Volume 7, Number 2, May 1985, pp.13-17

Regional News

San Francisco

Teri Oikawa-Picante has taken early retirement as Chief Painting Conservator of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (California Palace of the Legion of Honor and the M.H.de Young Museum.) She may be reached at 102 Buena Vista Terrace, San Francisco, CA 94117.

Mark Van Gelder has been accepted into the Cooperstown program to begin in fall 1985.

Elisabeth Cornu reports that the Objects Conservation Laboratory of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco has received an IMS grant to work on the outdoor sculpture and bronzes located in front of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. Work will commence this summer and will include research, analysis and a work program plan.

An FAIC refresher course on "Natural Fiber Identification" is tentatively planned for this summer at the University of California Berkeley campus. The course will be taught by Mary-Lou Florian and Margaret Ordonez and is being planned by Cara Varnell, Textile Conservator of the Fine Arts Museums of S.F. in conjunction with the Objects Specialty Group of A.I.C. Watch for details in the next issue of the A.I.C. Newsletter.

Brigita Anderton has retired as Textile Conservator of the Fine Arts Museums of S.F. She is planning to divide her time in textile conservation between San Francisco and Sweden.

Los Angeles

William Leisher has been appointed Executive Director of Conservation at the Art Institute of Chicago. Bill will direct the paintings and sculpture conservation laboratories and he will also develop a museumwide conservation program. His position begins in June 1985. For the past five years Bill has been the Head of Conservation at LACMA, during which time the new Conservation Center was built. The entire conservation staff will miss him and they wish him the best of luck in Chicago'

Dr. Pieter Meyers has been chosen to fill the position as Head of Conservation at LACMA. Pieter has been the Senior Research Chemist at LACMA for the past four years. The staff welcomes Pieter to his new post and they look forward to working with him at the helm!

David Kolch, Paintings Conservator at LACMA, was in NYC examining 60 landscape paintings by George Inness in a LACMA organized exhibition which has opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show will travel to Cleveland, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. David also visited Paris to examine the French Impressionist paintings in the exhibition "A Day in the Country" at the close of their tour. He was at the Detroit Institute of Arts to supervise the installation of Ed Kienholz's "Backseat Dodge" which has been lent to the "Automobile and Culture" exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Chris Stavroudis, an Andrew Mellon Fellow in Paintings Conservation and Conservation Research at LACMA, will leave his post to join Tatyana Thompson in her conservation studio on 17 June 1985.

Gwen Tauber, an NMA Intern in Paintings Conservation at LACMA, has accepted an Andrew Mellon Fellowship in Paintings Conservation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Steve Dykstra, an NMA Master Apprentice in Paintings Conservation at LACMA, will soon appear in a KCET (PBS, Los Angeles) "Videolog." He discusses the conservation of "The California Alps, 1874" by William Keith. The 6 x 10' monumental landscape belongs to the Mission Inn Foundation in Riverside, CA.

Pat Reeves, Textile Conservator at LACMA, has been recuperating at home since January due to a broken hip and back. We wish her a speedy recovery!

Catherine McLean is now Associate Textile Conservator at LACMA. Ann Svenson, an NEA Intern in Textile Conservation at LACMA, will become the Assistant Textile Conservator at LACMA in June 1985.

Philip A. Sykas is working in the textile conservation laboratory at LACMA on a four month contract this spring. Philip has a diploma in textile conservation from the Courtauld Institute of Art. His major projects have included the conservation of a 17th century Spanish Altar frontal. He is helping to organize the new textile storage facilities.

Victoria Blyth Hill, Paper Conservator at LACMA, traveled to the Brooklyn Museum to examine the objects in the exhibition "The Light of Asia" at the close of their LACMA organized tour.

Joanne Page, an Advanced Intern in Paper Conservation at LACMA, attended "Conservation of Books and Archival Materials" a course given at the University of Texas in Austin, 10 - 12 April 1985.

Denise Domergue-Wilhite had a 5 lb., 10 oz. baby boy, Axel Emmett Andrew Wilhite, on 31 March.

In between bathing prints, Paper Conservator Leslie Kruth will be bathing her new son, Zachary Brannon, born 19 February 1985. Leslie served on a panel at the Western Museums Conference (a regional meeting of the AAM) in Sacramento last October. She addressed curators who were concerned about a proposal for their certification and she discussed the current controversy over certification for conservators in general. As a practical example she spoke about the certification of paper conservators.

