Ellen Carrlee is an objects conservator who lives in Alaska.  We’ve never met in person and only know each other through these internets.  Along with our other friend and objects conservator, Daniel Cull, we’ve decided to take turns this week writing aboutour ideas for “New Directions” for the American Institute for Conservation (AIC).  I was a guest blogger for Ellen on Monday. My post up there in Alaska is filled with lots of crazy ideas.  On Friday, Daniel Cull will make a post on his blog… who knows what he’s cooking up.  Here’s Ellen’s offering:

Straight from Wikipedia:

Elitism is the belief or attitude that those individuals who are considered members of the elite—a select group of people with outstanding personal abilities, intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes—are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most weight; whose views and/or actions are most likely to be constructive to society as a whole; or whose extraordinary skills, abilities or wisdom render them especially fit to govern.

First things first: we need AIC and I respect the vital role it plays in our professionalism.  You could say I was suckled at the AIC teat.  Back in 1993, I was trying to find someone who would tell me what the heck “conservation” was.  I made a long distance phone call to Jay Krueger, who my uncle told me was a friend of a friend, and one of this mysterious breed called “conservators.”  It was quite a short conversation, and the upshot was “ask AIC.”  I sent away for their brochures (by mail!) and poured over the requirements of the programs.  It was the first of many times I turned to AIC to tell me what I needed to do.

In graduate school at NYU, the conservation professors referred frequently to the standards and ethics outlined by AIC and required us to follow them in our coursework.  I became a member in 1997.  As an emerging professional, I found myself moving to Alaska, the home of exactly three conservators: one was a contemporary from the Winterthur/Delaware program (Monica Shah) and the other was the man I had just married (Scott Carroll from the Buffalo program.)

I also accepted a job as a curator of collections and exhibits, and began a part-time business doing private conservation work.  Suddenly I had a ton of questions about ethics, and the standards of practice I would have to live up to in starting a business.  Again, I turned to AIC and studied its core documents carefully.  I became more interested in listserves in order to stay informed about the conservation world, and frequently thumbed through the AIC directory to see if someone who had posted was affiliated with AIC and therefore steeped in the same professional standards I was familiar with.

Occasionally, someone with an excellent reputation and interesting postings was not listed in AIC at all, and I would wonder why.  In 2006, I jumped through the hoops to become an AIC Professional Associate, which seemed like the closest thing to being vetted by a national professional conservation organization.  I have used AIC and its core documents as a touchstone every step of my career.

WHY DOES AIC TICK PEOPLE OFF?
After I’d been in the field awhile, I began to hear more about why some people didn’t like AIC.  It was elitist, some claimed.  Critical and harsh to outsiders.  It was behind the times.  It didn’t do enough advocacy in the wider public arena to benefit its members.  It had a history of excluding natural history, archaeology, and ethnographic conservation.  It had a history of setting up confrontational or adversarial relationships with various groups of people: people who were not program-trained, restorers, foreigners, archaeologists, maritime conservators, etc.  And there were a fair number of people who had been involved with AIC their entire careers but declared they were fed up, and membership in AIC had no benefits for them.

At first, I assumed they had just had run-ins with some of the more abrasive and powerful personalities that often dominate organizations like AIC.  I daresay conservators can be a cantankerous and self-righteous lot.  I still think that’s part of the issue.  But I also think there is much to be learned (and perhaps a better path for the future) by studying the history of the organization.  There could be a thesis written on that, no doubt.

Reading the “Murray Pease Report” and other early documents however, makes it clear that in the beginning, AIC was largely an organization of conservators specializing in paintings and sculpture.  Individual artifacts of high monetary value that justified money being spent on their conservation.  Those who identified as “conservators” were interested in developing standards to differentiate themselves from “restorers.”  Conservators were scientifically and morally saving art from those who were using dubious recipe books and old wives’ tales to turn a fast buck at the peril of our heritage.  Was this the beginning of an “us versus them” mentality?  Throughout AIC’s history, the institutional culture has time and again organized itself around fighting “them.”  Loosely defined, AIC’s critics have come to see themselves in “them” … anyone who disagrees with the AIC.

