Disaster recovery at Museums of New Mexico conservation laboratory

Last Sunday the main conservation laboratory for Museums of New
Mexico - Conservation was badly hit with a influx of sewage from a
stopped main drain in the Museum of International Folk Art during
the recent International Folk Art Market.  They were a great
success, I guess we were the sacrifice.  We always tell museum
designers don't put collections and conservation in basements but
guess where we are?

Our companion laboratory, housing mainly 2 dimensional conservation
projects such as textiles, is located in another museum building
miles away and is unscathed and functioning normally.

All art work and museum collections housed or in work within the
main laboratory were unharmed and have been appropriately evacuated.
We are now stripping the laboratory back to the walls for
rebuilding.  Our science unit also housed within the International
Folk Art Museum was not affected but is now choked with our
equipment and movable supplies.  When we find and relocated to
temporary laboratory quarters the science unit will return to use.
I hope this will be within several weeks.

This is going to be an "interesting" process as being an old
laboratory many systems were protected from modern codes.  This
"grand fathering" has now been broken.

The main reason for my making this announcement is to let people
know how we can be contacted.  It is normally a bit difficult as we
are "buried" within a bureaucracy but many of our regular phone
numbers are out of service for the time and our office workstations
shut down.  Email addresses remain the same and are the surest way
to communicate.  Existing cell numbers do as well.

Our open position, recently advertised (on State Personnel
Department website) is active and we are soliciting applicants. This
position will remain posted until filled and we will be posting
separately about this on the DistList and elsewhere.  By the time
he or she is on strength we will have a brand new laboratory.

General office communications should be sent to me using one of the
following addresses

    Mark MacKenzie
    Chief Conservator/Director
    MNM-Conservation
    120 Lincoln Ave.
    Santa Fe NM 98501
    Mobile: 505-231-6263
    mark.mackenzie<-at->state<.>nm<.>us

Our so called "normal" telephone numbers for offices located within
the International Folk Art Museum may or may not work, try as you
wish.

We were all set for a system emergency this past weekend, little did
we realize it would be us.

"We'll be back!"

Mark Mackenzie
Chief Conservator


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 27:6
                  Distributed: Saturday, July 20, 2013
                        Message Id: cdl-27-6-001
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