The Huntington Art Gallery has an intern, Nadia Awad, from the USC Art History/Museum Studies Program. Nadia has curated a show of l9th century French drawings by Eugene Blery. In preparation for this show she worked under the supervision of Carol Verheyen learning conservation techniques used to remove 36 drawings from old mounts, then to mat and frame these works for exhibition. They are currently on view through 30 June.

Southern California

Alfredo Antogoni returned in February from a 4 month trip to Europe. He attended the IIC meeting and spent three months studying European conservation technique under Mr. E. Rostain in Paris. He also visited the lab at the Prado where he met Rocio and Maite Davila Alvarez who were working on "Las Hilanderas" by Velasquez.

Joan Samuels is the 1984-85 Mellon Fellow in paintings conservation at the Balboa Art Conservation Center.

BACC has received a matching grant from the NEA to upgrade its climate control and fire protection systems.

BACC paper conservator, Janet Ruggles, and her husband Harry Klemfuss are proud parents of a baby girl, Nola Marie, born 7 March 1985. Janet is currently on maternity leave and will return in September.

Betsy Court married Tom Court on 23 March 1985.

The FAIC sponsored refresher course "Recent Advances in Lining Techniques #3" will be held at BACC 8-12 July. Betsy Court is liaison. The guide will be Gerry Hedley of the Courtauld Institute in London and Al Albano of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The deadline for application was 15 April.

Rocky Mountain Region

The Rocky Mountain Regional Conservation Center has received an NMA grant to conduct a series of collections care workshops in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and North Dakota. RMRCC paper, paintings, objects and textile conservators will each present two-day seminars.

The RMRCC has also been awarded an NEA grant to upgrade their in-house humidity control system.

Terri Schindel, RMRCC student aide has been accepted at The Textile Conservation Center, Hampton Court Place, England. Marjorie Rubin, RMRCC student aide, has been accepted as a conservation student at the London Institute for Archaeology

Wendy Fairchild has joined RMRCC staff as Conservation Technician.

Bob Morgan, Southwestern Textile Restorations, and Jeanne Brako, RMRCC, will present a workshop on the care, history and materials of Southwestern textiles at the Denver Museum of Natural History, during the Durango Collection exhibit. Bob will also conduct a practical Navajo weaving workshop at DMNH in June.

Bob Herskovitz, Arizona Historical Society, and Jeanne Brako have jointly initiated a one-year project to survey the textile collection at AHS. The project is funded in part by an IMS grant. Terri Schindel will also assist in the project.

Arizona

Nancy Odegaard, Arizona State Museum, will join an archaeological conservation team during June and July in the excavation of an earthquake site at Kourion, Cypress. Nancy is also working on a termite control project and hopes to report on that topic in a future newsletter.

Carolyn Beeman of the Mesa Museum in Arizona is presently supervising 25 students from Arizona State University in the recovery and conservation of Classic Hohokam pottery at the Rowley site and of material from a well which dates around the turn of the century. She is also supervising the museum's lab which is staffed by a very active volunteer force.

Phillip Gottfredson, Scottsdale, Arizona, has just completed an article on the prevention of acid migration from frames and stretcher bars to canvas. This article will appear in an A.I.C. publication.

Michael McColgin, Arizona State Archives in Phoenix is conservator of thousands of cubic feet of documents which pertain to the state of Arizona. He is available upon request from Phoenix libraries to demonstrate book repair procedures which might be employed by the libraries for their circulating collections. Conservation News is a quarterly newsletter published under the auspices of the state archives for the Arizona Paper and Photographic Conservation Group.

Oregon & Washington

The Oregon Historical Society and the Northwest Conservation Center are working on a project to conserve a variety of artifacts in the OHS Museum collection. This project is funded by a grant from the IMS and the objects being conserved range from a Chippendale chest-on-chest to a dugout canoe and two objects from the Lewis and Clark expedition. Istor Productions is producing a 30 minute videotape called, "Conservation at the Oregon Historical Society: Objects" about the project. John Barrett has been hired as the wood conservator.

The Thompson Conservation Lab has acquired a Macintosh 512k computer with an infrared scanner. The computer will be used to store treatment records and condition reports which include drawings and photo-documentation. In addition the lab's staff is indexing "Studies in Conservation" for entry into the computer. The acquisition of a few hundred books will augment the lab's present reference collection of 2,000 titles. This new group includes l9th and 20th century book arts journals; bookbinding books; books on papermaking, leather tanning, artists' materials and techniques; and a number of l9th century publishers' bindings for the exemplar file.

