Program

According to the 2021 California Cultural Collection Protection Survey report, less than half of the museums in California that responded had a written disaster plan that included collections. That is even less for smaller organizations like historic or cultural societies. We estimate that over 1200 collecting organizations in California have no written disaster plans. Many of these collections are at grave risk of disasters, including natural events such as earthquakes or floods, as well as human-caused emergencies or threats. Recognizing the need, the California State Library granted the Northeast Document Conservation Center with funding to support the “Ready – Or Not” Emergency Preparedness for Cultural Collections project.

The team of six emergency preparedness consultants visit California collections organizations each week to help with their institution’s disaster preparedness plans. We meet at an organization for a day where we interview the staff and conduct a walk-through to assess the building and collections care practices. This results in a report with specific recommendations to guide organizations through emergency preparedness actions and writing a disaster response plan. With this short talk I would like to outline all regional natural hazards assessment of Los Angeles County. In addition, our interviews demonstrate the common issues these organizations are facing within the area, which include security and infrastructure issues. The project aims to reach collections organizations in communities with the highest social vulnerability, who are the most likely to need disaster assistance.

Emergency preparedness is the initial step these organizations are working on, but response and recovery is a collective task that we should all be considering as a community. As a fellow conservator, I would like to draw my colleagues' attention to emergencies in our area and foster a sense of mutual aid partnership within our association through conservation community engagement. 

Where are All the Women? Prioritizing Gender Equity in the Preservation of Place

Women founded the historic preservation movement in the United States and in many respects they continue to lead it today, but women’s histories and achievements--especially Indigenous, LGBTQ, and women of color--remain woefully underrepresented in the ways we document, designate, and communicate about historic places. The reality is that virtually every place has a women’s story to tell and women’s history and impact is omnipresent. Yet women’s history is officially represented in less than 4% of our National Historic Landmarks, 3% of our Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monuments, and 2% of our National Park units. These percentages have remained unchanged and stubbornly low for the last half century, due in large part to the biases inherent in our most fundamental preservation practices and systems. The result is that women, girls, and all people who identify as female consistently do not see themselves represented in their own history.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Where Women Made History program is a manifestation of our commitment to tell a more truthful and equitable national story. Over the last three years we have made it our goal to identify, elevate, and celebrate women’s histories across all of our work and programs. This takes many forms, from examining and altering our own practices to prioritize gender equity, to providing more funding and advocacy to support women’s place-based priorities in their own communities, to intentionally centering women’s stories at our own collections of sites. However, some of our most exciting projects are experiments being developed in collaboration with women historians, artists, filmmakers, architects, educators, and entrepreneurs, which are intended to challenge both the traditional perceptions of and practices of historic preservation. This talk will feature just a few examples of Where Women Made History’s partnerships with women creatives who are putting women’s achievements squarely at the center of our understanding of history and place. 

The practice of using naturally insect-repellent plants to preserve cultural material was not developed for the Conservation of museum collections, but rather to care for items of personal value. Plants that naturally kill or repel insects, or botanical pesticides, have been used by communities throughout the world for centuries to protect valued belongings, including cultural items, from insect damage. Time-tested tools for pest management that utilize locally available plants are part of the shared, intergenerational wisdom, or traditional knowledge, of communities. As a result of this intergenerational refinement process, traditional knowledge is not static, but ever-evolving as new observations are made and its stewards respond to changes in the environment, its resources, and adapt their knowledge to suit evolving needs. One relatively recent adaptation of traditional pest management practices is their application in museum pest management. Today, staff at museums in Northwest India have adapted the traditional practice of storing dried neem leaves with cultural items, primarily textiles, to keep insects that feed on these materials safely at bay.

This presentation will describe the traditional methods of pest management that are presently used at museums in India. When traditional methods of Conservation are utilized, processes are often highly sustainable, requiring little or no transportation, packaging, or energy to prepare. This information was collected during interviews with museum staff in India conducted in January and February, 2023. The process of interviewing staff at museums in India who choose to utilize traditional methods of pest management, or not, will be discussed. The concerns and outstanding questions brought up during in these interviews shape the experimental parameters for further research.

This project is a direct response to the need for increased accessibility and sustainable practice in Conservation that can be met by promoting preventive care and giving due consideration to traditional methods of caring for cultural heritage. Looking to traditional knowledge for pest management strategies that are locally available and culturally relevant meets the needs of stewards and contributes to a shift in the field of Conservation toward more inclusive and sustainable practice.

