AIC

I must thank Dr. Reedy and Barbara Appelbaum for their responses to
my original post on the need for publications on treatments.  They
both reinforced what I said, there are few treatment articles and
both stated that the JAIC was interested and open to publishing
more.  The only problem is to change the attitude conservators have
to the perceived position of the JAIC which is preventing them from
sending their articles to the JAIC.

Might I suggest putting some more bench conservators on the
publications board or the JAIC editorial board?  Someone like Jack
Thompson for example, who has experience as an editor and
translator.  Which brings up another related point.

I was rather amused to find that the current issue of the JAIC which
is devoted entirely to disaster preparedness has not one reference
in a foreign language.  I may have missed something, but I went over
it twice.  Do we really think when we read articles in English that
no one else in the world is doing anything worth noting?  It would
seem to me the responsibility of the editors to make sure that those
people writing should include (if not be aware of similar work being
done abroad).  This does not seem to be the usual case with most
issues of the JAIC, but it does give the impression that we know it
all.

In 1989 Luis Monreal was quoted by Don Garfield (Museum News,
Jan/Feb 1989:50-3) that in conservation (the)"...scientific
understanding of the deterioration process--fundamental for
conservation--and the chemical behavior of certain materials used by
the profession is 'as primitive as was medicine in the time of
Moliere."  I agree, but we cannot progress if we do not break from
our present provincialism and recognize that there is much to learn
(and much being done elsewhere outside of the USA) and much more to
discover.

Niccolo Caldararo
Director and Chief Conservator
Conservation Art Service


                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 14:8
                  Distributed: Thursday, July 27, 2000
                        Message Id: cdl-14-8-003
                                  ***