if conservators gave you advice?

I will be honest with you. Not me! It never once, not in my wildest dreams, occur to me. Until I did my training, I had never considered that I should not try to fix something that broke in my house. Or that I should not try to clean something that was dirty. (Remember the first time they told you all dirt was not dirt?) And let's remember again, conservation has a communication problem. A lot of people don't know we are here. They don't necessarily know this is a legit job with university degrees that goes beyond being the local knick-knacker repairer person thing.

So what right do we have to be angry at them when they ask about how to fix something? Why do we expect them to know how things work? Is this common knowledge? Of course it isn't, and it's unreasonable to expect them to just know this. If anything, it's our own fault they don't know this - because we haven't communicated properly.

Let's consider this... Doesn't their question imply care? Would they even ask for advice if they didn't care how their results turned out?

How do you feel about askers now? I certainly had a rethink.

On the "amateur" condition

I was watching a documentary on fungi the other day. Never thought I'd say that, but there it is. I didn't have time to finish it, so I can't give you an overall score on it, but there was one thing someone said that stuck with me: All those 19th century men and women who went out and became the founders of every other academic discipline today? Guess what? They were amateurs. Yes, they were remarkable amateurs, but amateurs still. And many of them were shot down by the academics of their time. I'm not implying that doglover1234 asking you about the mould spots on their grandfather's painting on Reddit is the next Plenderleith in the making, but let's try to exploit an educational opportunity instead of just saying no. What if they really could have become the next Plenderleith and you just smote down their interest? Unlikely, but we can't know, I guess.

Do you want to be involved?

Basically, I'm going to try a little experiment. Maybe you will decide to join me, in which case, let me know! It'll be great if we can make a little conservation team that does not, in fact, run away from "How do I..." questions!

I will go on Reddit every now and then and look at these questions about "Oh there's a stain in this stone bust thing that my grandmother left me. Can I use stone cleaner on it?"

Whenever possible, I will respond and try to stick to the following rules:

Avoid just saying "No. It's complicated" and "go find a professional." - Although, let's face it, that will probably be the conclusion of the post - just not phrased like that.
Explain why it's complicated. No need to start drawing benzene rings at them, just try to do it in a friendly Magic Schoolbus manner that is educational and, above all, not condescending. This can be hard because things can be read in oh so many ways and imparting information can always come off condescending.
Give DIY preventive conservation advice and explain it.
Explain what could go wrong, how and why if they proceed with their suggestion.
Clarify that, as a conservator following the ethical guidelines of my professional bodies, I am not in any way endorsing the treatment of a valued object by a non professional.
Give people reputable links they can use in their research such as the CCI Notes or the various conservation YouTube channels for ICON, ICOM, Getty, etc. while at the same time telling them to avoid general DIY or homemade recipe solutions.
Don't go on social media to respond to people if I'm in an irritable mood or having a bad day.

I guess the points I will be trying to make will have to do with clarifying why we think something is complicated instead of repeatedly stating the fact that it is - which only weakens the argument over time. If I'm lucky, the person considering the DIY will re-think their choices, take some preventive measures, learn something new from a reputable source and potentially take the object to a professional - thus supporting the freelance conservation industry. If I'm not lucky, I'm not any worse off for trying - except maybe for my time, but it's a fee I'm willing to pay in this journey.

Final thoughts

The Reddit or Facebook group or wherever answers you send are not a blog or an article or a paper that someone has to go and find. The person you are answering will read you if only because you are directly replying to them. You are 100% getting their attention - regardless of whether they decide to agree or not, do as you say or not.

That person's ultimate choice will be their own and beyond our control, but we can take each question as a little "Ask a Conservator" opportunity that someone is actively giving us without having to run a Zoom event which we then have to attempt to promote to like the ultimately 30 people who will sign up, half of whom won't even show. You know how that works.

We can't control the questions, but we can certainly improve on our answers.

May the Force be with me and with all of you who choose to join me in this endeavour.

If you liked this post, you can follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ConservaLlama) where I'll be posting more content on conservation tidbits and how to improve your collections at home.

Online Education for Heritage Conservation

Angelica Isa — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Guess what too, I made this logo myself, so it's not perfect - but it works for now and it's growing on me. Can Altminster help you get higher level online courses in the humanities?

Frustrations

If you work in the culture sector, you know the word frustrations very well. If you don't, I bet you still know the word very well in your field too. Let's go over some bullet points about what it can mean to go into a field like conservation - or, let's face it, almost any field in the liberal arts that doesn't imply the possibility of also going into tech.

Pondering student phase

I love this field. I want to study it. I've been told it will be awful, but I love it. I love it. I'm in love. I want to do this. I want to get paid to do this.
Oh... okay... it's... kind of expensive to study at a higher level... I hope my parents/grandparents/partner are okay with this...
Oh... okay... there are three million applicants for 10 spots at this expensive place to study...
Oh.... okay... the other applicants already have 10 years of experience even though I'm pretty sure we're all in our 20s...

Graduate phase

I made it. That was painful, but I made it. Yes. Win.
Wow, it was so expensive for me to get to this point and have this particular career and nobody wants to pay me to do this properly. Okay, okay, I knew this might be the case... it's on me...
Okay, yes, fine. I always knew it wouldn't be a Wolf of Wallstreet life, but... really? I can barely afford the transport to get to my job?
A job posting!!! YES! Oh... it's across the country... for a maaaaybe renewable 3-month contract... for a non-living wage... right then.
Dear colleague/old aunt, just because you have no idea what I really do doesn't mean you can imply that my job is a hobby or that someone else could do it as a side gig.

Professor phase

I can't believe I made it past that graduate phase, but look at me. I'm teaching this. I publish things. Not raking in the proverbial dough, but I love my topic and I love being there for my students, and not to blow my own horn here, but my research is FASCINATING, yes you better believe it is.
Oh look... my successful students all seem to have one thing in common - they all have a support network to help them pay for this.
Oh look, my institution wants to get rid of me again because we don't make millions for the department even though we do amazing research and publish tons and even win awards sometimes. Do we really need to go over this every other year even though a bunch of us show up on big TV shows talking about our work?
Yeah, okay, I don't know anymore if I can put a brave face on and tell my students they'll be able to find a job after we finish this.
Did I mention I have 30 years of experience and I'm probably making the equivalent of a recent graduate in some other fields?
Aaaaaand there go half my colleagues and our department got merged with -.
No, I'm not curled up in a ball today.

Academia

I know it sure sounds like it, but this post is not supposed to be a Debbie Downer or a complaintathon. It's just a reflection of what many of us may have felt at one point or another in our non Doctor/Engineer/Lawyer/Investor/Developer lives. I was trying to be darkly humorous. Think of it as a deadpan delivery in a Scandinavian tragicomedy.

Naturally, some of us have risen over all this crazy and done well and are happy. (Please reach out and tell me if you are one of these people. Would love to hear your thoughts.) However, if what I see on social media is any barometer for reality, then there is definitely a lot of disenchantment floating around with the world of academia - and not just in conservation.

Opportunities

Like I said, this is not a post about pointless (though legitimate) complaints. This is a post about making opportunity. If we can't find what we are looking for in the traditional spaces, maybe we can find it elsewhere.

Let me make the point with the following numbers:

Save Ancient Studies Alliance (SASA) is a non profit that has, according to their own website, attracted over 30,000 post engagements on social media, recruited +35 volunteers, attracted +17,000 visitors to their site and received at least 2 grants and over $5,000 in donations. You can check our their Twitter here.
Interintellect is an online community that meets for discussions on various topics that could very well be electives in a liberal arts college. They have over 10,000 followers on Twitter here.
Republic of Mathematics is "a group of mathematicians and mathematics educators focused on the neuroscience of mathematics and developmental implications for learning and teaching mathematics." Does that sound niche to you? Because they have over 111,000 followers on Twitter here.
If we go into Folkloristics, which is just about one of my favourite topics ever, you will find the Myths and Legends podcast guy, who is effectively making a living out of his (super fun) podcast and has over 18,000 followers on Twitter here.

I could go on, but I think the point is clear that there is a hunger for knowledge out there, and in many cases, it's not a hunger for basic knowledge, but for advanced studies.

There are a lot of people who can't afford to go to university, but would love to learn.

There are others who are already past university, but are still looking for high level courses to learn more on topics they were never able to study.

Altminster: My grain of sand

Accessing university-level education is not that straightforward, while at the same time, teaching university-level topics may not make many academics happy at all given the current structures.

If you are reading this post, you may have read a previous post I wrote a few months back on why I want to try to make conservation public. If you haven't read it and feel like having a look, you can do so here.

The point is, since that first post, I have decided to take steps - and I will take steps not just for conservation, but also for other fields who share our experiences. This is part of how Altminster was born.

What is Altminster?

I'm glad you asked! Altminster is a lot of things, so let's start with the simple. It's a website - a platform. What does it do?

In a nutshell, Altminster has been born to do the following:

Give interested students a curated source of resources on liberal arts topics. The internet can be hard to parse, so we'll do it for you. All our listed resources have been recommended by someone who knows what they're talking about - like they literally have a degree in it.
Give academics a place where they can offer the courses they wish they could teach - at fair prices. They can also offer private instruction at prices which can be negotiated with students (should the instructor be amenable to it). This includes any possibility for price adjustment based on student possibilities and the instructor's own decisions (which can include anything from geographical location to philanthropy). We won't interfere with this at all.

So, Altminster is there for teaching and for learning at a higher level, for fair prices and flexible times. It will let students vote for courses they'd like to see. It will allow instructors to post course ideas they'd like to try and let students vote to see if it's worth making the course before investing a lot of time. More things will come as we grow.

What's in it for Altminster?

Yes, yes. I'm the same. No shame in wanting to know what's going on behind the scenes. You want to know what I get from this. For now, the answer is literally nothing. All listings are being offered for free. My co-founder and I are doing this in our free time, with our own resources. We want to get as many instructors with courses and students on Altminster as we can to make it a viable project in the long run.

Cool, you say. This is not sustainable without future payments. You are a smart cookie. In the future, Altminster will charge a flat annual fee to list courses or instructors. This will have to happen at some point because we will need to maintain the site somehow, but don't worry. We will let you know first, and we won't charge you retrospectively if you're already there. We will also not charge an amount which we do not believe you can reasonably make back with a couple courses a year. While Altminster will be a for-profit place, it will not be an extortionate-profit place because its mission will always remain the same, to make the best education in the world within reach to anyone who wants to receive it. Most of the funds will be re-invested into improving the platform. Oh, and did I mention that we will not take fees or commissions from your courses or lessons ? It's true. We mean that. Your effort = Your wages.

Do you want to be involved?

If Altminster is the kind of project you'd like to be involved with, there are a number of ways you can do this:

Send us your curated resources. We will happily add them to our growing list.
Sign up for free here as a private instructor.
List a course for free here. It can be on any other platform. It can be a free course too. We will only list the course and the link.
Sign up for our newsletter so you can find out how we are getting along! The link is available at the bottom of all our website pages.
Just follow us on Twitter to keep up with news and send us messages. We love constructive criticism, collaborations and any other ideas you'd like to send our way.

If you liked this post, you can follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ConservaLlama) where I'll be posting more content on conservation tidbits and how to improve your collections at home.

Cinderella Fanfiction Conservation style

Angelica Isa — Sat, 14 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

"Cinderella with her bird friends" by Paul Meyerheim (1842-1915) taken from New York Public Library's Public Domain Archive.

A fictional character

This is an entirely fictional letter. I guess, it counts as Cinderella fanfiction... sort of. The main character in it is a completely made up conservator, not intended to represent or depict any real person. I may, in the future, choose to play (or not) with conservator stereotypes. This is just me, a conservator, writing for fun to exercise my literary hand, with the purpose of extending preventive conservation knowledge without directly alluding to it and also making fun of myself. I do not pretend to be an expert on late Georgian or Victorian forms of written expression. If you wish to correct any issues of style, you are welcome to send me a message and we can have fun making this letter much more "accurate" with your contributions.

You are welcome to think of the 1950 Cinderella film as you read this keeping in mind that I, of course, do not own anything related to that.

This particular fictional letter was inspired by my random reference to Cinderella in my post about understanding dewpoint, which you can read here. Without further ado, I present to you the proof that I'm a nerd.

Enjoy!

A consultation

Dear Lady -,

I take my pen in hand to write to you with regards to the recent incognito visit I made to your chateau, at your request, to review the collections of your late husband, Lord -.

I am very much afraid that the conditions I found at your premises could not be considered ideal for the maintenance of the late Lord’s estate, details of which I briefly describe as follows:

Your daughter, the young miss C, seems to be quite determined to encourage the proliferation of a rather diverse nucleus of house mice which, after only a cursory inspection, seem to have a very advanced travelling system throughout your handsome building. I strongly suggest that she is reprimanded on such behaviour and that you might find the time to seal many of the exit and entry orifices which these mice use to traverse your home.

I further observed that the main foyer is cleaned, at least, once a week, by a liberal and uncontrolled application of soap and water. While I was most impressed by your daughter’s singing abilities, confessing them to be much more accomplished than any such talents I could represent for myself, I do believe it would be best to refrain in the future from similar open uses of water in the main hall, as they will not only increase the possibility of mould on your beautiful curtains but potentially cause damage to your Italian tiles.

I must be permitted to suggest that the household cat and dog be restrained from wandering the house quite so openly. I have seen many a broken vase due to the passions exerted on them by beloved pets.

I am, dear Madam, in great distress after viewing miss C ascending the steps in the morning with no fewer than three breakfast trays, each with corresponding pots of tea. I am sure you must agree that we should avoid spilled tea stains on the main staircase at all costs.

I have deemed it proper to communicate my observations in confidence to you, Madam, where I know no offence could be given, as all are provided with only the best of intentions.

I flatter myself that your Ladyship will consider my current observations and that we may continue to correspond on the matter of the care of the late Lord’s furnishings and collections.

I remain, dear Madam, your obedient servant,

Preserva B. Kerfel
Conservator

If you liked this post, you can follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ConservaLlama) where I'll be posting more content on conservation tidbits and how to improve your collections at home.

Understanding psychrometric charts and dew points

Angelica Isa — Sat, 31 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Photo by Julia Filirovska on Pexels.

Contents

Dew point
Absolute vs. Relative humidity
The psychrometric chart explained
Let's go back to dew point
- What does this mean?
Useful links

Dew point

What is the dew point, in simple terms? When you look at your environmental monitoring charts, you are used to seeing the temperature and relative humidity lines. However, there is also another line. The dew point line, and this line can be a bit trickier to interpret.

What does it tell us? I have found several explanations of dew point, so I will attempt to sum it up here as clearly as possible:

Dew point is read as a temperature. You will see it in °F or °C.
It represents the absolute moisture content of the air.
Dew point is the temperature at which Relative Humidity (RH) in your space is at 100% so that the moisture will start condensing out of the air.
This means that the dew point is the temperature at which dew will begin forming in your space.
If your dew point temperature is close to your dry air temperature, your RH is high.
If your dew point is well below the dry air temperature, your RH is low.
In other words, it is not something you want to be too close to your dry air temperature if you want to keep your things dry.

This is a space without any HVAC control. There is no artificial humidifying or dehumidifying or heating or cooling. If you look closely, you will notice that the dew point line is basically the same as the temperature but a few degrees below it.

Absolute vs. Relative humidity

Before going a bit more into dew point, it's important we understand two concepts clearly. You will find much better, more scientific definitions in physics sites, but the following are supposed to be straightforward and clear.

Absolute humidity

Assuming constant atmospheric pressure, absolute humidity is the actual amount of water (in weight) that can be "held" by air at a particular temperature. It's actually more about vapour pressure equilibrium, but let's not overcomplicate for now and use the word "hold".
It is expressed as weight of water per weight or volume of air. So it can be in grams of water per kilograms of dry air. Or grams of water per cubic metre of air. Or similar measurements using feet and pounds.

Relative humidity

Relative humidity is that amount of water expressed as a percentage of the total amount of water that can be "held" by air at that same particular temperature and pressure.
It is expressed as a percentage.

Example in an imaginary space

Absolute humidity in g/m3	Temperature in °C	Relative humidity %
5	10	53.2
5	20	28.9
5	30	16.5

Numbers calculated using Michell instruments calculator

If you look at the above example, you can see that in an imaginary space that holds 5g of water per cubic metre of air, the relative humidity will vary depending on the temperature even though the amount of water in the space has not changed.

This helps explain how, if the only thing you can control is temperature, you can lower it to increase humidity, or increase it to lower humidity. There is an inverse relationship.

The psychrometric chart explained

The psychrometric chart is a really intimidating looking graph with a ton of lines going in 6 different directions. For the sake of clarity and because conservators don't really need to use them, I have not drawn in the enthalpy or volume lines. Let's leave those to the engineers and HVAC specialists. Don't worry about the actual numbers in the following charts. These are not strictly accurate charts, but are only being used diagramatically.

Look at all those crazy lines. Notice that there are temperatures, absolute humidity and relative humidity in there. But which is which and going where and what is this and what do we do with it?

Before we begin parsing this out, the answer to your question is YES.
What is your question? Probably

Isn't there an online calculator for this horrible thing instead? YES

You can use the Mitchell humidity calculator that I linked above with the table, or you can use the Image Permanence Institute Dew Point Calculator, which I link below in the links. That said, you might not always have access to the internet (Crazy! I know!), so why not understand the vintage way of going about it?

Let's separate things line by line...

Dry bulb temperature

The dry bulb temperature is the fancy way of saying what we normal people mean by temperature. It is the x-axis at the bottom of the graph and will be seen going upwards. You could also say it is read from left to right in the sense that the lines are vertical but going left to right.

Wet bulb temperature

The wet bulb temperature is traditionally measured by using a thermometer with a water-soaked cloth around it. The temperature you get will be affected by the evaporation of water from the cloth. If you have 100% relative humidity (blue), the wet bulb temperature (green) will be the same as the dry bulb temperature (orange) because they will both be essentally surrounded by water (Notice the 15°C I have marked for you in light yellow). To get a wet bulb temperature reading, either your manual thermohygrometer has to be digitally setup to tell you the wet bulb temperature, or you will have to use one of these old-style whirling hygrometers that have two thermometers in them. These readings have diagonal (green) lines that cross towards the bottom right and use the (blue) 100% RH line as the base axis.

Relative humidity

The relative humidity in a psychrometric chart can be found as curling curves that get wider as they go from the bottom left towards the top right of the chart. It's very easy to tell it apart from the other readings because it's a percentage number.

Absolute humidity

Absolute humidity will be running as the y-axis on the right of the chart and will have to be read using the pink numbers on the right axis. Absolute humidity rfers to the amount of water being "held" in your air.

Dew point or saturation temperature

The dew point will be read by moving horizontally (yellow) using the same lines as if you were reading absolute humidity (pink), but the number readings will use the (blue) 100% RH curve line as the base axis, just like with the wet bulb temperature (green). This does not mean that wet bulb temperature and dew point (also called saturation temperature) are the same number (they are not), they are just sharing the same 100% RH curve for readings. Go back to the wet bulb graph above and compare it with this image if you need to. The wet bulb (green) temperature is read diagonally while the dew point (yellow) temperature is read horizontally.

A quick note on dew point vs. wet bulb

Just in case all this talking about absolute humidity, relative humidity, dew points, wet and dry bulbs confused you. Here is a quick table to explain the difference between the wet bulb and the dew point.

	Dew point temperature	Wet bulb temperature
Definition	Temperature at which Relative Humidity (RH) in your space is at 100% so that the moisture will start condensing out of the air.	Temperature you get from a moistened thermometer bulb exposed to air flow. Affected by the evaporation of the water.
At high RH	Close to dry bulb temperature	At 100% RH, it equals dry bulb temperature. Notice that at 100% in the graph below, the blue and green lines meet.
At low RH	Below dry bulb temperature. At 10%RH, your dew point will be around 5°C. Read along the 100% blue line at the blue 10% level.	Low. See graph below. At 10%RH your green wet bulb will be about 20°C while your orange dry will be around 43°C.