CHARISMATIC MEGAFAUNA / BIG SEXY ART

Following the recent debate/defeat of certification, it seems that the organization has now entered a period of introspection and re-evaluation.   AIC is unlikely to break free of its aura of elitism.  It is also doomed to be a venue for those who insist on shooting off their mouths in an undiplomatic fashion.  But it does serve a very important role in conservation in the United States: it is our national professional organization.  Let’s not underestimate that.  But perhaps elitism has been at the root of conservation remaining separate from the museum world: separate programs, training curriculums, and conferences.

Chenhall’s Nomenclature anyone? Marie Malaro?  AAM’s General Facilities Report?

Conservation students are not taught much about the museum profession.  Often, the conservator on staff is seen as the obstructionist. The one who says “no.”  The one who goes by the book and makes everything difficult.  The one who does not get invited to the table.  Elitism is perhaps the cause of AIC’s biggest failure: people don’t know what conservation is.  When I give a lab tour, I always have to define conservation.  My good friends still mistake me for a curator. After more than 50 years as a profession (NYU’s Conservation Center was founded in 1960 and AIC in 1972) we still are scarcely known to the public. Plenty of people think we protect trees.

There is a term in the world of environmentalism: charismatic megafauna.  It refers to the use of large popular animals like pandas and whales to leverage support and protection for whole ecosystems and less flashy critters. Conservators have traditionally focused on Big Sexy Art, and while some aspects of preventive conservation serve to improve the condition of all collections, a lot of our cultural heritage is still neglected.  The Heritage Health Index indicates that 190 million artifacts are in peril, and many of them are in smaller museums with no conservator on staff and little funding to afford one.

These folks often post on listserves:
“How can I reshape this brittle basket in my collection?”
“There’s white fuzzy stuff on this saddle… is it mold?”
“How can I make this samovar shiny again?”

Often the answers come from their colleagues who are well-meaning but misguided.  Hardware store commercial products and Martha Stewart-inspired recommendations are common.  Occasionally someone might jump and scold, “Stop! You have to consult a conservator!”  Pragmatically and financially, many of these objects are not going to get a proper conservation treatment.  But they can be saved from poor treatment choices with just a little in-depth expertise and gentle words of caution in plain English.

Dave Harvey is the champion of this kind of service.  Marc Williams is also thoughtful and generous with his knowledge.  This is the kind of public relations that the conservation world needs more of.  Here’s some of the love!  Jump right in.  Individuals are sometimes working like this, but the profession is not.  What if providing this kind of public voice were a factor in assessing PAs and Fellows?

ELECTRONIC ELISTISM
Elitism is not solely the realm of conservators.  There is brand of elitism found among folks who have passion for computers.  People who are conversant in Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, Ning, Delicious, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace…those people are the future. They are connected.  They have the answers.  Or do they?  While the potential of many of these platforms is appealing, the actual content is often rather meager.  Visually stimulating and easy to digest, they remind me of the recent trend toward museums as entertainment.  The blockbuster!  The wall of graphics!  The touch-me interactive!  I say, show me the REAL STUFF.  Give me content.  What is it made of?  Who made it?  Why?

Web 2.0 definitely has its place.  It can function in ways that AIC can’t or won’t.  AIC has a hard time responding in a timely manner on current events and 2.0 folks can take advantage of front line opportunities for PR in our profession.  Viral marketing!  Professional organizations are a bit like museums: slow, careful, and deliberative.  Not designed to jump headlong into new things but rather hang back, observe, and help history sort itself out.  AIC would have a hard time keeping up with Daniel Cull in terms of relevance anyway. Maneuverability is an unfair expectation of AIC.  That should be up to us.  And perhaps our smaller and more nimble regional organizations like WAAC and MRCG.

