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.