The psychrometric chart again in full colour

Now that you have seen all the lines coloured in one by one, this psychedelic graph should be less shocking. Hopefully, it is also much less intimidating than the original one where all the lines were black.

A psychrometric chart and dew point example

Why did we go through all that? The point of the psychrometric chart is that you should be able to get any of the variables as long as you have at least two other variables that you can cross-reference in the graph.

Let's take a look at this example. Imagine you measure a space with (orange) 40°C and (blue) 54% relative humidity. Unpleasant, I know. But just look at the numbers. Using the chart, you can find the place where the orange 40°C dry bulb and the blue 54% RH intersect (red dot). This will tell you that your space has (pink) 25g of water per kg of dry air. If you move your eyes horizontally to the left and read along the 100% RH line, this means your dew point is ~28°C (yellow). Should you require it, look at the diagonal green line, and you will tell that your (gren) wet bulb temperature is 31°C.

Now imagine that you don't have any dehumidifiers or humidifiers, but you manage to lower the temperature to 35°C. If you look at your graph now, your (green) wet bulb temperature has moved down to 30°C. You should still have 25g of water per kg of dry air, but now you have about 70% RH (blue). Notice your dew point has not moved because the amount of water (pink) has not changed and this number is read horizontally. It is still at ~28°C (yellow).

What can the psychrometric chart do for you?

Once you become comfortable reading a psychrometric chart and following the lines in the correct directions, the chart is a powerful tool. It means that once you know a couple of variables, you can calculate the others. This, in turn, means that if you want to change variables, you know what other variables you need to move in what direction in order to get what you want.

You should be able to calculate how many grams of water you need to remove from a space, and therefore how many hours you should work your dehumidifier. Or, on the contrary, if you want a certain RH%, you can decide whether you should turn on the AC or the heating to get it.

Feel free to play with this other calculator and then compare those numbers using this chart. Make up some exercises for yourself and see if you get it right using the charts. Remember my graphs are not precise, so look for rough number similarities to know you are correct. Tip on how to use this calculator: Use 1013.25 millibars for your pressure to keep it standard. Plug in your test numbers on the left and click the Convert button to see your results for wet bulb temperature and RH on the right.

Let's go back to dew point

Remember how I pointed out in the example above that even though you reduced temperature and the RH% dropped accordingly, the theoretical dew point didn't change? This is because the amount of water in the air didn't change. It means that while you were messing around in that imaginary room, nothing else happened to mess with your numbers. This imaginary room is not a real-life situation. In real-life situations, other things happen in your room. For example, leaks, spills, system changes, windows or doors opening, etc.

What does this mean?

This means that when you have a supposedly closed space, your dew points should remain relatively stable and should reflect your temperature readings just like the ones in the graph at the beginning of the article.

However, if you notice a sudden spike or drop which differs completely from the temperature line, then something has happened. Being able to identify this will help you investigate and decide if everything is still okay.

A sudden change in your dew point will indicate a sudden change in the absolute humidity of the air in your space.

Chances are this change can be easily explained.

Maybe it means someone opened a window and it was really damp/dry outside compared to your room.
Maybe you got a leaking pipe that is adding water to your room.
Maybe someone turned on/off a de/humidifier.
Maybe Cinderella came in and washed all your floors.

I hope this explanation of dew point, humidities and psychrometric charts helps you out wherever you are. I'm not a physicist or HVAC specialist, so do let me know if I didn't explain something quite right, and I will make sure to fix it.

Useful links

Caring for Books: Using Plastic Sleeves for Home Collections

Angelica Isa — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Contents

Why make plastic sleeves for your books?
Materials
Video examples
Step-by-step instructions

Why make plastic sleeves for your books?

If you live in a place like I do, you'll be sick and tired of dust and dirt. It seems like all you have to do is look away, and there is a thin layer of dust on everything even though you just cleaned. How are you supposed to care for books this way?

Not only is this annoying, but it is also bad for books. Dust is hygroscopic. This means it attracts moisture. Since dust is also made up of small bits of organic matter (among other things), it means that between the moisture and the organic debris, dust will encourage mould growth.

You might have seen it too. The tops of all your books get these tiny brown, reddish or black dots over time. Sometimes, even the side edge. But the bottoms look the cleanest. You can blame a mixture of dust, oxygen, moisture and book composition for these.

Differential book damage on a book I own and never wrapped. Top (left), edge (centre) and bottom (right) of the book. Notice the top has gone darker and has spots. The edge has lots of foxing spots. The bottom still retains original colour and has almost no spots.

You might not be able to do much about book composition, but you can at least protect the surface of your books from dust settling on them directly and setting off these ugly spots.

Important note: Ventilation is always important when trying to keep things mould-free. So keep in mind, as we learn about these book sleeves, that they should not be wrapped too tight as this can compromise ventilation.

Additionally, look at at how plastic shrinkage over time could pull at your book covers and damage them. This cover is now less wide than the rest of the book. This is easily solved by making sure you don't tighten up your wrapping right against the covers when you fold. Try to make sure you buy polyethylene or polyester only, which are the best to use from a conservation perspective.

I am aware that there are somewhat expensive, commercial, automatic machines that will make cool sleeves for books and that some archives and libraries use them. However, this is aimed at the rest of us for whom it would make no sense to spend that kind of money just for our own personal use.

Materials

Stable plastic (polyethylene or polyester) non-adhesive film
Scissors
Box-cutter (just for cutting out the piece of wrap you will need)
Acid free tape or regular scotch tape if you're not that bothered
The book you want to wrap, obviously

Materials you will need. Do not buy self-adhesive plastic film. Remember that this process is meant to be entirely reversible and is not intended to affect your book directly in any way. Keep in mind that regular adhesive tape can be acidic and that even the non-sticky side of it against the back of your book could, after many years, leave a tape-shaped stain. If this is something you definitely don't want, make sure you opt for acid-free tape instead.

Important note: Choosing the right materials is extremely important.

Look at this old book in my personal library. It was probably wrapped back in the 60s, 70s or 80s. The plastic (probably PVC) and tape used were not acid free and even though the tape is not stuck directly on the book (which would be worse), it has still managed to stamp it. It is interesting to note how the damage seems to have acumulated on the edges, where dirt must have accumulated due to the edges of the adhesive.

Video examples

Here are a couple videos I made to show the whole process. They completely unintentionally came out as ASMR bookwrapping videos, so do enjoy if that's something you like. I apologise for the quality, but I'm still figuring out the video aspects of all this.

Book 1 example

Book 2 example

Step-by-step instructions

1 - Measure

Know the measurements you need. Make sure you know the size of your book in all 3 dimensions: Length, width and height. Make sure you add a few inches in every direction so that the sleeve is not a tight fit and allows your book some space to move.

Make sure you have enough wrap on all sides to cover the book. Give it a good 2-3 inches (8cm or so) for the bottom and sides while for the top use the thickness of your book plus another 2in (5cm). You can also make the sides wider if you want the book covers to be more protected.

Make sure you have enough wrap on all sides to cover the book. For the top edge, in particular, make sure the extra goes completely over the thickness of your book plus an extra inch (3cm) or so. This is necessary for the final top flap that will protect the top of the book.

2 - Fold

Place your book over the flat, open wrap and fold the edges over the end flaps in the same way commercial book sleeves cover books. This will leave you with edges on the top and bottom sticking out.

3 - Make windows

Since it would not be possible to bring up the wrap on the covers of the book with the plastic edges coming all the way around, you will need to make little "windows" close to the spine which will be folded in so we can get them out of the way.

On the bottom edges of the book, make a small cut in the plastic up towards the edge of the book. Make it about an inch away from the spine. Repeat the procedure for the bottom back flap.

On the top edge of the book, the window will be slightly different. Since we intend to use this top part to make a flap to protect the whole top edge of the book, align your front small cut in the plastic with the front corner of the book. Make the back flap cut about an inch away from the spine as you did for the bottom of the book.

4 - Fold in windows

Once you have cut in your top and bottom "windows," open up the plastic wrap and fold the windows in.

You should be able to see how that "window" I mentioned is being folded up and will end up inside the wrapping.

Note that the top window (right) being folded in is smaller than the bottom one (left). This is to account for the full flap that will protect the book at the top.

5 - Close the sleeve at the back

Once you have folded in both top and bottom "windows," bring the wrapping back like a book sleeve.

Now we can start closing the sleeve.

Folding in the back bottom of the sleeve. Make a little triangle fold at the corner and fold the whole flap up. Secure it to the sleeve with a small bit of tape. Do NOT allow your tape to touch the actual book. Remember you are only taping the plastic wrap to itself, and not to the book. This will allow you to remove the wrap in the future if it ever became necessary without damaging or touching the book at all.

Repeat the same process with the top edge at the back of the book.

This is how the back of your book should look at this point.

6 - Close the sleeve at the front

For the front of the book, you will repeat step 5 for the bottom part.

This is how the bottom of the front of your book should look at this point.

However, for the top part, just fold the whole top in, without any triangle folding. Don't tape it. You're just generating that fold so it will sit nicely on top of the book.

Open the top flap back up, close the book, and bring the flap over the outside of the book and to the back. You may now decide to put a small bit of tape here to close up that flap if this is a book you don't often use, or you may leave it sitting there just like that.

7 - Final result

Habemus plastic book sleeve!

This is your finished wrapped book. Thanks to that top flap we made, even when you stand it in the bookshelf, the top will be protected from superficial dust and will make cleaning much easier.

Make sure you watch the videos up at the top in case the photo instructions were not entirely clear.

If you liked this post, you can follow me on Twitter where I'll be posting more content on how to improve your collections at home.

Checking traps with phone microscope adapter

Angelica Isa — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Image of a globular spider beetle, Trigonogenius globulus.

You want to be able to keep a nice record of the insects you catch or of other wonderful things like textile fibres or stains or grains. Things that are too small to be caught on regular camera, but you don't have a microscope with a nice attachment or any other fancy equipment to do it.

Read this post and despair no more.

Contents

Pictures I have taken on my phone
What you need
What it looks like
Step-by-step process
Acknowledgments

Pictures I have taken on my phone

Yes, believe it or not, all of the following photos have been taken using nothing but my Samsung A30s (see specs here) and a generic, £5 clip-on 4x magnifier that I bought in some cheap place in the UK a long time ago. For those of you unfamiliar with the broad Samsung offer, the A30s is basically not dirt cheap but it doesn't even get up to what you could call the start of the fancy ranges.

Unknown bug. If you know what this is, send me a DM on Twitter as I'd love to know!

Liposcelis spp. - Booklouse

Tinea pellionella - Case-bearing clothes moth larva out of its case. Yes, those pellets are what you think they are.

Unspecified cricket and a small, dried up silverfish - Lepisma saccharina

Fly pupa and what seem to be the cannibalised remains of said fly.

Like what you see? Look no further to see how to take these yourself!

What you need

Any mid-range smartphone with good camera
Clip-on phone magnifier
Head magnifier

My head magnifier looks like this one, and I have to say I am amazed at how good it is considering how cheap it looked when it arrived.

Note: You don't need the head magnifier to take the photos, but you might need it at first to find some of the smaller insects you'd like to photograph.

If you don't know what I mean by clip-on magnifier, they look like this:

This is just a random screenshot. You can find whichever you like at the price range you wish. Mine was quite cheap (~$10), so don't feel the need to go expensive unless you want to. Make sure you're buying a set with the zoom and not just the other fancy lenses.

What it looks like

This is my magnifier phone clip next to an ant stuck on some tape and a ruler just to show you what it looks like:

This is what the ant looks like on a regular phone photo.

After you use the clip and the magnifier app, the ant will look like this:

This is what the ant looks like with the clip and the magnifier app.

Step-by-step process

1 - Attach the magnifier

Clip on the magnifier against the main back camera of your phone. Make sure you have the right lens on. Many of these will come with twist-on/off lenses and include fish-eye, panoramic, zooms, etc.

2 - Use the magnifier app on your phone

Open up the Magnifier app. You might have to look for it a bit.

Android: My phone was in French at the time, but you can see it's the green app with a + on a magnifying glass called Loupe.

Apple: You might have to hunt for the app, but it should be there.

3 - Take the photo

Zoom in and take your picture. Here, proceedings will be different depending on whether you have Apple or Android.

Android

The download button is in the middle of the photo to the right after you take it. You have to hit that button or your photo will not be saved.

Make sure you press this button to save the picture before you hit the left arrow to leave or it will not save the image.

The app will save the magnifier photos in a separate folder in your phone under Files > Images > Magnifier

Apple

Unfortunately, the Apple app does not save or download magnified photos. You will just have to take a screenshot.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Eliana Quispitupac, entomologist, for the ID on the globular spider beetle.

If you liked this post, you can follow me on Twitter where I'll be posting more content on how to improve your collections at home.

Excel for Environmental Monitoring: Modeling Humidity

Angelica Isa — Sun, 13 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

What is this?

When I first started working, I didn't have dataloggers or any way of monitoring some of the spaces where we were storing collections. I also don't have an HVAC system or any sort of automatic or even semi-automatic way of controlling the environment in spaces. All control requires a person turning something on or off, opening or closing a door, etc.

I needed to make decisions about placement of shelves, furniture, collections and dehumidifiers, but I didn't really know what was going on in these spaces. A datalogger could tell me general information, but I needed detailed knowledge about different areas within the same space, so I came up with a simple environmental monitoring solution that can be applied when you have no budget at all.

Why this model works for me

I have run this model 3 times. Once in 2016, and twice in 2017 - in the summer and in the fall. I believe I should probably run it a few more times in different weather conditions to see how things change over the changing seasons in the year. It will not look the same throughout. However, knowing how the humidity looks in my spaces has helped me decide on where to place my dehumidifiers and what to do about opening and closing doors at different times of the year.

Keep in mind that this is a basic modeling tool I came up with. It may not necessarily work for you. It might not be worth doing if you have more sophisticated systems for monitoring and controlling the environment. However, if you ever find yourself in a situation similar to mine, let me know if you tried it out and if it worked for you!

What you need

A small step ladder (to take the higher readings)
A handheld thermohygrometer
A bit of time to take your measurements. It does take a while if you do a lot of spaces.
Microsoft Excel
This template if you don't feel like making your own from scratch. You can mess with it however you wish for your own personal use, but please download it first. Don't change the original.

Obviously, this method will be hindered by unmoveable furniture in your way depending on how your spaces are set out, but you can probably figure out if this is still possible working around the obstacles.

The basic concept

The idea behind this model is extremely simple.

Figure our your space and divide it into a grid. The more measurements you take, the more detailed your final model will be. Be aware that less than 9 grids will not give very satisfactory results. I know from personal experience that just four or five points (corners and centre) does not work at all.

Map out your space. To make it easier, think of it as a square. Naturally, if your space is rectangular, use a rectangle and more grids. Know the location of your doors or other openings such as ventilation systems or windows to help you with later interpretation.
Take temperature and relative humidity measurements at 3 different heights (ground level, 1m/3ft and 2m/6ft off the ground) at each different grid of your space. If you have really high ceilings, you might have to take more measurements heightwise. Make sure you step away from your sensors while the measurement is being made so your breathing and body temperature do not affect it and that you have a standardised way of taking the measurements. For example, waiting x number of seconds before reading or resetting the equipment in between reads. Note: I have mapped temperatures too but the variations were so small, they didn't really give a useful model for me, so unless you're particularly concerned about temperature, it might not be worth doing a model for that.
Turn the information you get into a 3D surface chart in Excel.

Making your 3D surface charts in Excel

Screenshot of 3D surface charts in Excel. This is the one you will have to use, although you can play around with the contour or 2D versions if you prefer.

1

Copy over your data into an Excel table that replicates the room grid you made. Make a table for each height level. I am using metres.

Excel tables replicating the spaces measured. Note that I have coloured in the wettest and driest numbers for my own benefit.

I am using the cardinal points to name the different areas in the room. I have also pointed out where the door is. You can basically equate these tables to the square of the grid you made.

Important: Please note that when the graph gets drawn, the column names at the top of your tables will actually show up at the bottom of your graph as the X-axis, so don't put the names of the top locations on those columns. This is why I have left them empty. If you don't think it will confuse you, you can put the names of the bottom locations of your room in the names of the columns.

2

Organise your graphs so that you can see the highest at the top and the ground level at the bottom.

3D surface chart results in Excel. Make sure that you colour code your graph consistently and that you are using the same axis formatting so that you can compare across graphs.

3

Interpret your data and make your decisions.
Some of the things you can see in the above results for an imaginary space are:

In the winter, humidity seems to be coming in through the door and is highest at ground level.
In the summer, for some reason, the NW corner of this room is quite humid, particularly at ground level.

Decisions you can make based on this:

Close the door in the winter
Place dehumidifiers in the NW corner in the summer and near the door in the winter. Try to find out why that corner is more humid than the rest of the room, so you can take action.
Avoid placing humidity-sensitive objects close to the ground.

Pros and Cons

These are not fool-proof graphs, nor are they comprehensive. It is best if you do the exercise several times at different times of the year to refine your results.
Obviously, you are missing out on areas where you didn't take measurements.
The graph does not cover the whole space seamlessly.

However

The graphs can still give you a rough visual guide for what's going on in a space regarding relative humidity and will enable you to rethink your decisions coming from a place of at least some knowledge rather than just educated guesses.

If you liked this post, you can follow me on Twitter where I'll be posting more content on conservation tidbits and how to improve your collections at home.

Understanding sensor calibration

Angelica Isa — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Photo by Monstera on Pexels.

Why we send our sensors to be calibrated

All of us who work in museums or heritage and run environmental monitoring programmes know the answer to this.

It's pretty basic. If your datalogger sensors are not working properly, they could really affect your decision-making process for those areas where you keep important, sensitive objects.

So we know it's important to have the sensors working properly.

The thing is, I only recently discovered that the extent of my knowledge on this was limiting the results I was getting. The following is information that lab analysts and engineers may consider very common and obvious, but it's something that I had never seen before and was certainly not included in my (otherwise excellent) training in conservation. Are you in the same boat?

What I was told:

Just send your loggers off to calibration service every now and then to fix them up.

That sounded straightforward enough. However, here are the things I didn't know and nobody ever told me...

Time in between calibrations should not necessarily be standard. Just because you're used to sending your loggers of every 'x' years, doesn't mean that's the correct time for your loggers.
If you're not applying the results that come back in the calibration report, there's a chance you might as well not have done anything.
For the most important bit, I will let Wikipedia give you the following because it's the clearest way of saying it:

In measurement technology and metrology, calibration is the comparison of measurement values delivered by a device under test with those of a calibration standard of known accuracy. Strictly speaking, the term "calibration" means just the act of comparison and does not include any subsequent adjustment.

Did you know that when you send your sensors off to a "calibration" service, that does not necessarily mean they're fixing them? I certainly didn't!

First important conclusion: Make sure you know what service you are requesting and whether your service includes actual sensor adjustment. If your service does not include adjustment, then I'm afraid you can't just put your reports away and forget about it. Turns out I had sorely misunderstood the meaning of the technical term "calibration". What about you?

In this post, I will only talk about temperature and humidity for the sake of brevity and simplicity, but you can probably extrapolate the information to all other sensors. Please note that the following is normally applied to laboratory or commercial or auditing analytical equipment that requires high accuracy for various commercial and legal reasons. If you're just monitoring environments, you will have a bit more leeway regarding acceptable errors in your numbers.

What information do calibration certificates give you?

First of all, if you are in charge of getting these services, remember that it should be conducted by a provider accredited under the ISO/IEC Standard 17025.