WHERE IS THE LOVE?
This month, I’m joining the AIA and the SAA.  As a conservator of ethnographic and archaeological materials, I was not even aware until last week that the SAA has a group about perishables.  While I enjoy the AIC annual conference, I think I’ll be aiming to go less frequently in order to direct resources at attending conferences in allied professions.  This has been a talking point in AIC for some time, but there seem to be only a handful who walk the walk.  And I am posting information liberally on the internet…info that might have been considered taboo in the past.

When I was in graduate school, treatment reports done as part of the core courses were saved in a file cabinet in the library.  But it was locked.  Students had to request the key, and it was discouraged.  I never found out why, and I was too timid to ask.  In some ways, I feel the conservation profession is locked in that way, particularly when it comes to availability of treatment information, lest it “fall into the wrong hands.”  After more than a decade in the profession, I have come to believe that in many cases, lack of treatment information does not generally force those objects into the competent hands of conservators.  Nor does it mean that the object won’t be treated.  People will just give it their best shot.  Inside the tent pissing out or outside the tent pissing in?

I have had several stimulating telephone conversations with Jim Jobling at the Conservation Research Lab at Texas A&M.  Certainly there are many ways that his lab is not “AIC compliant.”  And you know what?  He doesn’t care.  He does his work the best he can according to the parallel universe of standards that have developed in maritime conservation world.  Google the names of people who treat shipwreck material or wetsite archaeology and most of those names are not coming from the AIC world.  In fact, many of those names have been affiliated with the Texas A&M program.  Or the program at East Carolina University.  If AIC cannot or will not be more inclusive then it is up to us.

I have long suspected that People Who Know Things tend to share generously, while people who are not sure of their knowledge tend to be defensive and secretive.  How about being the change we want to see? I’m trying to put content on my blog that looks like info I’d like to find.  What if Richard Wolbers had his notes on cleaning techniques that worked and ones that didn’t right there on the web?  What if Tony Sigel had a series of brilliant YouTube clips showing tips for treating ceramics?  Rogue exhibit critiques with Toby Raphael?

Only a small percentage of what I am doing is unique or mature enough to bother jumping through the hoops of journal publication.

But plenty of my files are interesting…

…To folks on lab tours: here is more detail on what happens behind-the-scenes
…To the scientist at NOAA: can we collaborate on this project?
…To the grant committee: here is this prototype of what I would do with the money
…To the prospective intern: this is what working with me would be like, are we a good fit?

Plenty of files in the AIC office are interesting too.  Documents on the history of the organization.  Discussions and reports about difficult issues like certification.  Letters to AIC.  Writings from the Kecks.  Do you have to go to Delaware to read the AIC oral history project?  I would love to see pdf postings of all the past conference brochures!

My own blog doesn’t even need to generate new material…I just need to clean up and post the useful stuff that’s already on my hard drive.  I think AIC could do the same.  And so could you.  If you look at my blog it is probably obvious that what I want is a real webpage, but I can’t be bothered with learning how to set it up.  In fact, I’m pretty bad with technology in general.  If you see a hyperlink (is that the right word?) in this posting, it is because the folks at the IMA know how to make it work, not me.  But a weblog is an easy place to dump my content for everyone to use, and best of all, it has a comment section to allow collaboration.

So, what do you think?

Live MW2009 Twitter Feed

Today’s post will be fairly short and to the point.  The MW party is just getting started with lots of sessions, workshops, demonstrations and late night parties.  These moments will be filled with tech chatter revolving around social media, content creation, audience development, institutional collaboration and the next big thing.

The IMA is well-represented at this year’s conference (it is in Indy) with colleagues from New Media, Marketing, Applications Development, Conservation and the official ArtBabble intern, Emily all here to mingle, learn and importantly, share.  In fact, in the very near future, you’ll be able to watch Max’s talk on ArtBabble – the Nugget Factory is also here filming this event.