Philip Smith, past president of Designer Bookbinders and author of New Directions in Bookbinding, addressed a group of binders and book conservators at the Thompson Conservation Lab on 22 March. That evening he made a general presentation at Lewis and Clark College on modern design books.

Don Guyot, book conservator, paper marbler and proprietor of the Colophon Binder in Seattle, will intern for two months this summer with Frank Mowery at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

Jack Lucas and Sonja Sopher send regards but have no news to report.

The Pacific Region Conservation Group held its 13th semi-annual meeting on 12 April in Victoria, British Columbia. Following the welcome and opening remarks by Barry Byers, conservator at the Provincial Archives, Mary Lou Florian discussed current thinking about the mechanisms of leather deterioration. Nancy Thorn of Portland gave a talk about the techniques of water gilding.

Jane Down, conservation scientist at CCI, gave a presentation about epoxy adhesive testing for joining glass and ceramics.

Janet Bridgland talked about the current activities of the Getty Conservation Institute.

Eric Lawson, private conservator from Bowen Island, B.C., gave a slide presentation on the remarkable state of preservation of a British submarine raised 60 years after sinking.

Salt Lake Region

Brook Bowman, her intern Jeri Clarke and Myrna Saxe have just participated in a yearly conservation maintenance project on the courtyard fountain belonging to Litton Industries in Beverly Hills.

The Harold B. Lee Library of the Brigham Young University in Provo reports that Ellen McCrady, Preservation Librarian; Robert Espinosa, Library Conservator; his assistants Teresa Ciebach and Randall Silverman: Cathy Johansen, Commercial Binding and Kirby Packham, Book Repair, all worked in collaboration with Paul Folger, Conservator at the Marriott Library of the University of Utah to present a seminar on 10 April called, "Care of the Physical Book." Topics included bindings, repair and enclosures.

The Latter Day Saints Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake reports that Sharon Odekirk, objects conservator, and Mia Struteanu, paintings conservator, continue to work on the Church's historic collection of art and artifacts. An additional section of their new facility has opened this year. The conservation department has supported quarterly gatherings of conservators and curators in the Salt Lake area. The most recent meeting was held in their new facility and the topic was fumigation of collections.

Richard Trela, paintings conservator at Brigham Young's Fine Arts Conservation Laboratory in Provo, reports that during his first year at the lab he has been busy working on paintings from the Hudson River and American Impressionist Schools. He is preparing an exhibit on the various aspects of collection management of the University's collections of works of art. The laboratory is preparing for relocation to a new facility in September 1985. Richard has also done some private work for the Montana Historical Society on paintings and bronzes by Franz Kline. These pieces will tour to several locations including a stop in San Francisco this fall.

Brook Bowman, conservator for the Utah State Art Collection in Salt Lake City, writes that the collection has just acquired a new exhibition facility at the historic Chase Mill Home in the city's Liberty Park. She has developed a more effective collection management plan to handle this very active collection. The five year inventory and conservation condition report on the entire collection of 750 works is nearing its completion. Treatment of individual pieces is on going.

Hawaii

The staff of the Pacific Regional Conservation Center at the Bishop Museum would like to introduce itself to our readers in case there are any who may need a contact in the Pacific.

Mary Wood Lee, former chairman of the Pacific Regional Conservation Center, has left Hawaii for the wilds of Chicago where she is now preservation officer at the Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.

Laura Word is now acting chairman of PRCC. She graduated with a master's degree from George Washington University with a specialization in objects conservation.

Gregory Thomas joined the staff in January as senior paintings conservator and is in the process of setting up a paintings conservation facility at the Bishop Museum. He had been teaching at the Cooperstown Graduate Conservation Program.

Natalie Firnhaber is the senior objects conservator. She has been with the lab for five years following time spent at the Institute for Archaeology in London.

Leslie Hill Paisley is senior paper conservator for the lab. She trained through an apprenticeship and by study at the Fogg Center for Conservation and Technical Studies.

Lynne Gilliland is assistant paper conservator and has had a five year apprenticeship at PRCC.

Marion Kaminitz is the lab's advanced level intern. Her position is funded in part by the National Museum Act and by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.