There are a number of different types of information which your calibration certificate should contain. If you want to look at those details, check out this page by the Omega company in the United States.

Ok, I sent it off and the numbers look small, so it's... fine? Can I put it away and forget about it?

I certainly did for a while! But the answer is maybe. Let's do a mini-checklist.

My service included adjustment. ---> Brilliant, you can put it away, but you should still look. If the numbers were big, you will want to keep an eye on it over time.
My service did not include adjustment ---> Do not just put it away without looking. You will need to adjust your results.

Sigh. What am I supposed to be looking for?

1. The errors of your sensors

It is normal to do 3-point calibrations for three different temperatures and three different humidities. They will show a positive or negative number based on how they differ from the standard used.

If your sensors have not been adjusted in the service, you will have to add or subtract these numbers from all your readings in order to get the accurate measurements. This will be important if you have very sensitive spaces and/or if the numbers obtained will make a significant difference in your readings.

Adjusting readings with calibration information.

2. The deviation of the measurements

These will also affect the accuracy of your measurements. The number provided alone might be within your acceptable ranges, but it might push you out of them if you take the deviations into account. The following is a table with arbitrary numbers just to show you a visual example of how deviations can mess with your data.

I have coloured the dots blue where all is in order, red where they are out of range, and orange where they are within range on their own but out of range if the deviation is considered.

Deviations may be enough to cause doubt about whether your numbers are within range or not. If you were to look at these numbers without deviations, you'd be within range 70% of the time (7 out of 10 measurements). With deviations, this changes to 30% ok with 40% being potentially not, and 30% out of range. Not quite the same, is it!

3. The period of use for your results

Your results will be applicable until the next time you run the calibration. This time can vary between a number of months or a few (1-3) years. This means that you will need to apply the adjustments in your calibration certificate until the next time you run the service.

I get it. I probably should look at these things. What else am I missing?

Remember I mentioned that time in between measurements should not necessarily be standard? I will add to this another question. How do you know when it's time to replace your sensors entirely? The answer, as I have come to understand it, is bullseye charts.

As the name implies, bullseye charts look like... well... bullseyes. These have been made in Excel. As you map your calibration results on, you will start to see where the dots place themselves in the bullseye, and this will help you decide what to do next.

You can make your own decision regarding where to draw the circular lines in your bullseye charts, but I like 5°C and 5% because they are nice, round numbers and 5% humidity is the lowest acceptable variation within a day as presented in this paper by Boris Pretzel.

You are welcome to download my Excel template here. Keep in mind that the circles have already been drawn for you in the BullseyeCircles tab and that you should only mess with it if you want to change their sizes.

How to add info to the bullseye charts

I think the image above and Excel provided are pretty clear, and I'm sure you can reverse engineer the information based on the provided Excel, but here are a couple pointers:

Make a row for every calibration point run. In these made-up examples, the four sensors shown have been run through three points for three consecutive years. The points used will depend on the standards used by the service provider you hire. You can ask them what they are, and they might even tell you what points they have so you can choose which ones you want. Try to pick some that your logger normally encounters when in service.
Make a bullseye chart per sensor over the years or over the calibration services. Don't put different sensors on the same graph.
You can keep adding information to the tables below if you have more results and just add the selected cells necessary to the graphs as you go.

How to interpret the bullseye charts

As shown in the image above, there are four potential results. You should be looking for reliability. Here is a brief breakdown of the four types shown above:

Valid and reliable (top left): Results are great. Your sensors are working well and giving accurate results. You can trust them. You can check how often they get sent out for calibration and if the results keep coming back the same, you can lengthen the time in-between services.
Not valid but reliable (top right): Results are fine. Your sensors are working well, but they're a bit off. This can easily be corrected by applying the error adjustments given by your calibration certificate. This will bring the results back into the middle for valid results.
Valid but unreliable (bottom left): Your sensors seem okay, but the dots are a little too spread out for comfort. Consider reducing the in-between time for calibration services and maybe find a service that includes adjustments if you haven't already.
Not valid and not reliable (bottom right): Your sensors are all over the place and should not be trusted. Check with a provider if they can be adjusted at all or just consider replacing them altogether.

Benefits of knowing all this stuff

Yes, it's not all just hassle - although I will admit it feels like a big hassle.

Guess what? If you're low on budget, running these graphs might help you reduce the number of calibration services you do. If you notice that, over time, your sensors are just fine, then maybe you don't need to run the service as often as you thought. On the contrary, if you notice your sensors are all over the place, maybe you should get new sensors instead of using up your precious budget on calibrating equipment that should be let go.

If you liked this post, you can follow me on Twitter where I'll be posting more content on conservation tidbits and how to improve your collections at home.

How to make sticky traps

Angelica Isa — Sat, 05 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Photo by Erik Karits on Pexels.

Contents

Why make your own sticky traps?
Materials
- For the sticky bit
Step-by-step instructions

Why make your own sticky traps?

Maybe you want to start learning how to run your own Integrated Pest Management programme at your small institution or even at home. Maybe you can't buy commercial sticky traps for whatever reason. Maybe you just want to learn how to make sticky traps.

This option allows you to recycle old card stock or cardboard in order to make your own traps with household items.

However, make sure that the cost of buying the traps balances out vs. the amount of time you need to make your own. Make sure that you are not creating false economies by making your own traps to save a few pennies at the expense of your time.

Important note: Because these are homemade traps, they will depend on the strength of your adhesive or the adhesive tape you pick. These traps will never be as strong as commercial traps and are meant only as a last resort.

Materials

Materials you will need to make your own traps.

Card stock / recycled, thick paper
Box cutter or scissors
Ruler (ideally metallic - save your fingers)
Protected surface for cutting on
Pencil and eraser
Regular adhesive tape

For the sticky bit

2in / 5cm wide adhesive tape
Make sure it is transparent enough for you to be able to look at the insects later. The choice of tape is a trade-off between visibility and adhesive power. Duct tape will be very strong, but it will make it harder for you to look at the insects caught.

OR if you can spend a bit

Any goo that will not dry up over time. Please make sure it is safe for use. I have seen this being sold, but I have not used it myself. When you use commercial products, please follow all instructions. I am not earning any money from this link.
You could go for sticky rolls too if you want to make tons of traps.

Note on animal cruelty
Sticky traps in IPM as used in museums and heritage institutions are used in order to monitor and keep track of different pests that may affect organic collections - namely different types of beetles and moths. These counts are important for institution-level management of pests that could destroy important collections. If you will be using traps at home or for any other personal reason, please be aware that the insects trapped will most likely die.

Take note that regular, commercial sticky traps are not considered humane, particularly when small rodents or other small non-insect animals become trapped. Commercial sticky traps are never endorsed by any organisations concerned with animal rights.

These DIY traps will not be strong enough to trap a mouse or other small animal. Even some larger insects will probably be able to get away. As such, this should be taken into account if you are running numbers or doing serious monitoring. This all depends on the strength of the tape you use.

Please be mindful when/if you use sticky traps if animal cruelty is an important concern to you.

Step-by-step instructions

1 - Cut your cardstock

Cut your piece of card into rectangles of about 9 x 3 inches (8 x 24cm).

This is a big card that I cut in half down the middle.

Rectangles ready.

2 - Fold into shape

Fold your rectangle into thirds and make a triangle shape. Do not close it yet. Label your trap by putting the name and date on one of the outside edges. In the area in the middle that will become the base of your trap, place some of the wide tape, sticky side up.

Place sticky tape in the middle of the trap. If you are using goo or any other adhesive, add it here. I was using transparent tape here.

3 - Close the trap with tape

Close up your triangle shape with a bit of tape where the card ends meet.

Close up the trap with some tape joining up the top and bottom edges of your rectangular card.

4 - Secure the base

Secure the base tape with two small pieces of tape at the bottom, on the underside of your trap. Make sure the large adhesive tape remains taut against the card or the insects will walk under it in the space left between the card and the non-stick side of your wide tape.

Use the regular tape to secure the edges of the large tape overflowing from the top of the trap. In this picture, I have used the brown wide tape for the base of the trap.

5 - Final result

Habemus bespoke insect trap!

Finished trap.

Diagram showing trap construction.

If you want, you can always cut out little windows on the (wall) sides of your triangle.

Also, if your card is thick enough and you are careful, you can even reuse these traps, just changing out the tape in the middle. You can kind of see I've done this in the photo in Step 4 above, where the card looks a bit worn where the old tape was pulled off.

If you liked this post, you can follow me on Twitter where I'll be posting more content on how to improve your collections at home.

Make an archival box at home

Angelica Isa — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Why make your own boxes?

Sometimes, you won't be able to find the exact size of the box you need for an object or set of objects.

The acid-free boxes available commercially will be either too big or too small for your shelves or for your objects and getting bespoke sizes can be a bit pricier.

In these cases, it's best to just make an archival box yourself. It's not difficult! Below, I give you some basic instructions to make your own boxes.

Materials

Archival board / acid-free board
Box cutter
Ruler (ideally metallic) and right angle ruler
Protected surface
Pencil and eraser
Linen tape
Brass pins
Awl or something to make small holes

Step-by-step instructions

1

Know the measurements you need. Make sure you know the size of your object in all 3 dimensions: Length, width and height. Make sure you add a few inches in every direction so that the box is not a tight fit and allows you to put in other packing material to cushion your object (polyethylene foam or acid-free tissue paper). Make sure your corners are 90° or your box will not come out straight.

2

Draw the basics of your lid. You basically need 2 squares (or rectangles), one inside the other, with the lines going all the way to the edges to denote where the flaps will bend.

Lid drawing. Make sure the corner squares/rectangles formed by your drawing all have the same length or they will not fold accurately.

3

Cut only one side of each of the corners that will make up the flaps. Make sure you don't accidentally leave a side without its corresponding flap.

Lid drawing with cut edges

4

Repeat the steps to make the base of your box. Remember that the size of the outer square will determine the height of your box. Make sure you make the inside square 5mm smaller on each side to ensure a tight fit with your lid.
Base drawing. Note the thicker outside square for box height.

Base drawing with cut edges. Again, make sure each side has its flap.

5

Abuse all the folding lines a bit by passing over them with a blunt point. Then, fold up the flaps and use an awl to make small holes that will hold the lid and base together. Make sure the holes align. Insert brass pins.

Lid with brass pins.

Purposefully place your pins on different side corners in the lid and box to avoid double thickness of brass pins when attempting to close the box.

Base with brass pins. Note that they do not align with the location of the pins on the lid.

6

Reinforce the lid and base edges with linen tape.

Outside of the lid reinforced with linen tape. Note again, in comparison with the base below, that the pins are located in different corners so they will not line up when the box is closed.

Outside of the base reinforced with linen tape. Note that some tape is also holding down the edges of the brass pins.

7

Habemus bespoke box!

Finished closed box.

If you liked this post, you can follow me on Twitter where I'll be posting more content on how to improve your collections at home.

An Egyptian Faience Lotus

Angelica Isa — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Four side views of the Egyptian faience lotus. Photo credit: Jeff Veitch

An Egyptian Faience Blue Lotus

Object number: DUROM.1953.121
Object: Lotus bud
Owner: Durham University Oriental Museum
Collection: Rawnsley Collection
Material: Faience
Location of origin: Most likely Egypt
Function: Most likely decorative
Probable date: New Kingdom

Faience production

Labeled by the author. Photo credit: Jeff Veitch.

By the author.

The faience core

According to Vandiver, faience is composed of 92-99% SiO2, 1-5% CaO (lime), 0.5-3% Na2O (alkali/soda) and minor quantities of CuO, Al2O3, TiO2, MgO, and K2O (Nicholson 2000:186) – very likely unintentional impurities found in the sand and alkali sources. The source of the silica may come from either desert sand or crushed quartz pebbles and, depending on the source, – because of the type and amount of impurities among the silica – the faience core may present a brownish, pink or yellowish hue, or it may be white. “The crushed quartz pebbles are characterised by high purity, and therefore result in white bodies” (Tite 2008:37). Based on microscopic inspection of the fresh break found on top of the lotus bud, the most likely source for silica in this case was probably crushed quartz.

Apart from the main silica body, an alkali is needed in the faience to aid the material in sticking together. This may come from natron (“naturally occurring mixture of sodium carbonate and sodium sulphate”) or from the ashes of certain salt-loving plants (Nicholson 1993:50). It is possible to determine the alkali source by the high levels of magnesia or the presence of potassium in the case of use of plant ashes (Tite 2008:38,45; Nicholson 2000:187). EDXRF tests were carried out on the clean, broken, white tip. These displayed the presence of silica, iron, potassium and copper. It must not be assumed that because of the presence of potassium the alkali source is definitely plant ash. There is a possibility that the levels of sodium from a natron source are too low for the EDXRF machine to pick up and display. Thus, these results are far from conclusive and simply provide a rough list of elements present.

Once the basic faience materials were mixed, the bud would have been shaped. There are several ways of making faience objects: free-form modelling, moulding, throwing, abrading, layering, etc. (Nicholson 2000:188). However, given the irregular edges of the bud, it can be determined easily that although “fairly uncommon” (Nicholson 2000:188), this particular object must have been hand-moulded, and no other shaping technique has been applied to it after that.

The glazing, painting and firing

The second step to making a faience object would have been to glaze it, and there are three main ways of doing it: efflorescence, application and cementation. The most accurate way of determining the glazing technique is to use a scanning electron microscope on the edges of the glaze where it meets the faience core. The size of the object precluded this analysis, and taking a sample could not have been done without damaging the hard surface of the bud. Therefore, macroscopic and optical microscopic analyses were used.

Technique	Characteristics	Evidence on lotus bud
Efflorescence	Minerals mixed in faience core migrate outwards during drying and glaze during firing. / Variable glaze thickness – thickets on the outer surface and rims. Rough or raised places (firing marks) (Tite 2008:49) / No glaze on the underside where no evaporation is possible (Nicholson 2000:189)	Yes / No / Yes – no glaze in insertion hole
Application	Slurry dipped or painted on and fired. / Drips and sideways runs of glaze (Tite 2008:49)	No
Cementation	Object surrounded by glazing powder and fired. Uniform glaze thickness / No firing marks in small objects. (Tite 2008:49)	No / Yes

Optical microscope picture of the insertion hole. No glaze on the inside. Magnification: 7.5x

Age

Because it has not been possible to pin down a location for the excavation of this artefact, age can only be roughly approximated based on stylistic and technological characteristics and a rough comparison with similar specimens in other collections around the world. The following suggestion is far from definitive.

Architectural Ornament: Lotus Bud. Found in the Palace of Amenhotep III. New Kingdom. ca. 1390–1353 B.C. Accession Number: 11.215.531. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Bud of a water lily. Found in the Tomb of Thutmose IV. New Kingdom. ca. 1400–1390 B.C. Accession Number: 30.8.35. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Other examples whose images may not be reproduced because of museum licensing on photos have also been dated to the New Kingdom, a time recognised as “the zenith of Egyptian faience-working with widespread, varied production, masterpiece works, vivid use of polychromy and the dissemination of periods abroad” (Nicholson 2000:182). However, the difference between these and DUROM 1953.121 is stark. DUROM 1953.121 is mostly matte in finish, has only one colour glaze, and displays very crude black painting. Moreover, the examples above do not have a comparably irregular shape. Taking into account all of these observations, the most likely timeframe for DUROM 1953.121 is somewhere between the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 B.C.) and the Second Intermediate (1650-1550 B.C.) (Nicholson 2000:179-186).

It is unlikely that the object would have come before the Old Kingdom as this period in faience-making is described by Nicholson as one of “experimentation” (Nicholson 2000:179), and DUROM 1953.121 seems to conform with the traditional characteristics of later faience. According to Vandiver as presented in (Nicholson 2000:188), it is further possible that the lotus bud cannot have come after the Second Intermediate because there is no evidence of free-form modelling after that period. It could even be possible to narrow this timeframe down a little bit by suggesting it did not come after the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 B.C.) as the “linear designs in dark paint” (Nicholson 2000:181) are not yet very good. Once again, it must be emphasised that these dates are tentative and based only on very limited information.

The Blue Lotus in Egypt

Flowers and plants in Egypt

According to the British Museum dictionary of Ancient Egypt, the name for Egypt used to be ‘Kemet’, which literally means ‘black land’ because of the fertile black soils that would be deposited annually from the inundation of the river Nile. In contrast to this ‘black land’, there was the desert, the ‘red land’, called Deshret (Shaw 1995:148). It was a natural duality in the Egyptian world-view which put the Nile vs. the desert, essentially life as opposed to death (Wilkinson 1994:12). It made sense, therefore, that all the vegetation that grew thanks to the Nile should be regarded as precious and closely related to the idea of a ‘good’ life.

Plants such as the lotus and papyrus, which grew naturally on the river were, as Frankfort put it, “essential constituents of this unchanging significant “landscape of the first time”” (Frankfort 1949:154) which had always had lotuses and papyrus and renewed itself with every flooding of the Nile. The vegetation around the Nile was not only part of the geography, but because of its vital role to Egyptian society, it was part of the mythology, religion and cultural iconography. The lotus and papyrus were taken as the representations of Upper and Lower Egypt respectively, and it was common to depict them entwined to represent the union of Egypt during the 1st dynasty (Hepper 1990:11).

Examples of Lotus and Papyrus architectural columns. (Jones 1856:Plate VI)

The blue water lily, commonly known as the Egyptian blue lotus, was particularly important because of its natural properties of rising out of the water during the day and sinking back again at night (Shaw 1995:164), which emphasized the ideas of birth and renewal of life (Nicholson 1993:26). This lotus was the birthing place of the sun (Nefertem) in Egyptian mythology (Mercer 1949:242) and was therefore also the symbol of creation (Strouhal 1997:106; Wilkinson 1994:2). Furthermore, as the attribute of Osiris, the lotus itself became a “symbol of the sun of resurrection, and of creative force and power” (Burlington 1903:350).

Nymphaea Caerulea. Image source: Wikipedia

The blue lotus in life

Due to the blue lotus’ importance in Egyptian society and beliefs, it was ever present in their celebrations. Lotus bunches would be sitting over banquet tables, threaded into women’s hair (Strouhal 1997:106), given out to guests as necklaces (Manniche 1997:42) and worn in wreathes and garlands as crowns for distinguished women (Converse 1879:246). Bouquets would also be offered to the gods, wreaths would be placed around sacrificial geese and bulls, and eventually, flower arrangements would be made for the dead as well (Semple 1929:430).

Edwards suggests that the imagery of receiving bouquets of lotus and papyrus flowers presents a blissful picture of domestic life (Edwards 1974:22). Perhaps this is also why there would be flowers inside Egyptian homes with special bowls and vases to “keep the heavy blossoms of the lotus in place” (Scott 1973:149). Additionally, according to Harer Jr. the blue water lily even acted as a narcotic or aphrodisiac when steeped in wine or beer (Harer Jr. 1985) Note the wreathe of persea leaves and lotus petals found on the wig of Princess Nany here.

Gardener drawing water from a shaduf (Scott 1973:131). Image source: Wikimedia commons

Thus, having flowers such as the lotus was very important and a sign of status and good living, and to have such flowers, it was necessary to have expensive-to-keep gardens (Shaw 1995:108). Gardeners of high status were “entrusted with the task of providing vegetables, plants and flowers for the altar in cult ceremonies” (Carroll-Spillecke 2004:80). Of course, not everyone could afford to keep luscious gardens in the desert conditions of Egypt, and some took to design ‘tricks’. “By painting gardens on the interior walls of the courtyard, the planted area could be ‘enlarged’ with artistic illusion.

House owners of limited means could thus attempt to ‘compete’ with those who could afford a really large and luxurious garden as a symbol of their status and wealth” (Carroll-Spillecke 2004:108). Taking it one step further, gardens could not only be painted, but made artificially. Precisely because of faience’s entrenched meanings of life, rebirth, immortality and by extension, good health (Friedman 1998:15), it would have been the perfect material to make artificial lotuses, papyrus stalks and any other plant typical of an Egyptian garden. Such bouquets would require no upkeep but would maintain their symbolic significance for the household.