Documenting for ArtBabble

I hope the many visitors from outside Indianapolis and the US enjoy this city, this conference,  and all the ideas and projects that will come to the surface over the next couple of  days.

And, if you’re in town or watching from afar – please share your comments or thoughts on this conference, technology in general or simply, museums.

Euro Design at the IMA

Let the conversation continue long after the thought-provoking Q&A sessions at the European Design Symposium on March 6th and 7th at the IMA.

Got something to say? We’d like to invite you to use this blog as a forum to ask questions and post comments about anything and everything to do with European Design.

By the way, footage from this weekend’s events will be on ArtBabble.org very soon, so keep an eye out!

The IMA pharmacy prescribes the following links to combat Monday online anemia.

Abduzeedo.com – I’ve been checking this design blog for the last week on recommendation from a design buddy of mine. Their “Daily Inspiration” series is how I’ve been starting my design day.

Arts Admin – Here’s a secret. I test Monday morning interns with, “What’s your favorite website?” According to our newest intern from Indiana University, this blog is worth reading. With the first post I ever see from here being about Whit Stillman and his witty movies, I believe her.

Knowledge Generation Bureau – Saw this on the television last night and thought it was weird. A new viral campaign? Who would want to be attached to anything KGB (me I guess)? Doesn’t the Moon have an eccentric orbit?

Julie Blackmon – This photographer popped up after talking to a friend of mine the other day about the funny stuff humans and their companions do in their houses. What came to iPhone camera was a foothill of bathing towels. Laundry time.

Glasvegas Album Cover - Amazon.com

I care about wordplay. I also care about a band name. Formative case in point, the instant the young Phil learned the proper way to spell beetle, he realized that the band that sang Help to him before bed every night had cleverly altered the spelling of their name to reflect a basic musical idea. Simple, I know, but I remember getting home from school, my heart and stomach about to implode from crushing urgency, and asking the coolest person in the world, “Mom, who else knows about this?”

Luckily, years of schooling didn’t ruin me and I’m still as easy to please as the playfully ignorant kid amused by simple puns. However, years of English and Math classes have made slightly more sophisticated instances of cleverness understandable, and for that I’m thankful. For example, consider a recent IMA acquisition called Möbius Ship, by Tim Hawkinson. Tim’s demonstration of clever wood-play is seriously clever. I like it so much that I hike up to the third floor and check out this monstrous nautical nemesis at least once a week. And, whenever I namedrop hot art at the museum, you know I’m like, “Mobius Ship, get it?”

So, take all that and consider a band from Scotland, with a clever name, that has a song called S.A.D. Light, and whose album cover is a black and white image inspired by Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Point in case, the eponymous Glasvegas album is totally blowing my mind. I mean, these guys and gal from Glasgow are dominating my ears. I’ve spent the last week listening to their perfect poppy-scot-drone-bubblegum tunes at all of my listening stations and wishing they were playing on everything capable of sound reproduction as I travel on each of my daily relocations. Glasvegas, I’m moved.

And Glasvegas, I’m moved not only by your music, which totally rules, but also because of the possibility of a little kid sitting in the back seat of their hip Mom’s Mazda 5 and listening to you wail while they wonder if any of the other kids think the swirly things on your album cover look kind of like music clouds, whatever music clouds are. And then, maybe ten years later, after  feeling a little embarrassed by the surprise of seeing Starry Night in an art text book, that same kid goes home and immediately asks the least cool person in the world, “Mom, why didn’t you tell me about this?

Album in stores.

Exhibition: Breaking the Mode

IMA Facebook Fan Page

IMA Blog

Exhibition: On Procession

AAMD Object Registry

Exhibition: To Live Forever

IMA on ITunesU

The Viewing Project

Exhibition: Power and Glory

Something new is coming in January!

