Disbinding albums

Our institution is in the midst of planning an exhibition in which
most of the material exhibited will be albumen prints, some
individual and others mounted in photo albums. There has been
discussion on whether it would be appropriate to disbind some of the
albums in order to be able to display several prints from the same
album. Some of these albums are in good condition while the
condition of others ranges from fair to poor. The Conservation
Department and Curator's have written Curatorial Guidelines
discouraging this type of intervention solely for the purpose of
accessibility, but the question has surfaced again. Given the fact
that there isn't much literature available on the topic of
conservation of photo albums, we would be interested in hearing how
other institutions, conservation departments and member's of the
DistList have dealt with this issue in the past. Any comment or
point of view will be welcomed.

Marie-France Lemay
Paper Conservator
Canadian Centre for Architecture


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 15:52
                Distributed: Thursday, January 24, 2002
                       Message Id: cdl-15-52-016
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