Friedman suggested that the polychrome bud in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York’s collection could be “an ornament on a shrine or in an architectural setting designed for royalty” or “that they were used in pairs on the lotus columns of the throne dais” (Friedman 1998:191). In addition to those suggestions, based on the description of Cooney of an 18th dynasty limestone relief at the Egyptian Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art (Cooney 1967:285), the following is this author’s recreation of what a small bouquet of faience vegetation might have looked like. The model of the vase has been taken from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Accession number O.C.2761.

The blue lotus in death

“Spell for assuming the form of a lotus. To be said by N. I am this pure lotus that has ascended by the Sunlight and is at Re’s nose. I spend my (time) shedding it (i.e., the sunlight) on Horus. I am the pure (lotus) that ascended from the field.” (Allen 1974:70)

Because the Egyptians had such strong beliefs regarding life after death, it was only natural that what was important in life should be present in death. Thus, the tomb of Sebhekotep included a garden with a pool in the middle with fish and lotus flowers (Carroll-Spillecke 2004:16) where his soul could find rest and refreshment (Wilkinson 1994:2).

Similarly, just as the living gave each other wreaths of lotus flowers as symbols of longevity, it was appropriate to leave them with the dead as harbingers of rebirth and life beyond the physical plane (Petrie 1892:103, Strouhal 1997:106; Roach 2006). For example, in the tomb of Tutankhamun, among other plants, there were “papyrus, olive leaves, cornflowers, water-lily petals, wild celery leaves, pomegranate leaves and persea fruits, woven into garlands and necklaces” (Carroll-Spillecke 2004:100).

Floral collar from Tutankhamun’s embalming cache. Contains papyrus, olive leaves, persea leaves, cornflowers, blue lotus petals, Picris flowers, nightshade berries, faience and linen Accession Number: 09.184.214. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The perfume of the blue lotus was also of particular significance. According to Watterson, the lotus’ perfume “suggested to the Egyptians the perfume of Re’s sweat, the divine essence” (Watterson 1996:40), “the breath of life” (Quirke 1992:60). This would explain why both in depictions of life and death, the characters in paintings and carvings always smell lotus flowers. For an example, see the image of Khabekhent's ushabti chest here.

Most importantly, however, it was the link with the god Nefertem which made the blue lotus so important. He was the sun god who arose from the primeval waters of Nun at the beginning of creation. As the sun, he was born every day and died every night only to begin the cycle again the next day (Shaw 1995:74). In the exact same manner, the blue lotus would sink into the waters and ‘return to life’ every morning (Hayes 1938:182). In fact, “it was in order to identify himself with Nefertem and the act of creation and rebirth that Tutankhamun (1336-1327 B.C.) included among his funerary equipment a painted wooden representation of his own youthful head emerging from a lotus” (Shaw 1995:74).

Tutankhamun’s head emerging from a lotus. Image source: Wikipedia

Conclusions

Artefact DUROM 1953.121 is a perfect example of Egyptian religious beliefs spilling over into their everyday lives and funeral practices. They used faience, a material of particular symbolic significance, in order to depict a plant which not only addresses their national landscape and the importance of the Nile to their civilisation and social structure, but which holds a deeper religious meaning in its representation of the never-ending cycle of life, death and rebirth.

If you liked this type of content, let me know on Twitter, and I will write more artefact study posts.

Bibliography

Allen, T.G (1974). The book of the dead: or, Going forth by day : ideas of the ancient Egyptians concerning the hereafter as expressed in their own terms. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Ashmolean Museum. (?). Ancient Egypt and Nubia. Available: http://www.waa.ox.ac.uk/xdb/tours/ashegypt23sept.pdf. Last accessed 20th Jan 2013.

The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. (1903). On Oriental Carpets. Article IV. The Lotus and the Tree of Life. The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. 2 (6), 349-351, 353-354.

Carroll-Spillecke, M (2004). Earthly paradises : ancient gardens in history and archaeology. 2nd ed. London: British Museum Press.

Clarke, S; Engelbach, R (1930). Ancient Egyptian Masonry: The Building Craft. London: Oxford University Press.

Converse, E.M. (1879). The Lotus. The Art Journal (1875-1887), New Series. 5 (5), 246-247.

Cooney, J.D. (1967). Gods bearing gifts for the King. The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. 54 (9), 279-289.

Edwards, I.E.S; British Museum (1974). The treasures of Tutankhamun. 2nd ed. London: M. Joseph.

Edwards, I.E.S; Burton, H; Boltin, L; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1976). Tutankhamun, his tomb and its treasures. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Frankfort, H (1949). Ancient Egyptian religion : an interpretation. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press.

Friedman, F.D. et al (1998). Gifts of the Nile : ancient Egyptian faience. New York: Thames and Hudson.

Germer, R. (1987). Ancient Egyptian Plant-Remains in the Manchester Museum. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. 73, 245-246.

Harer Jr., W.B. (1985). Pharmacological and Biological Properties of the Egyptian Lotus. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt. 22, 49-54

Hayes, W.C. (1938). The Egyptian God of the Lotus: A bronze statuette. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 33 (8), 182-184.

Hepper, F.N; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1990). Pharaoh's flowers : the botanical treasures of Tutankhamun. London: H.M.S.O

Jones, O (1856). The grammar of ornament / Illustrated by examples from various styles of ornament.. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co.

Kaczmarczyk, A; Hedges, R.E.M (1983). Ancient Egyptian faience : an analytical survey of Egyptian faience from predynastic to Roman times. Warminster: Aris & Phillips.

Manniche, L (1997). Sexual life in ancient Egypt. 2nd ed. London; New York: Kegan Paul International.

Mao, Y (2000). Lead-Alkaline Glazed Egyptian Faience: Preliminary Technical Investigation of Ptolemaic Period Faience Vessels in the Collection of the Walters Art Gallery. Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, vol.39, no.2. The American Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Works. 185-204. Available: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/019713600806082739. Last accessed 7th Jan 2023.

Mercer, S.A.B (1949). The Religion of Ancient Egypt. London: Luzac.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (2012). Online Collections. Available online.

Morenz, S (1973). Egyptian religion. Translated by Ann E. Keep. London: Methuen & Co Ltd.

Museé du Louvre. (2001). Khabekhent's funerary servant and ushabti chest. Available: https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/khabekhent-s-funerary-servant-and-ushabti-chest. Last accessed 7th March 2021. Photo taken by R.M.N./F.Raux.

Nicholson, P.T. (1993). Egyptian faience and glass. Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire, UK: Shire Publications.

Nicholson, P.T.; Shaw, I (2000). Ancient Egyptian materials and technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Petrie, W.M.F (1892). Ten years' digging in Egypt, 1881-1891. London: Religious Tract Society.

Quirke, S; Spencer, A.J (1992). The British Museum book of ancient Egypt. New York: Thames and Hudson.

Roach, J. (2006). Ancient Flowers Found in Egypt Coffin. Available: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060629-egypt-flowers.html. Last accessed 30th Jan 2013.

The Science News-Letter. (1931). Garlands buried 3,000 years check Egypt's calendar. The Science News-Letter. 19 (509), 28.

Scott, N. (1973). The daily life of the ancient Egyptians. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series. 31 (3), 123-170.

Semple, E.C. (1929). Ancient Mediterranean Pleasure Gardens.Geographical Review. 19 (3), 420-443.

Shaw, I; Nicholson, P.T (1995). British Museum dictionary of ancient Egypt. London: British Museum Press.

Strouhal, E; Forman, W (1997). Life of the Ancient Egyptians. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Tite, M.S. et al (2008). Production technology of faience and related early vitreous materials. Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology.

(de) Vartavan, C; Boodle, L.A (1999). Hidden fields of Tutankhamun : from identification to interpretation of newly discovered plant material from the Pharaoh's grave. London: Triade Exploration.

Watterson, B (1996). The gods of ancient Egypt. New York: Sutton Publishing.

Wilkinson, A. (1994). Symbolism and Design in Ancient Egyptian Gardens. Garden History. 22 (Summer), 1-17.

Restoration vs. Minimum intervention

Angelica Isa — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Often, conservators will talk about the principle of minimum intervention and not touching up objects a lot. Sometimes, it will be argued that a restoration is absolutely necessary for the sake of the object. How do we make those decisions? When does each apply?

What can we say about restoration?

Not restoring things may give a distorted image of the past as broken and damaged.
Not restoring calls attention away from the object’s aesthetic appearance and towards its damage.
Restoration is useful to explain how things worked, sounded, looked and felt.
Restoration can be essential when we talk about working objects like musical instruments or clocks. Some objects were created to be dynamic and cannot be interpreted accurately if they stop moving.

Parisian-made gilt-bronze clock. c. 1770 - c. 1775. From the Rijksmuseum collection. See here. Is a clock still a clock if it doesn't tell the time anymore?

Restoration is capable of showing technical, social and economic changes through time.
Restoration involves the audience. It makes history interesting. Everyone likes to see amazing Before and After pictures.
Restoration can increase the stability of the object.
Modern, professional restoration ethical codes emphasize a respect for the remaining original material.
Even bad restorations in the past helped us have things now. Many of those restorations can be redone and fixed, although not all of them.
Restoration is about the meaning of the object, which is more valuable than the material itself. The idea is that the social functionality of the object impacts society more than its damaged appearance.
Restoration might be the only option to save “emergency” objects affected by insect attack, floods, fires, etc.
Restoration is affected by our perceptions of the past. Just like Victorians tearing down original historical buildings to create fake "gothic" reconstructions, we could be misinterpreting the past and restoring something inaccurately.
Restoration is sometimes purely concerned with aesthetics. It can be more interested in making something look "new" or "good" than in respecting authenticity.
Restoration can be used for political means. Choices on what gets or does not get restored can create "biased" histories. Restoration methods or choices can also be used to ignore or highlight different aspects of an object. The identity of the restorer can be defended or attacked based on the "identity" of the object. Certain religious items, for example, "cannot" be restored by women.
Restoration can affect the ease of care for objects in the future. A good restoration can improve the chances of an object while a bad one can destroy it completely.

What are minimum intervention and the concept of stewardship about?

Minimum intervention is (arguably) the minimum amount of work necessary to physically and chemically stabilise an object and prevent further degradation. This term is subjective.
The idea of stewardship is that people of the present are only stewards of the objecs of the past (or of the present), keeping them safe for the sake of the people of the future. Thus, we are not owners, but only caretakers. This principle implies that as caretakers, not owners, we do not have the prerogative to make many decisions about the objects we care for. If you borrow an item from a friend, do you have the right to send it off to get altered?
Restoration removes information. Many restorations require cleaning and removal of original material.

Wooden bowl from the wreck of the Dutch East Indiaman Witte Leeuw, anonymous, before 1613. From the Rijksmuseum collection. See here. Should this object be restored? Are aesthetics the most important aspect of an object? The shipwreck destruction is a part of its history.

The less we do to an object, the less likely we are to mess it up. Old restorations have sometimes proven to be worse for objects than leaving them be.
Is it culturally appropriate to restore an object? Some objects were made to be destroyed. They were meant to decay. It was a symbolic gesture. Think of grave goods. In some cases, they are supposed to degrade along with the body of the deceased. Would it be disrespectful to deny them this destiny? Some objects were ritually killed by bending or breaking them. Would it make sense to stick them back together?
If parts are continually replaced, what is the original object? This is called the Ship of Theseus dilemma and it has a "grandfather’s axe" variation. That is, if your grandfather left you his axe, but you eventually had to replace the handle because it broke and then replaced the head because it wore down... is it still your grandfather's axe?

Lumbering in Winter, from Every Saturday: A Journal of Choice Reading, January 28, 1871. From the Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery collection. See here. The Theseus Ship dilemma. Is your object still the same if every part of it has been replaced over time?

More things to think about...

Restoration generates money as objects are displayed or as they enter the commercial market. It is much easier to sell a good-looking object than a broken one.
Restoration gives less freedom to the public to interpret objects themselves. The more "accurate" an object is, the less room for interpretation it leaves.
Restoration can foster further investigation and research. Cleaning things off, investigating, researching necessary information before a restoration can lead to fantastic discoveries. Think about the paintings under the paintings.
Minimum intervention is about truth, keeping TRUE to the original. Why is the truth important? Does it really exist? Does it make people aware and proud of their past? Is that what gets visitors coming to the museum?
Is society just looking for stories, or does it care about truth? Do we prefer romance or beauty at the expense of "truth"?
Do we need professionals to filter information for us? On the other hand, minimum intervention may not be catering to the public. Conservation decisions can affect public viewing.
Truth is still important to some groups, how something really was. Are we taking away from their experience by restoring an object?
Do people find aged appearances more engaging or do they prefer things that look new?
What does society want? Who are we to give it to them? What does it believe? What is it interested in?
There are logical absurdities regarding the term “minimum intervention.” "Minimum" can ultimately be a subjective idea. Who decides? Is it up to the conservator, the curator, the museum director, the board of trustees, the donors, the general public?
If objects are just left alone (minimum intervention), they can get forgotten. They don’t exercise people’s curiosity. Does anybody care about the "ugly" stuff? Can we save the "ugly" stuff? Should we save items that society doesn't seem to care about? - Remember that everything costs money. Resources are not infinite. Budgets are mostly under-budgets.

Finally,

Strangely enough, even a bad restoration can give an object a new life.

The Ecce Homo fresco by Elías García Martínez in the Sanctuary of Mercy church, Borja, Zaragoza, Spain before its infamous restoration in 2012. Image source: Wikipedia

You might remember this fresco. The bad restoration became a meme. Ecce Homo became Ecce Mono (Mono is Spanish for monkey). The best part about this new version of the fresco is that I can't even share the Wikipedia image of the restoration because "The restored fresco is assumed to be copyrighted by the artist, Cecilia Giménez, who is still living. According to Spanish law, it won't be public domain until 70 years after her death."

In other words, her restoration is now potentially considered an entirely new and independent work, with an artist author who holds copyrights over the piece. Not only that, but this sleepy little chapel in a random, small town in Spain suddenly saw a massive increase in tourism (and by extension, economic growth - much of which has been given to various charities). People came from all over just to see the bad restoration. They never cared about the original before. It seems to have been considered quite unremarkable. If a professional conservator-restorer had fixed this fresco, maybe nobody would have cared beyond the people who go to that particular church for services every week. So did 80-year-old Cecilia Giménez ultimately do this town a favour? Mind, this would be a very contentious idea to propose - imagine the dangers of having an army of people going out to intentionally deface art in order to attempt such a scheme.

Conclusions

I hope that this brief article has brought to light certain aspects of restoration and conservation ethics.

Objects in museum displays tend to look good. They have already gone through conservation processes. You should assume that every object on display has been checked and reviewed by a conservator before it went up. They are not what came out of the ground, or what was found. What you see has not only been curated, it has probably been conserved.

I am extremely interested in opening up the conversation to the general public because it is a fascinating topic. Conservation is, generally speaking, a very behind-the-scenes type of work. If you are interested in art, museums, history and material culture, knowing about conservation can bring a whole new aspect to interpretations which you may not have considered before. Follow me on Twitter and join me in this exciting project.

Why conservation needs to go public

Angelica Isa — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Photo by Monika Kozub on Unsplash

My invisible career

I can't speak for conservators all over the world, but at least where I live, everyone thinks or assumes I must be an archaeologist. I work with collections? I stick things together? Ah. Archaeologist. Obviously.

If I don't talk about collections at all but just say I'm a conservator when asked about what I do, the next question I generally receive tends to relate to plastics, oceans, the Amazon jungle and recycling.

One colleague once told me she said she did restoration work and was then asked what part of the restaurant she liked best: front desk, kitchen or the bar? Something along those lines. To be fair, the word "restauración" in Spanish, can be used for both, but it makes for a good story where we lost out to a more famous line of work.

But perhaps the most common response to "I'm a conservator" generally tends to be an initial OH! followed by sudden frozen face of either confusion or blankness and then:

........... what's that?

The great thing is that when I finally explain or clarify, the responses tends to be very encouraging.

That's so interesting! I didn't know that existed! (Yes! I exist!)
Your work must be fascinating. (Yes, it is!)
That sounds really difficult. You must be very smart (Yes, it can be. Shucks, how kind of you!)

While this general experience is common and I'm used to people having no idea what I'm talking about, it underscores a serious problem.

What if people didn't know engineers existed and just assumed everyone was an architect?
Or... if nobody knew programmers existed and assumed everyone is an IT support person?
What would that mean for the profession?
What would that mean for the professional?
What would that mean for the job that requires that professional?
And by extension, what would that mean for the results obtained?

If almost nobody knows you exist, what you do, why you're important, why they should pay you to do anything, then why should anyone believe that someone else can't just do what you do as a side gig? I'm sure some of you will be able to relate to this.

Your job is not a real job. It's something someone else with another career can do just as well, right? The results should be the same, right? I'm not going to answer these hypothetical questions but leave you with the following anecdote (one among many):

A few days ago, I went onto a much-loved museum website. I know their website. I've looked at it several times over the years as I return for various things. And I noticed something new and terribly sad. Their page about the Museum team is now composed exclusively of senior management, curators, trustees. The conservation team is gone. The mounting technicians are gone. Collections and registration teams are not there either. The little blog posts about conservation treatment of objects are no more. It makes me worry that the actual people are gone. Are the jobs gone away too? Who takes care of the collections now? Do we care? Are we even aware that there's something to care about?

Museums during a pandemic

During the earlier months of the pandemic, the Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO) ran a survey with nearly 1,000 survey responses collected between 24 March and 30 April 2020 from museums in 48 countries, the majority from Europe. The final results were presented in early May 2020.

The big museums, such as the Rijksmuseum, the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, the Stedelijk Museum lose between 100.000 Euro and 600.000 Euro per week. Museums in touristic regions are looking at an exceptional income loss of 75-80% due to the complete halt of tourism and the potential continuation of restrictions into the summer period. (NEMO survey, p.7)

A bigger report was conducted by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). It analysed almost 1,600 responses from museums and museum professionals in 107 countries, across five continents, which were collected between 7 April and 7 May. They report that:

...almost all museums around the world will reduce their activities because of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly one third of them will reduce staff, and more than one tenth may be forced to close permanently. 82,6 % of the respondents anticipate that museum programmes will have to be reduced and 29,8 % expect that the number of staff will have to be reduced. 12,8 % of participants fear that their museum might close. (ICOM survey, p.2)

Extracted from ICOM survey, p.14

In relation to the conservation of museum collections, responses are slightly more varied. The maintenance of stable environmental conditions is a greater source of concern than other factors, with more than 18% of respondents reporting that their systems are not adequate to guarantee object conservation. The structural integrity of buildings and other systems (electrical, fire-fighting, etc.) are perceived as a smaller risk, with 14% and 12% of participants respectively worrying that the systems may not be adequate. (ICOM survey, p.15)

The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) did not fall behind and also ran a survey on the impact of the pandemic in American museums in October 2020. Here are two of the more salient points for US museums as reported in November 2020:

Over half (52%) of museums have six months or less of operating reserves; 82% have twelve months or less of operating reserves. (AAM survey)

On average, respondents anticipated losing approximately 35% of the museum’s budgeted operating income in 2020 and are anticipating losing an additional 28% of normal operating income in 2021. (AAM survey)

More specifically, the Institute of Conservation (ICON, UK) ran a small survey for conservators, where

Over 90% of respondents reported loss or postponement of work and 70% of respondents said that their monthly income had decreased. (ICON survey, p.7)

Looks grim, how will this help?

Specifically, I can't say I know for sure how me having an occasional blog and running conservation courses for non-professionals in my free time is going to help such a huge issue. I'm not (yet?) expecting to become a conservation crusader.