What is your favorite of 2008?  Let us know whether it is something listed here or something completely different.

Alice with students at Cold Spring School

What does it mean to say, “I live in Indiana”?  What is distinctive about that, as opposed to saying, “I live in Colorado,” or, “I live in Florida”?  These questions came to my mind as I listened to chef, author and food revolutionary Alice Waters speak at The Toby on December 2 as part of the IMA’s Planet Indy series. Alice was describing the simple delights of eating local, seasonal food, as well as the simple genius of rebuilding local economies around sustainable practices. In Alice’s economy, producers of organic vegetables, fruits, dairy items and meats know that their products will supply local markets and restaurants instead of being shipped across the country. Organic producers make a decent living; their neighbors enjoy fresh, high quality food and improved health.

Alice’s revolution is aesthetic as well as economic. She advocates beautiful experiences with the food we enjoy. She believes that children deserve to learn how to notice tastes and scents, and to develop the language skills to describe these and their thoughts about such sensations. During Alice’s visit we discussed the Human Capabilities initiative of philosopher Martha Nussbaum and Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen. They argue that a humane society has a responsibility to give its citizens the opportunity to develop such capabilities as understanding how to care for their bodies, how to give and receive love, and how to communicate effectively. I have sense that Alice, Martha and Amartya are on the same wavelength.

Hmmm…. I started to feel that my own residence in Indiana is a bit superficial, and not all that aesthetically appealing, either. I have an address in Indianapolis, but an inventory of my refrigerator and cupboards wouldn’t necessarily confirm that statement. Veggies from California, bottled water from New York.  If I had amnesia and went to my kitchen in search of clues about my own life, there would be little evidence to help me deduce my location. And if you asked me to name a good, local, organic poultry producer, I’d be stumped. I spend most of my days in Indiana, but I have no meaningful relationship with the farmers or cheese makers in my area who are working to produce quality food.

Nearly a year ago as the IMA staff began planning for Alice’s visit, we initiated a series of meetings with organic producers, chefs and culinary arts instructors, school lunch decision-makers, and environmental educators. It was amazing to see the groundswell of enthusiasm and the number of committed people who wanted to help bring Alice’s message to a wider public. IMA educators initiated a partnership with Cold Spring School, IPS’s environmental magnet and a neighbor to the Museum, to introduce some of the ideas in Alice’s Edible Schoolyard initiative. At Cold Spring I saw children learn where tomatoes come from and how different a local, vine ripened tomato tastes from a cellophane-wrapped import purchased at the grocery store.

In 1971, American meditation teacher Ram Dass wrote a book called Remember, Be Here Now. I’ve always loved that line: Be Here Now. I know that my distracted attention wanders all over the place and is often anywhere but here in this moment. I think that if you added up all the moments in my life when I have really been consciously present – in my body, in the instant – the sum total of those moments of fully-lived experience would be pretty small.

Alice isn’t teaching meditation, but she is advocating that life be lived more fully and with greater consciousness. She is urging us to help our children discover that a fuller life is their birthright. Live here now.

The IMA pharmacy prescribes the following links to combat Monday online anemia.

Herb and Dorothy Vogel were here. Check out some pictures from their visit and the new exhibit.

Style Wars – “The original hip hop documentary.” Graffiti, hip hop, urban culture and one of my favorite websites of all time. Try the music player, check out the trains, and marvel at the design of this site.

Mr. Picassohead, developed by the public relations agency Ruder Finn, allows you to create a painting, sign it and send it to a friend. Search the gallery to see works by people you know.  Our own Noelle, gave it a twirl.   (And here’s another cool one.)

Escama Studio makes some really neat purses from recycled can tabs. Turns out we have them in the IMA gift shop. Gift idea?

She covered all the points you’d expect from a sustainable food advocate: the health crimes of fast food, the shame that many urban children have no idea where their food comes from, the lack of time for experiencing food.

