Displaying lantern slides

Tamara Lavrencic <tamaral [at] gh__hht__nsw__gov__au> writes

>Curators at the Museum of Sydney (Australia) are keen to display
>lantern slides using transmitted light. Has anyone had any
>experience in setting up a similar display? What type of light
>sources are "safe"? How did you control light exposure? Did you
>monitor light levels etc?

About six years ago I treated a selection of lantern slides for the
Atwater Kent Museum in Philadelphia.  They too wanted to transmit
some of the images onto the wall as part of an exhibition strategy
and we talked about the efficacy of different approaches.  In the
end, they make photographic reproductions of the slides to 35mm
color slides and projected them with a standard slide projector
hidden in a dummy box built to look like the earlier machinery.  The
original slides were exhibited with diffuse backlighting using full
spectrum fluorescent lamps (filtered for UV, of course) to light up
translucent white acrylic backing panels.  The exhibit was only up a
few months at most.  Perhaps the people at the Museum could tell you
more.  Hope this helps.

Kory Berrett
Objects Conservator
Berrett Conservation Studio
3054 Reisler Road
Oxford, PA  19363
610-932-2425
Fax: 610-932-8955

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 11:89
                   Distributed: Tuesday, May 5, 1998
                       Message Id: cdl-11-89-005
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