However, I understand that there is a problem and I intend to address it slowly and steadily.

Conservation is not an island. Or rather... it is now. But it shouldn't be.
Do you agree?

I get the feeling that regardless of where we live, cultural heritage, and often education, tend to be found at the lower end of budget lists. Imagine that on top of that, within cultural heritage itself, conservation is pretty low as well.

Perhaps that is our own fault. We conservators are not famous for being into outreach. In true introvert fashion, some of us even seem to prefer objects over people.

BUT... if we can slowly bring conservation into the light, trickle it into general knowledge, diffuse it into people's homes and insert it into everyday language, then... well! Who knows what could happen? Maybe we can go from invisible, through a hazy glitter state, to a solid, visible form.

After all, the internet is a powerful tool. It has proven many times over since its inception that it can change the world. So maybe we can change the world in our own way, for the sake of our global and personal heritages.

Will you join me in this journey? Follow me on Twitter to help me share conservation topics with everyone.

Bibliography

The Home Collection Game - How to take care of collections

Angelica Isa — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Are you concerned you don't know how to take care of collections? Do you have any precious objects at home?

Your grandfather's medals from "the war".
Your great grandmother's black and white photos.
Your kid's first noodle necklace.
Your aunt's stuffed animal collection.
Your mum's silver service.
Your wedding dress.
Your personal library.
Prints, mugs, keychains, dolls, etc. you have collected over time.
Your very valuable comic books / action figures / Pokémon cards
Actual written letters from your first ever penpal

It can really be anything. Anything you cherish in one way or another. Have you ever wondered what would happen if you lost them?

Preventive conservation is all about not letting that happen without actually messing around directly with the objects and possibly ruining them.

You said "course". What is this course about again?

This course is my first experiment in teaching conservation to everyone.

And no, I'm not talking about reducing plastic use and saving the elephants, although those things are great too.

I'm talking about the profession of conservation as exercised in museums, galleries, historical and archaeological sites, etc.

I'm talking about the career behind trying to make things last forever.

The American Institute for Conservation (AIC) defines conservation as

"The profession devoted to the preservation of cultural property for the future. Conservation activities include examination, documentation, treatment, and preventive care, supported by research and education."

Big disclaimer: I don't intend to educate formal conservators. There are extremely good programmes for that at both undergraduate and graduate levels all around the world.

What I want do to is bring the ideas of conservation to everyone and anyone, so we can all apply conservation knowledge at home to take care of our personal heritage:

The things we want to preserve for our own personal futures, for our own descendants, not the general and vague future human society.

Without having to pay through the nose or email museum departments to find out.

Ok, so who is this course for?

Anyone.
Anyone with a collection they care about now.
Anyone with a future collection in mind.
Anyone interested in heritage, maybe even thinking about studying it at a higher education level, but still unsure.
Anyone who doesn't necessarily want to become a pro but wants to know what's going on behind the scenes in museums and other heritage institutions.

But this stuff sounds complicated... how are you going to teach me this?

In this occasion,
We are going to play a game.
We are going to draw.
We are going to roleplay.

I will teach you the basic concepts around the ten agents of deterioration as used in museums all over the world so that you may look at your collections and see what you can do with your available time and money.

We will roleplay as secret agents and supervillains in a Bond-inspired game as you learn to apply museum knowledge on preventive conservation and create tailored preservation measures for your own home collections. Fake accents will be encouraged.

This is just the beginning...

I intend to run more and more conservation courses and conversations as we slowly get this information out there. There is no reason why conservation should be secret, unknown, mysterious.

Conservation is where science, art, history and human practices merge onto material culture. I want to share this with you.

Will you partake?

I will partake!
I can't partake right now, but I will follow you on Twitter and find out more about what you do!

What is conservation?

Angelica Isa — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Thoughts on the definitions of conservation

“…the approach to conservation can never be generalised, and is very dependent on the aims of the particular museum and curator.”
(Oddy 1992: 12)

The definition of heritage conservation is an elusive one, particularly because of the varied nature of the work carried out on the thousands of types of objects chosen for conservation by the hundreds of conservators in the dozens of countries around the world. Actions taken depend on the myriad of objectives that the conservator-restorer may be looking to accomplish based not only on the object itself but also on the owner’s wishes and the societal demands on each particular object’s functionality. Thus, the definition of conservation should, for the sake of accuracy, take into account the different aims, objectives and purposes of all involved players: the object, the conservator-restorer, the archaeologist/curator/owner, and society as a whole. The difficulty in arriving at a general definition thus becomes obvious. Moreover, if, as Andrew Oddy states, “the approach to conservation can never be generalised,” (Oddy 1992: 12), how could we even attempt to arrive at a generalised definition? This essay divides the definitions of conservation into three main types: object-centred definitions, anthropocentric definitions, and mixed object-societal definitions. For brevity, this essay does not include preventive conservation, but only interventive conservation.

Object-centred definitions

Many descriptions and generalised statements about the aims of conservation focus on the importance of the objects themselves. As a main objective, deterioration must be stopped or slowed (Pye 2001:24). Objects and their significance (aesthetic, symbolic, religious, etc.) must be safeguarded into the future (Pye 2001: 25). “Conservation is the ensemble of means that, in carrying out an intervention on an object of its environment, seek to prolong its existence as long as possible” (Berducou 1996: 250). Thus, “Conservation supposes an awareness of the materiality of the objects in which we are interested, and of the twofold consequence of that materiality: their irreplaceable nature and their physical vulnerability to the test of time” (Berducou 1996: 250). These descriptions emphasize the importance of a material’s composition/lifespan and, by extension, focus on the conservator’s capacity (whether now or in the past) to understand each material and act upon it accordingly with appropriate conservation skills and techniques (Pye 2001:34). These could be considered “technical” definitions of conservation interested in the survival of material in the face of time and decay.

Anthropocentric definitions

Anthropocentric definitions, on the other hand, focus on the fact that objects are meant to be conserved because of the sole value of their existence in a human context; because of the fact that somebody, somewhere, sometime made them and thus turned a series of materials from something natural to something man-made. Here come all those descriptions that regard conservation as the guardian of cultural heritage, material history, and human ingenuity/knowledge (Pye 2001: 24; Cronyn 1990: 13; Berducou 1996: 250, 255; AIC website, ICON website, IIC website). This particular focus on the conservation profession chooses to highlight the conservator’s social responsibility (and interestingly enough, by extension, his or her necessity to be highly trained by or associated to a specific set of institutions). In this case, conservation is not so much about the objects themselves – which preserved cryogenically mean absolutely nothing to us (Caple 2000: 32) – but about the information and feelings they might hold for us regarding our historic past as human groups.

These society-focused definitions of the profession will use language such as “save our treasures for generations to come” (AIC website) and talk about conservation’s “essential contribution to the whole of society, to education, to the advancement of knowledge, to tourism and to the economy” (ICON website) in a natural attempt to justify the existence of the field. Consequently, conservation is presented as a human need, and the definition will not dwell on handling and treatment of objects as much as the symbolic importance of their maintenance. This will also extend to conversations about access - how conservation may act as a guard which either forbids or allows access of other individuals or groups to the objects themselves.

A more holistic approach to definitions of conservation includes in the general definitions both the ideas of cultural heritage and the material object itself (ICOM-CC website, Caple 2000: 33-36). Caple describes conservation as a three-pronged activity consisting of Revealing, Investigating, and Preserving (RIP) each object (Caple 2000: 34) with each individual case having its own, particular mixture of each of these activities. While the RIP triangle itself may be technically-inclined, referring to specific procedures in conservation, the overall purpose of it is to show diagrammatically the existence of a balanced approach including both the academic understanding and physical maintenance of the objects involved.

Similarly, The National Trust Manual of Housekeeping uses the following:

“Conservation is defined as the careful management of change. It's about revealing and sharing the significance of places and ensuring that their special qualities are protected, enhanced, understood and enjoyed by present and future generations.”
(Sandwith & Stainton, 2011)

This definition bridges the gap between the physicality of the object and its function in society. There is certainly no need for object-centred and anthropocentric definitions to be mutually exclusive unless one specifically desires so.

But why the divide?

The origins of conservation as the profession known today can be traced back as far as one wishes depending on what kind of focus we give it. We can talk about the very ancient techniques to conserve food by salting or drying, even include the processes of Egyptian mumification. We can skip those for being a bit tangential and start at the housekeeping manuals of the 17th and 18th centuries explaining how to clean and protect home items from the various agents of deterioration:

"... have speciall care and regard to p'serve the same from all manner of wett, mothe and other hurt or spoyle thereofe and to leave them to preserved to contynewe at the sayed several houses..."
Elizabeth, countess of Shrewsbury in her will of 1601 *(Sandwith & Stainton, 2011)

We can jump forward to personages such as John Ruskin (mid 19th c.), William Morris (late 19th) and Cesare Brandi (early 20th) who more specifically advocated for the protection of ancient objects and monuments.

Conservation has proven to be an evolving process. When Morris and Brandi wrote, they reacted to destructive "restorations" which did away with many original materials as they searched to renew the aesthetics of monuments or objects. They sowed the seeds for a profession which strove to protect the material aspect of our histories, thus setting the initial focus on the object itself.

During the 1930s and 40s, it was still considered somewhat acceptable to re-build archaeological monuments or objects based on expectations and knowledge at the time. (For example, the restoration of the Palace of Knossos, in Crete or the Inca Acllawasi in Pachacamac, Peru, or the arm of the sculpture of the Laocöon in the Vatican.) Many of these interventions could be impossible to reverse. Furthermore, as exciting, modern adhesives and fillers were invented, during the 50s and 60s, many of them were used on objects without much knowledge on how the added materials would age. Ancient metals were stripped of their corrosion by electrolytic means or acid dips in attempts to see the base metal beneath - to "discover" the "original". Some had no base metal left at all and thus were completely lost and dissolved.

When the 70s and 80s rolled around, it suddenly became noticeable that many old restorations were ageing extremely badly - some potentially even causing more damage than if the object had been left alone. Thus, the history of conservation begins with a concern for the preservation of the original materiality of the object and travels through a sudden realisation regarding the way the objects were reacting to our direct interventions. Ironically, our attempts to save had actually destroyed.

Once we became painfully aware that the objects were not just simply taking and accepting restoring interventions without becoming increasingly complicated, damaged and even losing authenticity, we began to explicitly talk about minimising interventions. We started to worry that our tinkering was, in fact, not only failing to chemically or physically stabilise, but was actively harming and taking away from the "meaning" of the object. And if we believe that objects have modern social identities, then an object-centred approach could be considered inaccurate - which period of time should that object represent? The time when it was made or the time when we are looking at it? Conservation stops being about preserving the material for the sake of an 'unbiased' history, but must take into account the current social value, function and purpose of the object in the context of what society deems important. This particular discussion could be the focus of a complete book, so I will leave it at that for now.

Final thoughts

How is it possible to have a short, straight-forward sentence which will, in a few words, describe what Caple has condensed into “three almost opposing aims” (Caple 2000:33)? (Reveal, Investigate, Preserve). In short, I'm not sure it is fully possible. Conservation must therefore be a case-by-case negotiation of possible treatments regarding the health of material objects based on societal desires or pressures, and it is the job of the professional conservator not only to worry about the materiality of an object, but to reconcile our demands with an object’s capacity to fulfil them.

If you'd like to continue this conversation, follow me on Twitter where I'll be happy to talk about it some more.

Bibliography

AIC. (2012). Available: http://www.conservation-us.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=471. Last accessed 19th Oct 2012.

Berducou, Marie. (1996). Introduction to Archaeological Conservation. In: Price, N.S.; Talley Jr., M.K.; Melucco Vaccaro, A. Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage. Washington: The Getty Conservation Institute. 248-259

Caple, C (2000). Conservation Skills: Judgement, Method and Decision Making. Oxon: Routledge.

Cronyn, J.M. (1990). The Elements of Archaeological Conservation. London: Routledge.

ICOM-CC. (2012). Terminology to characterize the conservation of tangible cultural heritage. Available: http://www.icom-cc.org/242/about-icom-cc/what-is-conservation/. Last accessed 19th Oct 2012

ICON. (2012). Available: http://www.icon.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=2. Last accessed 19th Oct 2012.

IIC. (2012). Available: http://www.iiconservation.org/about. Last accessed 19th Oct 2012.

Oddy, A (1992). The Art of the Conservator. London: British Museum Press.

Pye, E. (2001). Conservation examined. In: Caring for the past: Issues in conservation for archaeology and museums. London: James & James (Science Publishers) Ltd.

Sandwith, H. and Stainton, S. (2011). The National Trust manual of housekeeping. 4th ed. London: National Trust, p.35.

Thoughts on objects from dubious provenance

Angelica Isa — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Surveillance camera. Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash.

Much like a medical doctor, a conservator should not cause harm. It is a conservator's job to care for the different aspects of material culture, thinking not only about the physical nature of objects, but also about their context and meaning within human society in the past, the present and the future. Conservators are not detached observers/agents but may actively affect the interpretation of objects through their work.

What happens when a conservation treatment can lend legitimacy to an object of dubious provenance?

There are two opposing views which we can present here:

1

Stolen objects have no contextual value. We must not intervene them.

Here are some of the views that could be expressed to explain why some might believe that stolen objects or those with dubious provenance must not be intervened:

An object is worthless without context. Why waste scarce resources on it? If it was stolen and has no contextual information, then its value is limited to its aesthetic appearance.
Stolen objects hurt international relations. Here come in all the international debates on the return of looted cultural material or objects taken during colonialist undertakings.
Stolen objects fund dangerous associations (e.g. terrorism, drug trade, etc.). This idea posits that violent individuals will loot cultural heritage and sell it on the black market in order to fund questionable projects.
Conservation of objects of dubious provenance encourages buyers to keep acquiring stolen objects. A conserved object derives some legitimacy by having been accepted and treated by a professional. Conservation can unintentionally "white-wash" an illegally-obtained object.
The internationalist position of object trading encourages economically depressed locals to loot their own heritage for small cash revenues.
We would rather lose ‘information’ – which is cold and nonhuman – than to foster inequality and painful human experiences. The ‘past’ is not more important than the people in the present.
Conservation organisations encourage us to stick to the law and question the provenance of the items we treat.
Valuable information associated to the object's procurement could be removed by cleaning.
Legal implications – conservators could get prosecuted for aiding in the trade of cultural heritage objects.
There could be undesirable consequences from lack of information. Looters many times use chemicals to 'treat' objects to make them look older or to make them conform to a certain type of object they wish to sell. Carrying out chemical interventions on tampered objects could result in unexpected reactions with unknown added substances and ruin the object.

2

We must do everything to save our material culture

In spite of the above points, there are also some other views that refute the idea that all objects from unknown provenances should be shunned:

The classic: "If I don't do this properly myself, someone else will do I don't even know what and make it worse. The object will be in danger."
Conservation encourages research into the object before intervention. This can help educate the owner regarding the object they have bought or obtained.
There will always be a market for illicit objects. Will we sacrifice them all?
It's not the object’s "fault" it was stolen – it still needs and deserves treatment.
I could treat the object and notify the authorities. Preferably not in that order.
Conservation and study gives an object a record. This will make it more difficult for it to move in hidden circles. (Note that this can also legitimise a stolen object.)
Conservation treatments can reveal fakes. Sometimes, the object is not authentic. It has been fabricated. Conservation research will show technical-historical inconsistencies.
Who owns the object in the first place? How could a conservator find out or know? Who is the conservator to determine ownership?
Conservation is better than nothing.

Discussion

How do we even decide what counts as an object from "dubious provenance"? Objects could have been picked up, taken during conflicts, looted, sold legally to unwary buyers, picked up by legally contracted treasure hunters from shipwrecks in international waters, etc.

Exploring the J. J. AUDUBON shipwreck. Who owns underwater material heritage? Photo by NOAA on Unsplash.

When it comes to objects from shipwrecks, ownership is extremely fuzzy. For example: A sunken Spanish galleon from the 17th century that was taking essentially looted silver from what is now Peru and sank in what are currently Colombian waters by a British pirate ship. As far as I understand international naval war rules, the ship technically belongs to the victor - the one who sank it. So in cases like this, who are the real owners of the treasures? Spain, Peru, Colombia, UK, the private company hired to find the galleon, the government that paid for the company to find the galleon? etc., etc. Find out more about the intricacies of shipwreck ownership here.

Whether we like it or not, a conservation treatment has the power to validate an object in some way or another. The very fact that an object has gone through a professional, been studied, treated, photographed and registered on a database will remove a shade of illegality from it. How could it be illegal? It's all written down here. At the very least, the person who paid for the treatment can now claim that they have invested in the object and therefore it justifies ownership.

Another interesting aspect is that notions of identity can change through time. People may be comfortable/uncomfortable selling/not selling their cultural property at different periods in time. This is not to excuse the selling of cultural heritage during the 19th and early 20th century - certainly there are issues of power involved. However, if our ancestors didn't care and sold something legally to get money for it, can we assume they were wrong/mistaken/coerced and demand those objects back?

As time goes by, objects change identities and meaning through our perceptions of them. They are only important in cultural contexts. Humans made them. Humans decide what they mean to us.

Ultimately, there is a difference between personal ethics and actual law. Eventually, a series of laws arise which broadly represent the majority view on how complicated issues such as these should be dealt with. There will be a range of views regarding stolen objects, but it must be recognised that a consensus emerges that we all end up respecting. The ‘norm’ established at the moment is that objects with no clear provenance should not be worked on. Doing so might infringe the ethics codes of several conservation bodies and may even lead to possible prosecution. However, the main reason is that conservation gives more value and validates objects. Perhaps we must accept the fact that some objects have to be ‘let go’. Maybe not everything can be saved?

What do you think?

I hope you found this article thought-provoking. If you feel like it, do send me a message on Twitter and we can continue the conversation there!

Field Conservation: Account of an Archaeological Dig Volunteer

Angelica Isa — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Image of me by Photographer Tal Gluck

The Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon

Logo for the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon.

In 2016, I was lucky to participate as an archaeological dig volunteer for the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon in Israel. It was the last year of this project that began in 1985.

View of the Mediterranean beach in Ashkelon.

Superficial cleaning of mosaics. Before cleaning.

Superficial cleaning of mosaics. After cleaning.

The philistine cemetery at Ashkelon

Between 2013-2016, the project excavated an Iron Age IIA cemetery next to the old city of Ashkelon.

In total, more than 200 individuals were found buried in simple pits, constructed tombs and cremation jars. It was the first time that a typical philistine adult cemetery from the Iron Age had been excavated and has since become a basis for comparison for other sites.

In 2019, the results of the DNA tests on the individuals were finally published in this article, making a splash around the world as it revealed evidence of the possible origins of this cultural group.

If you would like more information about the excavations at Tel Ashkelon, here is the official website for the project, which includes a blog that was updated continuously until the project ended in 2016.

Tel Shimron Excavations

Logo for Tel Shimron Excavations.

When the excavations at Ashkelon were closed in 2016, the team led by a collaboration between Wheaton College (USA) and the University of Tel Aviv decided to move to the north of Israel to excavate a site known as Tel Shimron, about 20mins away from Nazareth.

Tel Shimron is a place of great importance mentioned in the Bible and other ancient sources (such as Egyptian texts). In spite of having been superficially surveyed, it had never before been excavated.

At Tel Shimron, I have been able to participate during the 2017 and 2019 digs. In 2017, we concentrated on desalinating ceramics using the White, Pool and Carrol method. I worked on a table in the field in our main working area.

Desalination process for small jar.

The same jar as above, reconstructed.

Broken bowl.

The same bowl as above, reconstructed.

