Online course on museum storage

MS 202: Museum Storage Facilities and Furniture
Instructor: Helen Alten
Dates: March 7 - April 1, 2011
Price: $475
Location: online at <URL:http://www.museumclasses.org>

Description: The building and storage furniture are your first line
of protection for the most valuable asset in your museum--the
collection. Museum Storage Facilities and Furniture concentrates on
building systems and furniture for storing and protecting
collections. Topics include environmental controls, insulation,
floor coatings and predicting space requirements. Museum Storage
also compares commercial and homemade furniture and provides a
blueprint for planning the redesign of your facility. Storage
philosophy, construction requirements, safety and security and
planning are covered. A unit details how commercial museum-quality
cabinetry is constructed. Blueprints are provided for high-quality,
homemade cabinets.

Course Outline:

    Storage Philosophy
    Agents of Deterioration and Preservation Planning
    Storage Facilities
    Storage Furniture
    Conclusion

Logistics: Participants in Museum Storage Facilities and Furniture
work at individual paces through five sections. Instructor Helen
Alten is available at scheduled times during the course for email
support. Resources include forums and scheduled online chats,
PowerPoint lectures, reading materials and lecture notes and links
to relevant web sites.

Museum Storage Facilities and Furniture runs four weeks. To reserve
a spot in the course, please pay at
<URL:http://www.collectioncare.org/tas/tas.html> If you have trouble
please contact Helen Alten at helen<-a t->collectioncare< . >org

The Instructor:

    Helen Alten, is the Director of Northern States Conservation
    Center and its chief Objects Conservator. For nearly 30 years
    she has been involved in objects conservation, starting as a
    pre-program intern at the Oriental Institute in Chicago and the
    University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. She
    completed a degree in Archaeological Conservation and Materials
    Science from the Institute of Archaeology at the University of
    London in England. She has built and run conservation
    laboratories in Bulgaria, Montana, Greece, Alaska, West Virginia
    and Minnesota. She has a broad understanding of
    three-dimensional materials and their deterioration, wrote and
    edited the quarterly Collections Caretaker, maintains the
    popular <URL:http://www.collectioncare.org> web site, lectures
    throughout the United States on collection care topics, was
    instrumental in developing a state-wide protocol for disaster
    response in small Minnesota museums, has written, received and
    reviewed grants for NEH and IMLS, worked with local foundations
    funding one of her pilot programs, and is always in search of
    the perfect museum mannequin. She has published chapters on
    conservation and deterioration of archeological glass with the
    Materials Research Society and the York Archaeological Trust,
    four chapters on different mannequin construction techniques in
    Museum Mannequins: A Guide for Creating the Perfect Fit (2002),
    preservation planning, policies, forms and procedures needed for
    a small museum in The Minnesota Alliance of Local History
    Museums' Collection Initiative Manual, and is co-editor of the
    penultimate book on numbering museum collections (still in
    process) by the Gilcrease Museum in Oklahoma. Helen Alten has
    been a Field Education Director, Conservator, and staff trainer.
    She began working with people from small, rural, and tribal
    museums while as the state conservator for Montana and Alaska.
    Helen currently conducts conservation treatments and operates a
    conservation center in Charleston, WV and St. Paul, MN.


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 24:40
               Distributed: Wednesday, February 23, 2011
                       Message Id: cdl-24-40-013
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