In case you haven’t heard, there was a big announcement that the IMA was awarded a major gift from the Lilly Endowment to start a Conservation Science Laboratory at the IMA. Needless to say, the whole department is pretty stoked!
I tried to think of a way to represent the announcement with some kind of image, but couldn’t come up with anything, so instead I made this. That pretty much sums up what I think about the news.
Today, though, I’m in Kansas City at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art looking around. Yeah, just looking around at the art, inside and outside. I don’t often get to do this. But I’m here because the Midwest Regional Conservation Guild is convening its 28th Annual Meeting this weekend. For a long time the MRCG has been an important association for conservators in the Midwest – an organization for which I’ve been honored to be the Secretary/Treasurer for the past 4 years.
How, you might ask, did I get to KC? Riding in a car (8 hours!) with two IMA conservators, Martin Radecki – and this is where I give him some much-deserved props –, the 2007 winner of the prestigious 2007 Sheldon and Caroline Keck Award, and Claire Hoevel, the IMA’s senior paper conservator. I think the highlight of our car ride was a necessary stop at Cracker Barrel somewhere in Missouri. No, not because of the food – it’s a necessity thing – but because of the spirited “Test of Our IQ” at the table. (If you’re really feigning for a taste of the game, you can play it here, and, no, I’m not going to give you a link to the cheats for the game.) Anyway, fine, Marty is the champ. I admit he’s “Purty Smart” and Claire and I are “Just Plain Dumb.” Fine, whatever, you win, Marty! (The observant reader would, of course, note the real competition that this game caused, and anticipate that I’ll be suggesting we stop at a CB on the way back so I can have a rematch.)
But today we’ll be spending some time looking around the NAMA, and then on Saturday and Sunday we’ll get down to MRCG business. I’m looking forward to our Meeting not only because there are some engaging presentations, but because I’ll be able to catch up with a lot of friends.
The featured speaker of the Meeting is Dawn Heller, a conservator of paper and photographs in private practice, and a member of the AIC taskforce on Digital Documentation. She will be speaking about the new AIC guidelines for Digital Photography and Conservation Documentation. You may not know it, but that’s kind a big deal in the conservation world.
Plus there will be a lot of other talks that cover a wide range of projects (including one by yours truly). Here’s the list:
- Moving a Wall – The Howard Cook Mural Project, Randy Ash, Fine Art Conservation, Denver, Colorado
- Gainsborough’s Portrait of Miss Ann Ford, The Second Time Around, Stephen Bonadies, Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio
- Lazarus Raised from the Dead: Repair of a Lead-Base Alloy Nouveau Lampshade Frame, Jim Cutrone, CCR Design, Cleveland, Ohio
- Foam (12), by Zhang Huan: The treatment of an oversize chromogenic print, Thomas M. Edmondson, Conservator, Heugh-Edmondson Conservation Services, LLC, Kansas City, MO
- Revisiting Old Repairs: Issues with Treating Objects from the DIA Islamic Collection, Kathryn Este, Kathryn G. Etre, Mellon Fellow in Objects Conservation, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
- The Responsible Care of Asian Paintings: A Discussion of Remounting Considerations, Claire Hoevel, Senior Paper Conservator, Indianapolis Museum of Art.
- To LED or not to LED?, Gersil Kay, Conservation Lighting International Ltd., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Using the MRCG’s Wiki Site (a Talk and Tutorial), Richard McCoy, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana
- The Conservation of an Abstract Expressionist Painting, “December 1957”, by Frank Lobdell, Marissa Racht Ryan, Yoder Conservation, Cleveland, Ohio
- Peeking behind the Cloth of Raphaelle Peale’s “Venus Rising from the Sea – a Deception,” Mary Schafer, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
- Charles Russell’s Studio: What Can Be Gained When the Cleaning Lady Doesn’t Come, Jodie Utter, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
- The Conservation of Charles Meynier’s Muses, Dean Yoder, Yoder Conservation, Cleveland, Ohio
- Edgar Degas, two decades later, Chris Young, Nashville, Tennessee
After all of that we’ll get back into Marty’s Volkswagen and head back to Indy. Hopefully I’ll be the guy in the back sleeping, or reading the rest of Georges Perec’s Species of Places and Other Pieces, or looking for signs for the Cracker Barrel.
And of course, I want to mention the NAMA’s blog, Blog @ the Nelson. I’m a big fan of Jodi O-K.
Filed under: Conservation
October 27th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Congratulations on your gift from the Lilly Endowment. I’m sure there is a lot of excitement around starting a new lab. I am always pleased to see museums receive funding, grants and support from public and private sources alike!
Best,
Drue
http://www.valleyzen.com
October 27th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Richard,
I hope you enjoyed your time at the Nelson-Atkins. I plane to be at your place next year for the Museums and the Web conference so maybe we can chat.
Thanks for mentioning the blog! It is nice to know I have fans other than my husband and 8-year-old.