This presentation will describe recent efforts to integrate the study of chemical principles with the characterization, authentication, restoration, and conservation of artistic materials of cultural heritage significance in a multidisciplinary course designed for high school students. Over the last 3 years, the curriculum has been described in several papers published in the Journal of Chemical Education and an American Chemical Society symposium volume entitled, Contextualizing Chemistry in Art & Archaeology: Inspiration for Faculty. Example classroom activities include: 1) pigment synthesis experiments and pigment colorimetric analysis with UV-vis-NIR reflectance spectroscopy, 2) the fresco lime-cycle chemical reactions and student creation of their own fresco tiles, 3) a laboratory investigation of volatile loss during the pottery production process, 4) thermodynamic calculations for redox reactions in the 3-stage firing process of Athenian black- and red-figure vases, 5) a problem set on the XRF analysis of Roman Imperial coins with implications for the standardization of ancient smelting and minting practices, 6) a case study of the National Gallery's filmed restoration of Artemisia Gentileschi's self-portrait as St. Catherine of Alexandria, 7) and analytical work with the Cultural Heritage Science Open-Source (CHSOS) database of analytical spectra (UV-vis-NIR reflectance, XRF, and Raman) for historical pigments in the context of pigment identification and authentication efforts for the famous Shakespeare Flower portrait and a painting purportedly created by Marc Chagall examined in the BBC TV series, Fake or Fortune? The presenter is actively seeking to further promote to young students the fields of chemistry, art conservation, and scientific research on cultural heritage materials and to develop, together with interested professionals and institutions, additional educational outreach and research collaborations. 

The Civic Art Division of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture has recently launched initiatives to review Civic Art policies, procedures, commissions, and support for artists. Through this work, Civic Art seeks to create and steward a Collection that is inclusive of all communities of LA County; reflects diverse artists, approaches, mediums, cultures, and perspectives; and provide opportunities for artists and narratives that have been historically underrepresented in public art. Many of these policy and procedure changes offer a more equitable process for artists who are working on their first public art project or are in the early stages of their public art practice. For collections, these changes and new programs promote support for artists through collaboration with art conservators, continued collaboration with living artists represented in the Collection during the maintenance and repair of their artworks, and providing conservation resources to artists. In more expansive efforts, conservation collaboration includes apprenticeship opportunities to community members and the development of a citizen conservation app with the goal to introduce and encourage cultural heritage preservation in LA County communities.

Working with living artists and artists studios can be tricky business. Sometimes information is easy to obtain from them, and sometimes said studios are unwilling to share essential aspects of fabrication, in an effort to control the conservation of their works. This poses challenges for conservators and often we blindly defer to the wishes of an artist's studio or estate in order to avoid conflict. Some insurance carriers and owners fear that an artist could disavow a work if their wishes are not followed, even when such wishes are capricious and when a conservator's repair would not come close to violating VARA or any other legal statutes. Certain fabricators are notorious for keeping trade secrets from collectors and conservators, in order to drive all treatment to their firms. For the most part the conservation of contemporary art has given artists and fabricators a wide berth in making these declarations. We rely, instead, upon robust interviews to lend credence to the stance of the studio. In recent years, however, I have come to have a different attitude about how to approach such requirements from artists. I wonder if it is not time for conservators to define more narrowly when an artist's studio needs to be contacted and when a decision for treatment can be made without possibly initiating a situation where a studio will decide who can treat a work of art. This presentation will lay out this question, and also demonstrate instances where the collaboration with an artist or studio has worked well to help with treatment. 

Our talk will discuss a recent project we collaborated on with Khalil Irving, a young but very successful ceramic artist, whose sculpture was damaged during shipping. We will cover both managing stakeholders as well as the expectations involved in the project. We have worked with many artists over the years as well as artist's foundations and reps in planning, repairing and caring for sculptures. This was an unusual situation where a newly purchased ceramic sculpture arrived broken at a client's home. The client had it moved immediately to our studio and the client's lawyer strategized about how best to salvage the artwork. Ultimately, the artist agreed to come to Los Angeles and work with us to repair the work and provide a sculpture that was, if not intact, one that was fully representative of the artist's work and intent. It was an extraordinary and freeing experience where we provided conservation tools and materials and the artist determined how to re-create his work. We thoroughly enjoyed sharing our process and learning more about his. Our talk will touch on many of the suggested topics for this presentation. The talk will show the steps taken as well as the management of all stakeholders: artist, owners, lawyer, art handlers and seller.