Call for participation--Online exhibit on conservation science

An online exhibit of 100 art conservation science stories. Call for
participation in a new, proposed public education web site.

My colleagues and I plan to create an online exhibit, for ages 15
through adult, to increase knowledge of art conservation science
among non-specialists, and improve attitudes towards the sciences
among students and the general public. Art conservation is a great
bridge between the arts and the sciences, which is still untapped
for online public education. The exhibit will consist of 100 case
studies, rich with multimedia, from a diverse range of art
conservation sub-disciplines.

Would some of your current or prior work be a good case study for
the public? Would you like to help advise and shape this project?

The tentative project title is "Looking closer: An online exhibit of
100 art conservation science stories," and we are in the planning
and grant writing stage. We hope to build a team of at least 25
interested participants before applying for grant funding (so far,
we have approx 10 participants). The lead organization will be the
Center of interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and
Archaeology at University of California San Diego. We will partner
with the nonprofit idea.org, which has run the webexhibits.org
online museum for the last decade, to produce and promote the new
exhibit.

Each case study will draw heavily on multimedia and visual data, and
will be presented very differently from how it might appear in a
textbook or research article. The structure will be inverted (the
conclusions first, and the methods and theory last), and presented
as a detective story, including the story behind the object, and the
human story of the conservation scientist. Visitors will be drawn in
by the intrigue of each example, and over the course of each
multidisciplinary case study, will learn more about the art, the
scientific methods, and the theory and science underlying the
analytical techniques.

If you were to be involved, as an advisor and contributor, you would
contribute content about your work for 1-2 of the case studies,
provide ongoing feedback and advise over various stages of the
project, peer review a few case studies from other contributors, and
share any ideas you might have for promoting the completed exhibit.
There will be a modest stipend.

The time commitment will be 4-8 hours a month, on average, over 2-3
years.

Please let me know if this interests you, and I'd be pleased to tell
you more about the project, other interested participants, or
anything else. Write me an email at acosentino<-at->ucsd<.>edu

Antonino Cosentino
CISA3, Center of interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and
    Archaeology
University of California
San Diego
9500 Gilman Dr. # 0436
Atkinson Hall, 5th Floor
La Jolla, CA 92093-0436


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 23:32
                 Distributed: Friday, February 26, 2010
                       Message Id: cdl-23-32-001
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