In 2019, I was able to work in a space more appropriate for conservation work. That is, closed and air conditioned. Of course this was much more comfortable for me too! But the main point to be made is that it allowed work with a stereomicroscope for cleaning out coins and permitted the conservation grade adhesives to work in a more controlled environment. I also decided to change the desalination method to that one by J. Unruh.

Photo credit: Melissa Aja for Tel Shimron Excavations.

Broken jar.

The same jar as above, reconstructed.

I have also been able to help during the first few days of the season by talking with local children who come to dig with us for a few days and look at all the different technologies we use (like LIDAR and photogrammetry). They also get to check out some of the objects we have excavated in the past. I can tell you they find me just as interesting as the objects as a Peruvian, Spanish-speaking Asian woman with a chopstick in her hair.

If you would like to join the dig...

So-called "dig" seasons for these archaeological projects take place during the june-august northern hemisphere summer holidays.

Except for the late COVID-related issues, Tel Shimron Excavations still happen almost every year during the northern summer season.

The digs are mostly full of undergrad volunteers taking credit courses and learning about archaeology in the Levant.

Days run from about 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. with hard work under the (very) hot sun. It's worth it. I don't only get to work on amazing material, but we also get to do some trips to different archaeological sites and cities.

If you would like to know more about joining the excavation, here is the link to their main website.

If you'd like to ask me direct questions about the project and going on the dig, you can message me on Twitter, and I'll be happy to answer all your questions as best I can.

The famous mosaics at Zippori.

The medieval, crusader city of Akko.

Basic preventive conservation - 3 things to start you off

Angelica Isa — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

If you're not a professional conservator, and you just don't have the budget to get one, then preventive conservation is for you!

We can learn to apply various bits of useful information on basic preventive conservation. Why?

The first mothers ever learned to roll the big rock over the entrance of the cave overnight to stop the predators from coming in and eating you while you slept because they knew that prevention is better than lamentation.

In the case of museums, galleries, libraries and home collections, prevention is better than restoration.

This is why I am giving you a tiny introduction to preventive conservation. I say tiny because there are thousands of entire websites and books on the topic, but here are some basics. I will address more in future posts.

1. If you touch the object, it's not called Preventive Conservation anymore

A clear definition of preventive conservation is the following by Dr. Ziad al-Saad:

"Preventive Conservation is the mitigation of deterioration and damage to cultural property through the formulation and implementation of policies and procedures for the following: appropriate environmental conditions; handling and maintenance procedures for storage, exhibition, packing, transport, and use; integrated pest management; emergency preparedness and reponse; and reformatting/duplication. Preventive conservation is an ongoing process that continues throughout the life of cultural property and does not end with interventive treatment."

As you see, Dr. al-Saad has at no point mentioned messing with the object directly in any way.

It is important to understand that "preventive conservation" is a technical term in the field. It is not just being descriptive. I have heard some people say things like "We did preventive conservation on object x by lightly vacuuming it." This statement is not accurate, as the object is being directly cleaned. It is being directly intervened. You cannot "do" preventive conservation on an object.

But why? Isn't cleaning an object a preventive action? Won't that prevent damage?

Yes. It will. However, any action taken directly upon an object is an intervention which requires a thorough documentation process. Preventive conservation is about taking measures around the objects in order to avoid having to intervene directly.

2. Why is preventive preferable to interventive conservation?

While direct intervention will sometimes be necessary and required to stabilise decaying objects, preventive conservation has many advantages:

It is so much cheaper!! It will be much more cost effective to monitor and control the environmental conditions around a huge collection of objects to minimise deterioration than it is to conserve object by object once they have been damaged.
Preventive conservation can be more environmentally friendly as it reduces the need for chemical use.
It encourages a culture of prevention rather than reaction to damage.
It can be taught to and carried out by all people who deal with collections and is not limited to trained professionals.
It encourages the scientific investigation of dynamics of deterioration and material science.
It is much more efficient on a time-per-object basis and resources used.

3. The 10 (or 9) agents of deterioration

One of the easiest and most basic ways to start learning about preventive conservation is using the 10 (or 9) agents of deterioration. They were first published in 1994 by Charlie Costain and were further worked on by Stephen Michalski, C.L. Rose, C.A. Hawks y Robert Waller. Here we go:

1

Physical forces - As in "Oops, I dropped that." or "Oops, that tourist plonked his backpack on it." or "EARTHQUAAAAKE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!"

The title of the video says it all.

2

Thieves and vandals - See bastards, sometimes also terrorists. Lately though, and much more contentious, politically-driven groups or individuals.

The Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan - destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Image by Fars News Agency, CC BY 4.0

3

Fire - See Notre Dame, National Museum of Brazil, Glasgow School of Art.

Fire in Notre Dame Cathedral in 2019. Photo by Wandrille de Préville - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

4

Water - Like in Flashdance, damage by the bucketful, or like in Titanic, by walls of moving water.

The Old White Horse Brasserie, Old Main Street, Bingley, UK in 2015. Photo by Chris Gallagher on Unsplash.

5

Pests - Like in the Bible. Cockroaches will eat anything and can cause disasters in a collection. Photo by Erik Karits on Unsplash .

6

Contaminants - Air pollution, like in any city in the world these days. Sulphides and particulate pollution in the air can increase degradation in objects. Photo by Kouji Tsuru on Unsplash.

7

Light, UV and Infrared - That is, unfiltered light, like under the sun or right next to a window. Light streaming in through a window may be beautiful, but your light-sensitive objects will not appreciate it as much as you. Photo by Ian Battaglia on Unsplash.

8

Incorrect temperature - Like in Qatar for the Football World Cup in 2022. Generally speaking, for objects, the colder, the better. High temperatures will increase the speed of chemical reactions, and by extention, increase degradation. Photo by Dan LeFebvre on Unsplash.

9

Incorrect relative humidity - This is sometimes joined to point 8 as a single point called incorrect environmental conditions. Being able to monitor Relative Humidity is essential to make sure you neither dry up your objects nor let them mould over. Photo by Kaffeebart on Unsplash.

10

Dissociation - This means the loss of the information that goes with the object. A loss of information causes loss of meaning and academic/social value. In other words, that little card with the object info that went in the box got lost, or Mr. Jones, who used to be the only one who knew anything about the object left or died and told no one, or the rats ate all the registration archives, or the fire burnt down the office, or your server got hacked. So the object itself is there and undamaged, but we suddenly know nothing about it anymore. It may seem old-fashioned, but always having a paper copy of your digital files might save you from software meltdown. Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash.

Since each agent is a whole book in itself, I will make little posts on each, but I just wanted to present them here as a list so you may have them in mind. These are the agents that a preventive conservation programme is trying to hinder and manage.

If you liked this post, you can follow me on Twitter where I'll be posting more information on the preventive conservation and how to take care of your objects.

Alternately, if you'd like to take a five-week interactive course, take a look at The Home Collection Game course here where I take you through all agents in detail and we learn to apply preventive measures through play.

Bibliography (in English and Spanish)

AECID. Conservación preventiva para todos. Una guía ilustrada. PDF here

Caple, C. 2011. Preventive conservation in museums. 1st ed. London: Routledge. PDF here

Costain, C. 1994. Framework for preservation of museum collections. Canadian Conservation Institute Newsletter 14:1-4.

IBERMUSEOS. 1999. Conservación preventiva. PDF

Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España. Plan nacional y fundamentos de conservación preventiva. PDF y PDF2

Michalski, S. 1994a. A systematic approach to preservation: description and integration with other museum activities. Pp. 8-11 in Preprints of the Ottawa Congress, 12-16 September 1994. Preventive Conservation, Theory and Research. (A. Roy and P. Smith, eds.). International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, London. 244 pp.

Rose, C.L. y C.A. Hawks. 1995. A preventive conservation approach to the storage of collections. Pp. 1-20 in Storage of Natural History Collections: A Preventive Conservation Approach. (C.L. Rose, C.A. Hawks, and H.H. Genoways, eds.). Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections. x + 448 pp.

Simmons, John E., y Yaneth Muñoz Saba. 2003. The theoretical bases of collections management.

Waller, R. R. 1995. Risk management applied to preventive conservation. Pp. 21-27 in Storage of Natural History Collections: A Preventive Conservation Approach. (C.L. Rose, C.A. Hawks, and H.H. Genoways, eds.). Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections. x + 448 pp.

Integrated Pest Management - Fumigations and pesticides

Angelica Isa — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Photo by Randy McEoin on Flickr.

Insects? Why are we talking about insects?

Pests and insects are a well-known topic in conservation. I am sure you will know from personal experience that there are certain insects which can wreak havoc at home - in the wooden furniture, our clothes, our books, our kitchens.

Has it ever happened to you that some ingrate moth has left a hole in that one shirt you had at the back of the closet saved up for special events and which is the only shirt that goes with the rest of the special outfit with the special shoes and the special bag that you save for special events when Zoom is not an option and you just have to show up? Maybe that's just me.

What about the gross little weevils that show up in your rice? You know how they say that the only thing worse than a worm in your food is half a worm in your food.

The point I'm trying to make is that insects will not just eat things in your home, but also in museum collections, galleries and archives.

A friend told me once that something ate seven books in her library. I myself had to throw out a bamboo steamer because of a termite infestation. It's my main excuse for discarding the steamed vegetable diet I intended to pursue.

The thing is, in my opinion, these insects eat away my happiness - and we can't just go fumigating all our spaces once a month because we don't also want to die from excess toxic chemicals. Moreover, collections don't like fumigations either and sometimes discolour or increase deterioration rates after contact with fumigants. Let's not even mention that some fumigants cause damage to local fauna (like bees) and that, just like with antibiotics if you over-fumigate and you don't manage to kill 100% of the bugs, they will come back stronger and more resistant.

Warnings about the fumigant ghosts of the past

There are some important warnings to be made.

Remember that many objects have been treated in the remote and not-so-remote past with toxic fumigants and biocides.

Yes, I'm Johnny. How could you tell my mum used to fumigate in the museum?

Remember that although many chemicals and fumigants today are designed to be non-harmful to humans, this was not always the case. Barely 30-40 years ago, we used very toxic, carcinogenic, teratogenic things. (Teratogenic means that if you are pregnant, your child might come out like a cubist Picasso portrait - with 6 arms, their mouth inside a half-eye, their ear on top of their nose and a hairy tail on one of their 3 feet. Do be careful.)

Be especially mindful of organic objects that have been in your collection or home for a long time. You just don't know what they might have had added to them.

Be extremely careful with taxidermy items. Most, if not all, will have remnants of arsenic and mercury. Remember that many of these horrible susbstances can be absorbed through the skin and will build up in your body.

If you are around objects like wood, textiles and dried botanical specimens, many of them might have been mandatorily fumigated in proper Ford-style production line mode. This is just how things used to be protected from insects in the past.

Beware of "white powders" on materials. Not everything that looks like salt is just table salt! (Sometimes it is, but do you want to find out the bad way?)

Don't go poking your nose on objects like a hound. If you feel you sense a particular fumigant-y smell (It's hard to describe. You come to recognise it with experience.), put on an organic vapour mask. Avoid being in closed rooms with such objects. Make sure you are in a well-ventilated space.

Be careful because your sense of smell might get flooded and stop recognising a smell. Your head, however, will know and will start hurting if the vapours in the area are causing you harm.

Even naphthalene (main ingredient in traditional moth balls) which were so common in our grandparents closets and wardrobes now seems to be a proven carcinogenic with some governments setting occupational hazard exposure limits to it. See this entry for naphthalene poisoning. I warn you. It's not pretty.

If you still know people who "smell like mothballs," you might be doing them a kindness if you let them know they're a walking cancer dispenser. Be nice about it, though.

This might be overkill, but not always! Photo by CDC on Unsplash.

Most of the time, there will be no documentation on past treatments with toxic substances, so it's best to be on the safe side and put on your PPE.

Remember that just because "I've never used PPE for this and nothing happened" doesn't mean nothing happened. Internal body damage by chemicals is cumulative. You may not feel anything is going on now, but if you keep doing it, maybe that cancer you get 10 years from now is being born through your actions today.

BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY

If you would like to know more about insects and pest damage for collections, you can follow me on Twitter where I'll be posting more content on how to protect your objects at home.

Marble Statuary Conservation: Technical and Ethical Issues

Angelica Isa — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Mount Takao, Takaomachi, Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan. Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash.

Contents

Introduction
Cleaning
- Sources of dirt and staining
- Cleaning methods
Physical stabilisation
Consolidating
Painted Sculpture
Infilling
Ethical Issues
- Authenticity and historical "accuracy"
- Location and identity
Conclusions
Bibliography

Introduction

Unlike metal statuary, marble is a porous material made up of mineral grains and salts. This particular characteristic makes stone inherently susceptible to certain forms of decay which do not affect their metal counterparts. What do we worry about with marble conservation?

Physical weathering, acidic rain, and damage through salt movements in the stone matrix can easily turn the once solid marble into a friable, flaky and relatively fragile material susceptible to any kind of handling and stress.

I will broadly go over the main problems and techniques that have been used in the past to arrest the decay of marble by separating them into three main topics: Cleaning, physical stabilisation, and consolidating with a small mention of infilling and care for painted sculptures. Certain ethical issues regarding the restoration of marble statuary will be briefly addressed.

Cleaning

Sources of dirt and staining

We can divide sources of dirt and staining of marble statuary in two:

organic
inorganic

Because many marble statuary (e.g. gravestones) is found outdoors, it is possible to find “a veritable ecosystem was evident: traces of plant life as well as of insect and bird populations… on upper surfaces, undercuts, narrow crevices, and even between the individual grains of marble” (Brody 2010:32).

This is of particular concern not only because of the un-aesthetic appearance of active microbial presence, but because these organisms damage by pitting, staining and decolouration through chemical dissolution and precipitation of harmful substances (e.g. oxalates) as they go through their life cycles (Berry 2005:880).

Additionally, the sole presence of algae, for example, promotes frost weathering by retaining water (Young 1995:82). This ever-presence of water and chemical by-products will create mostly green or black stains, and, although rare, red, brownish purple, orange and yellow stains are also possible (Grissom 200:17).

Tombstone in Cassadaga, NY, USA. Algae, fungi, mould and bacteria living on outdoor stone. Photo by Michael Williams on Unsplash.

According to Grissom, it is possible to determine the biological origin of a stain if it decolourises following an application of a cotton poultice of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) (Grissom 2010:17). An inorganic lead stain, on the other hand, would not react.

One of the main problems with ‘dirty’ marble by inorganic sources is the black crust of gypsum (CaSO4.2H20 – hydrated calcium sulphate) caused by air pollutants, in particular sulphur dioxide (which forms weak sulphuric acid on the surface) and carbonaceous particles reacting with the calcium carbonate (calcite) of the marble itself (Atlas et al. 1988:149; McGee 1991:38). You can see it in the main picture at the top of this article.

These crusts – which can become quite thick in buildings – are capable of disaggregating the marble underneath it by having its gypsum crystals growing between the calcite grains (McGee 1991:38). They are also partially soluble (Caple 2013), which means they help the stone eventually dissolve away.

On the other hand, crusts and dirt can “become intractable when it is deposited on weathered surfaces” which can cause “the microscopic fissuring of the surface by etching along grain boundaries” (Miller 1992:128). Thus, dirt layers not only affect the aesthetic look of marble statuary, but they are also capable of actively (albeit slowly) breaking the stone apart.

Studies on marble statuary around the world (Miller 1992; Grissom 2010; Thorn 2005) have identified the inorganic culprits of staining as mostly iron and lead. Iron is apparently inherently present in marble after having been part of its formation (Thorn 2005:888), and its ions can be “leached to the surface through regular wetting and drying effected by rain or aqueous cleaning” (Thorn 2005:888). There, it would be oxidised and produce an irreversible discoloration “varying from yellow to reddish-brown” which could only be removed through very aggressive and damaging techniques (Miller 1992:128-129).

Similarly, although lead does not tend to be inherently found in marble, its nearby presence in buildings (e.g. “roofing, gutters, fountain-basin liners, and plumbing or for spacers, cushions, fillers, or waterproofing membranes placed between marble blocks” (Grissom 2010:11)) together with its possible sourcing from “alkaline mortar, acidic water, atmospheric agents, microorganisms, and possibly bacteria” (Grissom 2010:11) has also led to it being pointed out as the other main source of marble staining.

Lead staining on the corner of a column. Notice it follows the path of running water. Taken from Grissom, 2010:12.

In both of these cases, it is the movement of water which takes the blame for the appearance of iron and lead stains. In the case of iron, the ions would not be leached out of the core of the stone if it were not for evaporating water; and in the case of lead, water dissolves lead and carries it from the source onto the marble, where it stains as it distributes lead ions and compounds (Grissom 2010:18).

The situation is made even worse by the fact that marble has fine pores that retain moisture (Grissom 2010:18). All it would take, in this case, would be to eliminate or reduce the presence of moisture in order to arrest the development of metal-ion staining (Grissom 2010:18).

Cleaning methods

Before mentioning the traditional cleaning methods of removing crusts mechanically or with machines, it is important to note that although there has been limited research about it (Hempel 1978, Kouzeli 1992, Gauri et al. 1992, Atlas et al. 1998), there is a possibility to use organic means for cleaning off microorganisms.

Atlas and colleagues suggested that sulphate-reducing bacterium Desulfovibrio desulfuricans can clean crusted marble monuments and even regenerate calcite (Atlas et al. 1988:149) while they replace sulphate-containing compounds with chloride salts (Atlas et al. 1988:149). The only issue was that “calcite did not form on samples where large gypsum single crystals had smooth faces preventing the bacteria from attaching to the substrate” (Atlas et al. 1988:152).

Marble monument treated with Desulfovibrio desulfuricans. The white streaks of calcite formation show the flow of the application. The clean marble is seen underneath. (Atlas et al. 1988:152)

Ideally, it would be a good thing to follow the above examples of studying the nature of dirt and make its chemistry work with the conservation treatments rather than attempt to harshly remove it by any means (Price 1996:15).

I could now give you two really intense tables of both chemical and non-chemical cleaning methods, but it's probably overkill. I am happy to provide them upon request.

Suffice it to say that marble has been cleaned with air abrasives, ultrasonic dental de-scaling tools, lasers, steam, and even scalpels and precision-grinding micro units.

Chemical methods have included poultices, biocides, polymer sollutions and various acids, soaps and petroleum based solvents.

Physical stabilisation

Because marble sculptures need to support their own weight, it is important that they are physically stable. Thus, since the moment they were made, pins, clamps and dowels were used of all sorts of materials such as iron, copper, brass, and tin- or copper-plated iron in order to hold sculptures together. In some cases, artists even added sealed armatures with melted lead to improve structural strength (Bourgeois 2003:152-153).

Sketch of the Hermes of Olympia showing metal rods from an old restoration (Hatziandreou 1981:26)

Whether original or leftovers from past restorations (Brody 2010:33), iron pins and lead insertions can be serious sources for staining and stress. Furthermore, copper dowels and Plaster of Paris used in the past (Miller 1992:132) can also corrode, stain, and provide inadequate support. Consequently, their removal and replacement must be carefully considered.

There are “physical risks to the statue that might result from their removal” that must be weighed against the “historical significance and structural advantages of retaining them” (Brody 2010:33).

Invasive treatments that would entirely disassemble parts of a sculpture in order to replace or remove such restorations should only really be undertaken “when the condition of an object is critically unsound” (Brody 2010:38).

Modern materials to replace iron and lead rods include steel dowels filled with polyester and sand mixes (Miller 1992:130), cores of aerated concrete for load-bearing (Miller 1992:132), “wood crutches based on orthopaedic models” for display purposes (Brody 2010:37) and copper cramps embedded in a mixture of polyester mastic (Sintolit) and titanium white pigment mixed with chippings of white silica (Larson 198:24).