Jodi O-K
October 28th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Thanks for your support, Drue; and thanks for your comment Jodi O-K.
I often wonder, too, who reads what I write. But certainly the Blog @ the Nelson-Atkins (http://www.nelson-atkins.org/blog/) is in my Google Reader. I wonder if any of fine NAMA conservators (I think I met them all) have considered writing for the Blog …
I thoroughly enjoyed walking around the NAMA grounds, and in both the old and new buildings.
Here’s a link to some images I took:
http://flickr.com/photos/25902840@N07/sets/72157608451001739/
October 31st, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Great photos from KC! Although I must say it is hard to take a bad picture of the Bloch Building.
I would love to have the conservators blogging along with curators, educators, even security guards but everyone is either too busy, too worried of what it might do to their reputation or just not interested. How do you guys make it look so easy?
November 4th, 2008 at 11:07 am
I’m an undergraduate at the University of Delaware for Art Conservation and I’m writing research paper for my class concerning fiber optic and LED lighting in museums, historic homes, and architecture, and I was wondering if you could steer me in the right direction of finding out more about the “To LED or not to LED?” presentation you saw at the NAMA two weeks ago? I feel it would be extremely relevant to my topic.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
To Jodi O-K,
I am so delighted to read the last line of your comment! We try really hard to make the blog feel (and in reality be) authentic. Not all shiny and polished, but instead it is good, about things that really happen and written by the people that make it happen.
That is not to say that we don’t have conflict about it. We have worked internally to gather a group of people that represent many areas of the museum and are willing to contribute, then we work with them to make the blog relevant to our readers. For the most part, though, those of us who work on the blog facilitate the content created by others…organize them all into this collective and find interesting new ways to engage readers.
There are definitely some people at IMA that feel the way you describe your colleagues feeling about blogging. But that number has declined over time as a core group of us start writing daily and gradually added new authors that were excited to participate after seeing the blogs success.
So, the blog definitely isn’t easy…but I am so glad it looks easy! Because that is really the ultimate compliment.
Thank you for reading!
November 4th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
I too will say that it isn’t easy.
Even though on average I make a post about every other week, it’s still a lot of work (plus, there’s a certain pressure to come up with something clever). Because I have lots of other things to do in the conservation department, I do my blog writing on my own time at home. Having said this, I often wonder why I do it since it really doesn’t reflect directly on my responsibilities here. One of these days I’m going to answer this question of “why should I blog”.
I admit, though, I check the IMA’s blog (and others) at work.
I would like to take a minute congratulate Despi and the entire New Media Dept. for having the guts to let me, and apparently everyone, write about whatever they want.
I really can’t remember a time when they’ve even exercised any editorial control on my posts — even though I wouldn’t mind if they fixed some of my errant sentences.
Brittany —
Thanks for your comment. The woman who gave the presentation is Gersil Kay, a lighting specialist out of Philly.
Here’s a link to a book she published on fiber optics:
http://www.mcgraw-hill.com.au/html/9780070349322.html
She also published an article in the Journal of Architectural Lighting in 2002.
http://www.donhead.com/journal_architectural_conservation/jac_8_1.htm
Thanks!
November 7th, 2008 at 7:10 am
Hey, check this out, Brittany:
An LED Par 38:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/would-you-buy-this-funny-looking-bulb/
http://lsgc.com/products/lamps/r38/
November 10th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Those links are great! Thanks for your help, I appreciate it.
December 5th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Nice and usefull post, thanks, this is one for my bookmarks!
February 16th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
In response to Brittany Smith:
Gersil N. Kay, President of Conservation Lighting International podcasts on the subject of “Functional Architectural Lighting” and speaks to LED and Glass Fibre Optics lighting options. The podcast is on iTunes (search podcast/lighting design) or you can also link directly from:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=294949475
Kay also posts articles at http://www.quesited.com. The articles are below.
1. “Glass Fibre Optics”
https://www.quesited.comtrendCurrent.aspx?featuredarticleid=52
2. “In the Dark about Light”
https://www.quesited.comtrendCurrent.aspx?featuredarticleid=55
And last, Kay shares a wealth of lighting information at the CLI website: http://www.glassfiberoptics.net.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Dear Richard McCoy,
Thanks for the plug. I have written technical papers for national and international publications, plus AIA, IESNA, BOMA, APT, IAEI, AIC, NECA, ASTM and in the UK: SPAB, CIBSE, English Heritage, National Trust, Architectural Association, Heriott Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, etc. Spoken on building conservation and green lighting from Taiwan and St. Petersburg to Australia and France.
April 25th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Wow…dude, enjoyed the Wirly Bird flying that piece of art across town. Brought me back to Nam..man…wow dude…gotta go, have a flash back coming on.
“Quik hit the dirt, VC is here” “Lock and Load” Man…gotta go.
Joe “Black Ops” Mojo!
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