But then she turned to the power of tablecloths. In her work with schools gardens (a.k.a. Edible Schoolyards, the subject of her new book), she noted that children flock to a table with a tablecloth. The kids recognize a well-set table as a sign of love and care.

She also addressed olive oil, equating good oil with life quality. This is a woman who carries her own olive oil with her when she travels. Lest her connoisseurship smack of elitism, Alice assured the crowd that quality-intense food pleasures like these are available at any farmers market across the land.

But just when you think she’s a charming spokesperson for edible beauty…she roars. She told the crowd of her daughter’s admission to Yale University, and their introduction to the college president Richard Levin. Alice twisted his arm, and showed him the light, encouraging him to leverage Yale’s food buying power to develop a local food program at Yale. Seven years later, the Yale Sustainable Food Project is going strong, complete with campus garden and a café with a sustainable menu.

True to her crusading ways, Alice didn’t leave Indy until she had dinner with IMA CEO Maxwell Anderson and several museum donors, which she took as an opportunity to inquire about the IMA’s food service, noting her disappointment with art museums that are monuments to beauty and human creativity, only to disappoint with sad cafes full of pre-packaged, soulless food. Watch the IMA Café in the coming year to see if her comments stuck…

In and among the logistics of her visit, a few of us on the public programs staff had a quiet moment with Alice. We told her we liked working with her assistant Varun, to arrange her visit (a long-term, intense process). “Varun walked into my office, with his long, long eyelashes, and I said, ‘you’re hired.’”

There it is again: Alice’s capacity for intoxication with life—the most persuasive argument you’ll ever hear for art, or food.

Did you hear Alice Waters at IMA last Tuesday? What did you think?

The first in-house video I worked on at the IMA was re-editing an African Pottery Techniques documentary shot in Burkina Faso.  At the time, it was a pretty big step for the museum – to actually do this in-house, quickly, easily and for free.  When I compare that to our latest  video release on Orly Genger’s installation “Whole”, I kind of laugh.  We shot this video in HD, incorporated Time Lapse, used a lift for certain shots and then published to YouTube.  Check it out below.

My colleague Dan Dark recently recorded the Christmas at Lilly House tour with the LH Director, Bradley Brooks in an afternoon.  Dan then finalized and edited in the space of a few hours, then uploaded it to our Guide by Cell account.  Visitors to Lilly House can access this content by using their cell phone. Our first Christmas at Lilly House involved a lot more time editing and recording, and incorporated the Dell DJ Ditty mp3 players.  I am actually laughing….but it worked at the time.  We plan on increasing our audio content across all of IMA’s collections in 2009, and I am incredibly excited about some of the concepts we are planning.  But I can’t discuss those yet…

imamuseum.org/blog is almost a year old.  It’s been a really exciting year for the blog with some superb posts from all over the museum.  I’m proud when I think that internally, the IMA supports a variety of areas blogging.  Where else can you go and hear directly from conservation, security, horticulture or an artist duo?  We’ve come a long way from the Felix Gonzalez-Torres blog (did anyone ever see that?) we setup a few years ago, and our imamuseum.org drupal based blog just a year ago.  Sometime we get it wrong.  Sometimes we get it right.

I’m also reflecting on past projects because I can’t quite share some of the upcoming projects in 2009, yet.  I’m dying to, and the second I can I will post.  The main change in the digital content we produce is an increased focus on the contemporary world.  The Toby, Contemporary department as well as the opening of 100 Acres in 2009, presents access to cutting edge artists, performers and academics.  That means content opportunities that will become audio guides, videos, and web projects.  It’s gonna be a big year, and we plan on making ‘09 the best for the museum visitor and technology-focused experiences.  It’s all about keeping the momentum.

And in closing, this is Despi’s last day at the museum.  She’s been an integral part of the IMA and New Media, a dedicated professional, supportive colleague, and more importantly, a friend.  Best of luck Darnell!