Consolidating

In time, as stone weakens due to natural decay, the original cement which holds the rock together moves towards the surface of the rock to form crusts and leaves the area directly beneath it structurally vulnerable. As the crusts fall off, these weak layers become exposed, and it becomes necessary to attempt to consolidate them in place to avoid further flaking and spalling.

Diagram showing the decay of stone (Caple 2013)

Apart from natural decay through time due to cement migration, marble will react to the environment around it. Changes in humidity and temperature will mobilise any present salts which can cause powdering and flaking (Bradley 1986:57; Drdácky 2012:32). Similarly, sea-spray salt crystals can cause weathering on the surface (Meierding 1993:575).

Cycles of freeze-thaw action will increase the porosity and median pore radii in marble (Bello et al. 1992:199; Berry 2005:880).

Pollution can cause loss of high polish, and a gradual growth of an opaque layer of calcium sulphate which flakes off (Hempel 1968:34) and reveals fresh, vulnerable surface.

Rain will dissolve gypsum and limestone in marble (Berry 2005:880). Additionally, not only is stone being attacked, but it may be weathered preferentially and give rise to distortions and bends than may affect its capacity to remain standing (McGee 1991:37; Bello et al. 1992:193) – a serious problem in the case of areas with seismic activity (Bello et al. 1992:193).

Finally, it must not be forgotten that the natural environment is not the only source of danger. People may easily scratch, damage, chip and vandalise stone (Miller 1992:127). It is then obvious that consolidation for protection can be essential.

At first, the emphasis had been on developing protective coatings, but conservators have since moved on to look for treatments that impregnate the stone and strengthen the binding of their grains (Nandiwada 1996:261). I can provide a detailed table of surface coating treatments upon request.

According to Gauri, impregnated polymers are intended to work through either one of two methods: 1) organic solvents polymerise within the stone and protect its particles from atmospheric pollutants while binding them together; 2) inorganic solutions change the chemistry of the stone to make it more resistant to exposure. “To serve its purpose ideally a preservative should be capable of certain performances such as: its deep penetration in the stone, chemical resistance to exposure, good adhesion with the pore wall, and a partial closure of the pores” (Gauri 1973:25).

In reality, however, “the degree of absorption of a product on the marble can change with the degree of degradation” and the environment around it (Bello et al. 1992:199).

Moreover, Casadio points out that “D. Honeyborne reported "as long ago as 1932" that "a common cause of failure of stone preservatives is that, even in porous materials, and under the most favorable conditions, the preservative penetrates only to a relatively small depth, and a surface skin is formed which differs in physical properties from the underlying material"” (Casadio 2004:4).

Penetration can depend on “porosimetric features of the stone material,” “specific surface,” “wettability,” “superficial polarity of the stone substrate,” “properties of the polymer solution,” “mode of application (poultice, brush, spray, impregnation by total immersion, vaccum),” and “microclimactic conditions of curing” (Casadio 2004:4).

It seems that “concentration of polymers inside stone materials is highly dependent on stone type but is always very low, ranging from a few grams to a maximum of approximately 500 g per square meter” (Casadio 2004:7). Thus the above variables should be taken into account when choosing an appropriate treatment. If you would like to see a table on various impregnation treatments, let me know and I will be happy to send it.

Generally speaking, there are so many choices, that choosing a consolidation method must not be taken lightly. The appropriate method must be chosen depending on the type of stone, its porosity, its eventual purpose (display, storage, outdoors, indoors), and the solution’s characteristics regarding flow, curing time, adhesive properties, durability, water repellence, elasticity (to allow expansion and contraction of the stone substrate), resistance to biological attack, acceptance of reapplication and of course, its aesthetic quality (Gauri 1973:31; Nandiwada 1996:262-263).

Of course, sometimes, it may just be easier to wrap up the sculpture to protect it from the inclemency of the weather. Statues may be close-wrapped with insulated water vapour permeable covers to protect from freeze-thaw cycles and changing humidity levels (although the stable levels will be high). If the surface is vulnerable, statues can be surrounded by framed structures so that there is no close physical contact between the wrapper and the stone surface. In these cases, “the aesthetic appearance of the covers, their initial and maintenance costs, and summer storage also need to be considered” (Berry 2005:885-886).

Taken from Berry 2005:880. Read the study here.

Painted Sculpture

Apart from the Greeks (Collins 1995:10), ‘modern’ artists that painted their stone sculpture include John Gibson (1790-1866), Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), Paul Gaugin (1848-1903), Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915), and Eric Gill (1882-1942). Similarly, “the use of coloured marbles to decorate chapels is a well-known phenomenon in the architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries” (Bosman 2005:353).

Thus, cleaning must proceed carefully because unexpected and unusual pigments may suddenly appear (Wallert 1995), and they may react unfavourably to some cleaning solutions (Thorn 2005:892). Where there are layers of paint, “a basic decision must be made at the start on which layers are to be removed and which are to remain” (Finn 1990:216).

Acrylic paints, dry pigments, watercolours and even oil paints bled from excess oil can be used (Miller 1992:134; Dinsmore 1987:28; Finn 1990:218) – these can also be used to disguise difficult-to-remove lead staining (Grissom 2010:17-18).

Care must be taken when choosing colours because soiling patterns, fading and reflected light can alter the way a colour looks (Finn 1990:218). Furthermore, the conservator must be aware of costs, durability, visual differences and environmental duress when choosing pigments/paints. Original remains of paint should be consolidated before treatment to prevent loss and being aware of possible darkening or discolourations (Finn 1990:217). Laser-cleaning can be carried out over stencils or especially prepared Perspex sheets (Cooper 1998:72).

Infilling

A big issue with restoration of marble statuary is finding the appropriate material to mould and add. To choose, the following properties must be considered (Nagy 1998:70-71):

Density – It should be close to or less than that of the original material to permit reversibility and potential faster rate of deterioration than the original stone
Water sensitivity – Absorption and drying rate should be close to that of the object and should follow the changing hues of the wet-dry cycle of the object
Colour and texture – Should be acceptable matches for camouflaged stone repairs. Pigments can be mixed in.
Refractive index – Material should be transparent (in line with marble)
Elastic and plastic behaviour – “A fill should allow expansion and contraction of the repaired stone without damaging the original material.”

Varying mixes have been used, mostly using marble powders and acrylic resins. In the past, epoxy putties or plaster of Paris were used. Original fillers from the 16th century include waxes and natural resins. Today, even paper pulp has been experimented with together with commercial products such as Polyfilla™ (Miller 1992:134; Brody 2010:38; Finn 1990:217; Nagy 1998:71,84; Lebel 1986:123-124; Domaslowski 1986:126; Larson 1986:24-25; Dinsmore 1987:28; Bourgeois 2003:151; Podany 1995:63-64; Matero 1995:64). For a detailed description of the infilling process, see Hempel 1968:38.

Ethical Issues

Authenticity and historical "accuracy"

It is difficult to talk about issues of authenticity and originality when history is full of material recycling and part of the things we see in art today are, by their very nature, very little of what they originally were. For example, in the 16th century, it was normal for wealthy patrons in Florence to bring in Roman ‘spolia’ – basically recycled antique marble quarried from some archaeological site – for the construction of their chapels and homes in a display of wealth and status (Bosman 2005:372). Such Roman marble was never meant to be encrusted around an altar with a myriad of other coloured marbles in a collage-style display of pomp. If our modern conservators and art critics had been there to watch it happen, it would have been construed as an inaccurate, ghastly, quasi-criminal putting-together of art, Wilfred Dodds-style aberration that distorted “the aesthetic poise of the [original] composition” (Brody 2010:33). However, we must consider the possibilities of accepting such ‘historical inaccuracies’ (for what is history if not duplicitous?) as information.

The arms of the Laocoön in the wrong angle, the imagined Seated Apollo Kithaodos, even the Piranesi Vase are all evidence of a tradition of treating art in the past (Rockwell 2003:84).

“Every work of sculpture given us by the past brings with it so much information on variations in taste, on developments in antiquarian knowledge, on the history of museums and collections, on the different philosophies of the beautiful and history, on different meanings in different ages, and on categories such as “original” and “authentic” (Rossi Pinelli 2003:70).

While conservators may want to be thorough in cleaning and concerned about ‘accuracy’ or the ‘artist’s original intent’, perhaps these modifications should be taken as a welcome ‘paper trail’ of human history and attitude – nevermind the legal implications of deriving provenance information for objects from dubious acquisitions (Brody 2010:36).

Brody himself has stated that “evidence of restoration, recarving, and tool marks not only is interesting to general museum visitors but also is of high value for teaching” (Brody 2010:37). It’s not just teaching about art or conservation either.

It’s a constant reminder that ‘truth’ is variable and unknown, which is a wise reminder when all we humans tend to like to find is certainty.

Location and identity

One more important ethical issue that should not be looked over with marble statuary is its conservation in the outdoors. In the case of High Crosses in Ireland and stelae in Wales, “careful public relations management will be called for in order not to alienate communities, a number of which may find themselves under pressure to allow familiar local landmarks to be taken to places of proper safekeeping and replaced with durable copies” (Fry 1996:266). From the eyes of conservation, it is essential to preserve an object that has managed (miraculously, we seem to naively believe) to stand the test of time (maybe because we’re thinking in human lifetimes and not geological time).

Perhaps the community will be alright with having a replica outside. Or perhaps, it would be appropriate to just let the sculpture lead its natural (tremendously long) life-cycle and decay. Moulds can always be taken for future reference and study (Fry 1996:270).

What if part of the importance of that monument had to do with the particular person who carved it? A perfect replica of the exact same material in the exact same spot would not make it any less pointless – it would not be the real thing, and the locals may know that better than any scholar could ever explain.

Conclusions

Considering the complications of cleaning and consolidating marble statuary and the limited results that are sometimes obtained in spite of all efforts and resources, and taking into account the ethical concerns of displacing some sculptures from their original locations and de-restoring past interventions, the best approach in many cases for marble statuary would be a preventive conservation plan. Fountains should be well taken care of to avoid leakages and buildings checked for close-by sources of lead and iron contamination (Bello et al. 1992:199). If treatment was unavoidable, it would be a good idea to choose materials that may help isolate the object from environmental aggression (Bello et al. 1992:199; Brady 1986:60).

In the case of objects already held in museums, it would be advisable to keep stone sculptures off the floor to avoid accidental chipping of corners and scrapes. Security bands and guards would also help deter visitors from carving inscriptions onto the work. A controlled environment should prevent salt efflorescence. Ideally, handling should be limited to the strictly necessary and large works should always be handled by professionals with appropriate equipment (e.g. piano trolleys).

It would be ideal, also, for institutions to keep track of the state of the surface of the object (not just in museums, but also in open, public locations) to easily detect any flaking or sudden evidence of decay and in the case of museums, to include statues in their own section of the collection’s emergency plan.

That said, marble is a very durable material, and if kept in stable, safe conditions, it should remain as it has been since it was carved for a long time to come.

If you liked this article, you can follow me on Twitter where I'll be posting more information on the conservation of various materials. I am also happy to send you the tables I left out.

Bibliography

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Bosman, L. (2005) Spolia and Coloured Marble in Sepulchral Monuments in Rome, Florence and Bosco Marengo. Designs by Dosio and Vasari. Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz,, 49 Bd. (H.3), p.353-376.

Bourgeois, B (2003) “Secure for Eternity” Assembly techniques for large statuary in the sixteenth to nineteenth century. In: Grossman, J. B., Podany, J., & True, M. (2003). History of restoration of ancient stone sculptures: papers delivered at a symposium organized by the Departments of Antiquities and Antiquities Conservation of the J. Paul Getty Museum and held at the Museum 25-27 October, 2001. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum. p.149-162.

Bradley, S.M & Hanna, S.B.(1986) The effect of soluble salt movements on the conservation of an Egyptian limestone standing figure. In: Brommelle, N. S., & Smith, P. (1986). Case studies in the conservation of stone and wall paintings: preprints of the contributions to the Bologna congress, 21-26 September 1986. London, International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. p.57-61.

Brody, L. and Snow, C. (2010) A Mystery in Marble: Examining a Portrait Statue through Science and Art. Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, Time Will Tell: Ethics and Choices in Conservation p.30-45.

Caple, C. (2000). Conservation skills: judgement, method, and decision making. London, Routledge.

Casadio, F. and Toniolo, L. (2004) Polymer Treatments for Stone Conservation: Methods for Evaluating Penetration Depth. Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, 43 (1 (Spring 2004)), p.3-21.

Collins, J. (1995) The tinted Venus and beyond: Painted stone sculpture from 1850-1930. In: Tate Gallery Conference, & Heuman, J. (1995). From marble to chocolate: the conservation of modern sculpture : Tate Gallery Conference, 18-20 September 1995. London, Archetype Publications. p.9-14.

Cooper, M. (1998) Laser Cleaning in Conservation: An Introduction. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, p.8-17, 57-72.

Dinsmore, J. (1987) Considerations of adhesion in the use of silane-based consolidants. The Conservator, 11 (1), p.26-29. Domaslowski, W & Strzelczyk, A (1986) Evaluation of applicability of epoxy resins to conservation of stone historic monuments. In: Brommelle, N. S., & Smith, P. (1986). Case studies in the conservation of stone and wall paintings: preprints of the contributions to the Bologna congress, 21-26 September 1986. London, International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. p.126-132. Drdácky, M. and Slížková, Z. (2012) Lime-Water Consolidation Effects on Poor Lime Mortars.Association for Preservation Technology International Bulletin, 43 (1 (2012)), p.31-36.

Finn, C. (1990) The cleaning of painted stone. In: Ashurst, J., & Dimes, F. G. (1990). Conservation of building and decorative stone: editors John Ashurst, Francis G. Dimes. Volume 2. London, Butterworth-Heinemann.p.214-218.

Fry, M.F; Martin, A. (1996) Defensive conservation: a phased strategy for protecting outdoor stone carvings in the north of Ireland. In: Stone Weathering And Atmospheric Pollution Network Conference, Smith, B. J., & Warke, P. A. (1996). Processes of urban stone decay: proceedings of SWAPNET '95 Stone Weathering and Atmospheric Pollution Network Conference held in Belfast, 19-20 May 1995. London, Donhead. p.266-274.

Gauri, K. et al. (1973) Reactivity of Treated and Untreated Marble Specimens in an SO2 Atmosphere.Studies in Conservation, 18 (1 (Feb 1973)), p.25-35.

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Matero, F. and Tagle, A. (1995) Cleaning, Iron Stain Removal, and Surface Repair of Architectural Marble and CrystallineLimestone: The Metropolitan Club. Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, 34 (1 (Spring 1995)), p.49-68.

Mcgee, E. (1991) Influence of Microclimate on the Deterioration of Historic Marble Buildings. Association for Preservation Technology International Bulletin, 23 (4. Historic Structures in Contemporary Atmospheres (1991)), p.37-42.

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Nagy, E. (1998) Fills for White Marble: Properties of Seven Fillers and Two Thermosetting Resins.Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, 37 (1 (Spring 1998)), p.69-87.

Nandiwada, A; Price, C.A. (1996). Retreatment of consolidated stone. In: Stone Weathering And Atmospheric Pollution Network Conference, Smith, B. J., & Warke, P. A. (1996). Processes of urban stone decay: proceedings of SWAPNET '95 Stone Weathering and Atmospheric Pollution Network Conference held in Belfast, 19-20 May 1995. London, Donhead. p.261-265

Oddy, A. (2002) The Conservation of Marble Sculptures in the British Museum before 1975. Studies in Conservation, 47 (3 (2002)), p.145-154.

Podany, J et al (1995) The use of paper pulp based fill material for compensation of losses to sculpture. In: Tate Gallery Conference, & Heuman, J. (1995). From marble to chocolate: the conservation of modern sculpture : Tate Gallery Conference, 18-20 September 1995. London, Archetype Publications. p.59-64

Price, C. (1996) Stone Conservation: An Overview of Current Research. Santa Monica: The Getty Conservation Institute.

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True Nature vs. the reversibility principle

Angelica Isa — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Montorsoli's restoration of the Laocoön's right arm was attached in an extended pose based on expectations, but when the real arm was found in excavations, it turns out it was bent at the elbow. Image source: Wikipedia.

"The conservator should endeavour only to use techniques and materials which, to the best of current knowledge, will not endanger the true nature of the object and which will not impede future treatment or the retrieval of information through scientific examination”
(Ashley-Smith, 1982:2)

The main issue in the debate between believing in an original, ‘true nature’ of an object and the reversibility principle is that if a conservator chooses a point in time for an object’s ‘original’ look and feel, all the cleaning that may occur based on this decision will effectively and irreversibly erase any evidence of any other aspects and interpretations of that object. The real question is: does it actually matter?

Definitions

Before beginning any analyses, working definitions are in order. The ‘true nature’ of an object “includes evidence of its origins, its original construction, the materials of which it is composed and information as to the technology used in its manufacture” (Caple 2000:62). The concept emphasizes the importance of the original object as a historic document, aesthetic entity and potential source of information (Caple 2000:141-143) and bases itself on a positivistic approach to knowledge where such a thing as one, single ‘truth’ is discoverable through scientific means. ‘True nature’ joins with the concepts of ‘authenticity’ and ‘integrity’ as “a measure of the wholeness and intactness of the natural and/or cultural heritage and its attributes” (Jokilehto 2009:81). This definition could lead a conservator to make the decision to irretrievably strip off many layers of later additions (whether natural or man-made) over the object in an attempt to reveal this ‘true’ meaning.

The concept of ‘reversibility’ began in the 1960s when conservators encountered the problems presented by past restoration work in the 19th and early 20th century that were difficult to remove and that caused objects more harm than good (Caple 2000:63). ‘Reversibility’ was meant to distinguish the modern, professional conservators from their ‘technician’ predecessors and emphasised the importance of not harming objects or hindering future treatments and investigations (ICON, article 9). As a concept, ‘reversibility’ displayed the interesting dichotomy of both insecurities in a profession where constant scientific discoveries can derail previous knowledge about what is ‘good’ overnight, and at the same time, the firm belief that constant scientific improvement meant that such a thing as ‘reversible’ treatments were completely possible – which in all reality, they are not (Caple 2000:64). ‘Reversibility’ implies that anything conservators do can be not just wrong, but very wrong – and that non-permanent treatments are paramount even if they mean risking the object to be subject to periodic retreatment – at its worst, 'reversibility’ almost hints at a lack of professional confidence and ability. Generally speaking, it would be more accurate to speak of ‘retreatability,’ but this is beyond the scope of this précis.

The rough location of the concepts of ‘true nature’ and ‘reversibility’ as presented in a RIP diagram of Revelation, Investigation and Preservation (Caple 2000:34). A particularly important thing to remember about the concept of ‘reversibility’ is that it is also dependent on the restorer’s skill (Ashley-Smith 1982:3).

The mythical Truth and the postmodern era

“It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture.”
(Ruskin 1996:322)

It turned out, as time went by and ideas changed or were rediscovered (Brandi 1996), that the one Truth – with a capital ‘T’ – was so elusive when it came to object biographies that it almost didn’t exist – and it had to fall from use for professional, ethical guidelines. That idea of an authoritative, historical, accurate, single past with the (very real) power to shape present thoughts and decisions was not real, and by extension – the consequences of ignoring ‘reversibility’ loomed more threatening than before. If it was true, as Viollet-le-Duc posited, that “to restore…means neither to maintain… nor to repair… nor to rebuild… [but] to reestablish… in a finished state, which may in fact never have actually existed at any given time (Viollet-le-Duc 1996:314), then conservators were running the risks of re-writing history with the stroke of a brush (Richardson 1996:191).

It became important to start retaining old restorations due to historical meaning (Oddy 1994:5; ICOMOS 1964:article 11) and because of the capacity of objects to speak as ‘objective’ witnesses to the past (Caple 2006:206). It was realised that the most stringent cleaning would not necessarily leave an object with an ‘original’ surface (as that may have already been corroded away) (Caple 2006:207-208), and that “the attempt to reestablish ‘the original state’ was purely a mythical endeavour that could never be obtained; one could only have a ‘present state of the material’” (Carbonara 1996:237). Moreover, authors like Carbonara and France-Lanord argued that since whatever the ‘original’ was could not be brought back, that objects should be given back their “figurative context” by striking a balance between looking for the historical document and finding its aesthetic identity (Carbonara 1996:240; France-Lanord 1996:245; Caple 2000:141).

Not only were the dynamics of historical continuity acknowledged on objects, but documents such as the Nara Document on Authenticity of 1994 also highlighted cultural pluralism and respect for different viewpoints in the interpretation of object ‘truths’ (Jokilehto 2009:73; UNESCO) – a recognition that not all ‘truths’ are tangible and based on the materiality of the object, and more importantly, that depending on our backgrounds, we all see or fail to see very different ‘truths’ reflected in the object (Hassard 2008:158).

The importance of object interpretations

On the one hand, it is very significant that ideas on ‘true nature’ have evolved into today’s definitions. Interpretations of an object will help determine its conservation needs (Hall 2004:69), and the actions that are taken with ‘reversibility’ concepts in mind will shape both the tangible and intangible heritage contained in each object for future generations (Hassard 2008:150). Furthermore, objects that are displayed are the result of a conscious decision by the curators and conservators and show very specific points in their history – that is, they give out a false sense of ‘completeness’ as an object becomes isolated in time instead of being clearly presented as a snapshot of a continuum (Caple 2000:94-95).

All of the aforementioned points imply that as professionals, conservators have the qualifications and power to influence public thought and knowledge – and to a great extent, this is true. This may be partly the reason why single meanings rather than a multiplicity of them per object are presented – so as not to confuse. Still, whichever way in which we choose to display objects, in this view, we have now supposedly moved on to believing that the object has had (and will continue to have) a much longer life than us and therefore has more truths in it than we can see. It is no longer conservators and curators attempting to reveal and force the one truth that they inaccurately believed the object held, but the other way around. It is the object revealing its own truths while we do our best not to obscure them.

In Holtorf’s opinion, however, “cultural appreciation of the past is not now, and never has been, to any large extent dependent on original ancient sites and objects” (Holtorf 2011:289). Holtorf regards ancient objects and sites as the product of our interest in the past, and not the other way around (Holtorf 2011:289). His ideas “based on the truism that ‘every generation rewrites its history – and its history is the only history it has of the world’,” suggest that every time a new past is ‘created’ through our interpretations, we find objects and sites that become significant and supportive of our beliefs (Holtorf 2011:289). Thus, Holtorf goes beyond the concept of ‘true natures’ that are inherent to objects and sites, and instead argues that “archaeological heritage management should be concerned with actively and responsibly renewing the past in our time” (Holtorf 2011:294).

In other words, it is not the objects themselves that are important, but what we make of them. In a strange way, it seems to go back to the idea of a single meaning in objects that we ascribe to them – except this time, it has no unrealistic expectations of such a meaning coming from the object itself, but is acknowledged as directly springing from us: ‘true nature’ as a concept, here, is completely redundant – and ‘reversibility’, by extension, becomes a non-issue. It will be most interesting to observe, as time passes by, whether Holtorf’s ideas become the next step in conservation theory or whether we will go in another direction entirely.

I hope you liked this article. Do send me a message on Twitter and we can continue the conversation there!

Bibliography

Ashley‐Smith, J. (1982) The ethics of conservation, The Conservator, 6:1, p.1-5

Brandi, C (1996) Theory of Restoration I-III. In: Price, N. and Talley, M., et al. (1996) Historical and philosophical issues in the conservation of cultural heritage. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. p.230-235, 339-342, 377-379

Caple, C. (2000) Conservation skills. Judgement, method and decision making. London: Routledge.

Caple, C. (2006) Objects: Reluctant witnesses to the past. London: Routledge.

Carbonara, G (1996) The integration of the image: /problems in the restoration of monuments. In: Price, N. and Talley, M., et al. (1996) Historical and philosophical issues in the conservation of cultural heritage. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. p.236-243

France-Lanord, Albert. (1996) Knowing How to “Question” the Object before Restoring It. In: Price, N.S.; Talley Jr., M.K.; Melucco Vaccaro, A. Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage. Washington: The Getty Conservation Institute. p.244-247

Hall, A. (2004) A case study on the ethical considerations for an intervention upon a Tibetan religious sculpture, The Conservator, 28:1, 66-73

Hassard, F. (2009) Towards a new vision of restoration in the context of global change, Journal of the Institute of Conservation, 32:2, 149-163

Holtorf, C.J. (2011) Is the past a non-renewable resource? In: Layton, R. and Stone, P., et al. (2011) Destruction and conservation of cultural property. London: Routledge.

ICOMOS (1964) Venice charter. [online] Available at: http://www.icomos.org/charters/venice_e.pdf [Accessed: 17 May 2013].

The Institute of Conservation (2002) Professional Guidelines. [online] Available at: http://www.icon.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=121&Itemid= [Accessed: 16 May 2013].

Jokilehto, J. (2009) Conservation principles in the international context. In: Richmond, A. and Bracker, A. (2009) Conservation. Principles, dilemmas and uncomfortable truths. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann. p.73-83

Oddy, A. (1994) Restoration – is it acceptable? In: Oddy, A. (1994) Restoration : is it acceptable?. [London]: British Museum Department of Conservation. p.3-8

Richardson, J. (1996) Crimes against the Cubists. In: Price, N. and Talley, M., et al. (1996) Historical and philosophical issues in the conservation of cultural heritage. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. p.185-192

Ruskin, J (1996) The lamp of memory, II. In: Price, N. and Talley, M., et al. (1996) Historical and philosophical issues in the conservation of cultural heritage. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. p.322-323

Viollet-le-Duc, E.E (1996) Restoration. In: Price, N. and Talley, M., et al. (1996) Historical and philosophical issues in the conservation of cultural heritage. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. p.314-318

Technical and ethical issues with doll conservation

Angelica Isa — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Painting of a girl with dolls. Photo by National Library of Russia on Unsplash.

Contents

What is a doll?
Multi-materiality of dolls
A brief note on storage, display and repair
The "true nature" of a doll
Dolls as sources of historical information
Dolls as objects with particular social identities
Conclusions
Acknowledgments
Bibliography

What is a doll?

Before even beginning to be able to talk about doll conservation, we run into a very basic question: what should count as a doll and what shouldn’t? Are dolls simply toys? Or are they objects of ritual and ceremony such as voodoo ‘dolls’ (Clar 1959), Katcina dolls (Teiwes 1991) and small statues of Christian characters such as the Virgin Mary? Do automatons count as dolls or machines (Brooks et al. 2007:253)? Do the French fashion dolls of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that were used to display wealth and finery but not for play (Dixon 1990:65) count as dolls? Should any anthropomorphised figurine count as a doll? Where do we draw the boundaries for them?

For the purpose of this article, and to narrow down the scope of what I mean, I will use the online Merriam Webster’s definition of a doll: “a small-scale figure of a human being used especially as a child's plaything” (Merriam-Webster online).

With this definition in mind, I will address the main technical problems for their conservation arising from the multi-materiality of dolls given their historical-social origins and development.

I will take a brief look at the ethical issues for the conservation of dolls, given that people – especially previous owners – will have very specific expectations of what should be done with their ‘old friends’ and childhood companions. Dolls are proof that conservation ethics are inseparable from what objects mean to us.

Multi-materiality of dolls

Given the enormous range of materials that have been used in doll making (whether home-crafted, as a small cottage industry or full industrial production) all around the world, and the increasingly complicated dolls made today that wet themselves, talk and move with increasingly uncanny resemblance to real humans, it would be impossible to go into fine detail regarding the technical conservation of all aspects of them. However, some examples will be given regarding the types of materials that may be seen, the most common problems found in doll collections today and how they are overcome.

A (very) brief and generalised historical overview of dolls would show a shift in materials as the process became less home-centred and more industrialised. It is not uncommon to find very old dolls made of straw, cornhusk, dried apples (Eaton 1985:15), animal bones (Gardner 2013), nuts of various kinds for the heads (Chambers 2013) and rags.

Faceless Amish dolls from the Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery. 1940s. Object # 2016.57.11.

Dolls with moving eyes appeared in England around 1825 (Dixon 1990:50-51), and by the mid-nineteenth century, poorer-class dolls has painted eyes and hair while the upper-class dolls had glass eyes and attached hair (Dixon 1990:50-51).

When bisque dolls began to be made, the porcelain heads and arms were being mass produced in the same factories together with the plates and saucers and were only later combined with the rest of the body in a separate production process altogether (Brooks et al. 2007:251-252; Caruso 1999:5).

In America, early dolls were made of ‘secret formulas’ that were manufacturer-specific and combined varying amounts of sawdust, glue, bran, plaster of Paris (Gaylin 1976:28), wood pulp, rags, scraps of leather and even ground-up bone (Brooks et al. 2007:251).

Thus, before the arrival of modern plastics and polymers, almost anything from leather to metal to hair to wax to textiles could be found on a doll. In fact, there were so many mixtures for doll bodies, that the term “composition” doll today is used to mean “any dollmaking substance that is not obviously wax, wood, metal, ceramic, paper, etc.” (Eaton 1985:33).

Apple-head doll. Photo by Mich3451 via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Paper Doll Costume, White Veiled Dress from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. 1876–80. Object # 1937-22-14.

The following table is an example of the number of materials that may be found in a single doll (Storch n/d:2):

Body part	Materials
Hair	Dyed mohair (sheep), human hair, boar bristles for eyelashes
Shoes	Tanned leather
Cape	Wool
Fastener	Steel
Dress	Cotton
Underwear	Dyed nylon, cotton
Accessories	Plastics, ink, enamel, paper
Skin	Shellac
Eyes	Glass
Mechanisms	Steel, rubber bands, lead, cork

Because of the particular dolls he was working on, Storch does not encounter the presence of silks, furs, wax, and modern polymers, but these can also be easily found in dolls today.

Additionally, Faith Eaton describes dolls made of natural materials such as straw, raffia, flax, palm fibres and fur (Eaton 1985:73). There are also edible dolls made of chocolate, sugar, bread, marzipan and prunes (Eaton 1985:42).

Thus, it becomes clear that doll conservation must be approached from the multiplicity of the materials found in each specimen. This is evidenced by Mary Caruso’s division of her book on doll repair into specific sections such as ‘eye repair’ (Caruso 1999:65-88), ‘wig care’ (Caruso 1999:89-112), and ‘dressing and costume care’ (Caruso 1999:113-140). Faith Eaton does similarly by devoting specific sections in her book to rubber dolls (Eaton 1985:91), wax dolls (Eaton 1985:111-113), leather (Eaton 1985:64-66) and paper (Eaton 1985:79-81) among others. Special attention is also given to the importance of restringing and rewiring dolls whose inner rubber bands and metal attachments have deteriorated causing dismemberment (Eaton 1985:12-14).

Diagram showing how a doll is supposed to be restrung. (Perry 1985:71)

A brief note on storage, display and repair

Due to the many elements of both cellulosic and proteic origin found in dolls, one of the problems reported in doll collections are insects: moths, vodka beetles and carpet beetle larvae, among others (Gardner 2013; Lutman 2013). Little can be done about them but to employ a proper Integrated Pest Management plan (Pinninger & Wilson 2011).

The second biggest problems involve fading due to light and decaying plastics. Very little can be done about these as well other than controlling the light levels based on each individual case (Michalski 2011) and controlling the temperature around the dolls.

A compromise must be struck between the dolls’ display and conservation (Keene 1994:19; Butler & Davis 2006:7). For storage, dolls are padded with polyethylene foam, small pillows of unbleached muslin under the doll’s faces (Storch n/d:5), and they are laid face down to prevent the mechanisms for moving eyes from causing pressures inside the dolls’ heads and falling away (Eaton 1985:14).

Dolls facing down during storage (Storch n/d:7)

One of the further problems with dolls and their varied compositions, as Brooks et al. have pointed out, is that sometimes they cannot be physically taken apart (Brooks et al. 2007:256) neither for examination or conservation purposes because they have been created stitched or glued together – good reasons for X-radiographing them.

In these cases, treatment must be even more careful, taking care of not damaging one material while trying to get to another. It may even have to be decided that it is not worth the risk trying to stabilise one material at the risk of another – how to choose which one material on the doll is more important? Is it a consistent conservation decision to make such choices on the same object? These questions bring us to the ethical side of doll conservation.

The "true nature" of a doll

“One doll came in that was really about gone. The cloth body had been torn and patched. Its hair was almost gone and very soiled. In a few days, all dressed in new garments, she looked like new again. The little owner came with her mother to get it, but somehow she just held her hands behind her, and didn’t even want to touch it. In moving it, the doll cried “Mama” and then the little girl recognized her doll, reached out quickly with just a trace of tears, hugged her doll and was happy.” (Gaylin 1976:68)

Before beginning any conservation treatment, we must understand the object in question. Dolls are a particular case: because they are anthropomorphic by nature, we react to them; and because the dolls I’m referring to in this article have at some point or another very likely belonged to children – these are objects that have shaped identities (Sutton-Smith 1986:242).

According to Bailey, children use dolls in an act of “scaled perception” to position themselves in the world and understand hierarchies of power (Bailey 2005:68). Dolls, through the way they are made to look by their producers, present to children social conventions, sexual representations, and behavioural expectations which help them build a picture of their expected place in society (Bailey 2005:70, 73, 84).

Superman action figure. Check out all those action joints! Photo by King Lip on Unsplash.

For example, an Action Man is a fully-jointed doll meant to be able to take many different active positions. It has been moulded with toned musculature and large hands capable of gripping its various weapon accessories. Some models have moving eyes to allow the doll to look ‘alert’ (Dixon 1990:122-123). The impression of such a build is that this doll is meant to engage actively. This toy has been made for action play, therefore, the child must use it for action play – it makes no sense to sit Action Man down for tea – something that makes perfect sense for the stiff-limbed Barbies™ and other dolls directed at young girls (Dixon 1990). I was about to complain that Barbies™ don't even have knee joints in order to sit them down properly for tea... but apparently new Barbies do. How... progressive... I'll not go into the gender implications imbued into doll construction, but they can be quite glaring.

Similarly, the noises and smells some ‘baby dolls’ have demand certain types of attention from their ‘mothering’ little girls (Dixon 1990:16). As such, these details are of integral importance to a particular doll’s identity. Having a minimally-conserved Action Man with atrophied joints or, on the other hand, leaving a baby-doll with a non-working crying mechanism inside because it is difficult to get to could, in fact, be hurting the readability of the artefact. They would be losing an important part of their original nature and purpose.

Dolls as sources of historical information

“Unlike documentary sources – so often written by ‘winners’ (and those other ‘dead white men’ who shaped the sources of academic history as it was studied in the nineteenth century) – material survivals could ‘speak’ of those in the past who had little or no textual ‘voice’.” (Pennell 2010:174)

“Artefacts are important because they can be used as evidence of something that was part of the past” (Riello 2010:25). Damage on a doll is like a wear-mark on a tool. Lack of hair, pen marks, soiling are all proof of ‘a child’s love’.

Similarly, hairstyles changed rapidly in the 19th century, and doll makers often tried to make their dolls appear fashionably up-to-date (Hogan 2010) – the smallest alteration to a doll’s hairdo would create a historical anachronism. The conservator would be reshaping history.

Furthermore, when thinking about conserving or restoring the costume on a doll, it must be kept in mind that the last person who dressed that doll may have been a very important one – or perhaps it was a child interpreting how women’s clothes were meant to be worn in their time – and thus the way that the doll was dressed should remain as evidence of that person’s hand (Mary Brooks, personal communication).

Following what Pennell said, any changes made to a doll would effectively erase that ‘voice’ of the object and its last owners and replace it with the conservator’s interpretation. Since “objects should not be used as an aid for providing enhanced answers, but for asking better questions” (Riello 2010:29), it would be important to weigh the benefits of conservation against the possible loss of history that could result from doll handling.

“An elderly lady brought in an antique doll in very bad shape; she had a tintype picture of the doll held by her mother when she was only eight years old. The customer said that she had never seen the doll all together, but had kept it in a box all these years. The doll was restored to better than new, and clothes made just like the ones in the picture. When the owner came to pick up the doll, she was so happy about it that she could hardly speak.” (Gaylin 1976:26)

If our objects are the results of human production, would it not make sense for them to always remain in human use? The above quote from one of Gaylin’s doll hospital anecdotes echoes with sentimentality and the dynamics of human memory, emotion, and the ways in which we link material objects with affections.

Should professional conservators be the ever-striving scholars looking for the preservation of historical evidence?

Would it be too outrageous to consider the possibility of conserving and restoring for the sake of our feelings, our characteristic human nostalgia, regardless of the chances of inaccuracy in recreation and the loss of material information?

After all, doesn’t that elderly lady’s happiness make it worth it?

Why else would we be conserving objects otherwise – to save knowledge for the sake of knowledge?

I cannot answer these questions directly. However, this aspect of restoration must be taken into account before embarking on the conservation of an object such as a doll – not just any object, but an anthropomorphised figure who was once someone’s friend and companion.

Portrait of girl with doll: Portret van een kind met een pop, anonymous, c. 1883 - 1886. Rijksmuseum collection. France. Object # RP-F-2007-66-59-5

Conclusions

“I love old dolls, not for their perfection or for the amount of money they may bring, but for the grace of a bygone era, for their lifelike charm, and for the love that was once given to them… I look at dolls with a loving eye; if I can rescue that gem for posterity, flawless or not, I will. How can we allow such treasures to disappear?” (Koval 1992:7)

“Museums collect these emotive artefacts both to record important aspects of personal and social histories and also to understand their manufacture and materials” (Brooks et al. 2007:249). Dolls are preserved “for future generations of visitors to see and enjoy and to provide information about children’s lives in the past” (Gardner 2013).

So, should we consider dolls as personal pasts or authoritative pasts? Are they heirlooms or sources of information? (Caple 2006:205) They are both, and therefore must be handled with care. As I have expressed above, conservation is very easily capable of changing the meaning of a doll (historically, socially, contextually), and thus, for each kind of doll, each particular artefact, different considerations must apply – including taking into account whether the doll belongs to a museum or a private person and what its purpose is (display, storage or use).

As France-Lanord said, “restoration means to renew not only a material but a product of human activity” (France-Lanord 1996:245), and as such, “the activity of conservation cannot therefore aim to bring back the material from which the object was made; it must instead restore the object all of its meaning as an embodiment of the imagination” (France-Lanord 1996:245). This particular view is perfectly appropriate in the case of dolls. It is essential to remember what they were made for, who they were made for, who they were owned by and how they were treated to make a better decision of what should be done to them.

Doll conservation requires the striking of a fine balance between the gung-ho attitudes of the loving ‘nurses’ at the so-called ‘doll hospitals’ (Koval 1992; Gaylin 1976; Eaton 198; Perry 1985), and the scholarly pursuits of conservators intent on the preservation of information. It would be ideal to inform doll owners of the historical importance of their little charges so that no extreme restorations take place and to remind conservators that we are not treating simple historical objects, but artefacts that have, through their being, influenced human lives and emotions.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the following people for their support and generous help with information during the writing of this essay: Dr. Chris Caple (Durham University), Dr. Mary Brooks (Durham University), Dr. Robin Skeates (Durham University), Mr. Charles Chambers (Vina’s Doll Gallery), Ms. Susan Gardner (Museum of Childhood, Edinburgh), Ms. Esther Lutman (Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood), and Ms. Nancie Ravenel (Shelburne Museum).

If you liked this post, you can follow me on Twitter where I'll be posting more information on the conservation of various materials.

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