Volume 7, Number 3, Sept. 1985, pp.18-22

Regional News

San Francisco

Elections for new Bay Area Conservation Guild Officers were held in May/June. The new officers are:

Anne Rosenthal, President
Tom Portue, Vice President
Nancy Harris, Secretary
Lesley Bone, Treasurer
Robin Tichane, Member-at-Large
Elisabeth Cornu, Member-at-Large
Continuing:
Keiko Keyes, Board Member
Robert Futernick, Board Member
Meg Geiss-Mooney, Newsletter Editor
Linda Scheifler, Membership Secretary

In other news Geoffrey Brown will be traveling to Japan in September to participate in a symposium at Hokaido University in Sapporo. He will be talking about the care and treatment of wax cylinder recordings. He has recently returned from Colorado where he was a consultant for the American Society of State and Local History for the Butte Pass Museum. Karen Zukor has 'secretly' married and rumor has it that she will be traveling to Paris this fall to celebrate.

Steve Miller will be leaving the Decorative Arts Objects Conservation Laboratory at the De Young at the end of September to assume the position of Chief Conservator at the National Museum of African Art, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Madeleine Hexter, a pre-conservation program intern with the Decorative Arts Objects Lab at the De Young has accepted a pre- professional position at the Western Center for Conservation of Fine Arts in Denver, under the supervision of Carl Grimm.

Cara Varnell will be leaving the Textile Conservation Laboratory at the De Young at the end of August.

Bob Futernick and Janice Schopfer attended a seminar held in San Francisco in June, "Excellence in Hand Bookbinding." (See Meetings and Conferences in Review.)

WRPCL intern Julie Goldman will be leaving in September to begin work as assistant conservator at the Center for the Conservation of Art and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia. WRPCL's 1985-86 intern will be Marc Harnly, a student in the Cooperstown Graduate Program. Former intern Barbara Stahler-Sholk continues residence in Managua and works at the National Museum of Nicaragua.

Los Angeles

David Kolch accepted a position as Paintings Conservator at the Art Institute of Chicago. He has vacated his position as Paintings Conservator at LACMA and everyone misses him!

Steve Dykstra has completed his NMA Master Apprenticeship in paintings conservation at LACMA. He will spend the next few months with E. Carl Grimm in Denver.

The textile lab at LACMA welcomes back Rosanna Zubiate for her second summer internship. Rosanna has completed her second year of the three year post-graduate course at the Textile Conservation Center at Hampton Court Palace in London. This summer Rosanna will focus on the organization of the costume storage facilities at LACMA. Philip Sykas, who worked in textile conservation at LACMA this past spring is now the Textile Conservator at the Platt Hall Gallery of English costume in Manchester, England.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has several major construction projects in progress. The Robert O. Anderson Gallery for 20th century art is scheduled for completion in the fall of 1986. It will be located at the center front of the museum complex. In the northeast corner of the complex, ground has just been broken for the Pavilion for Japanese Art which will house the museum's Japanese art collection and the Shin'en Kan Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Price.

Tatyana Thompson had a 7 lb. 9 oz. baby boy, Alexander Mather, on 1 August 1985. Tatyana has been engaged in a project to conserve paintings from the Panza Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The Workman and Temple Homestead in the City of Industry is surveying the conservation needs of the paintings and textiles in their collection. The staff of this historic house has been working with Tatyana Thompson and textile conservator, Sharon Gordon Donnan. Sharon has just returned from her third season with the UCLA excavation at Pacatnamu in northern Peru. Each summer Sharon assembled a textile conservation field laboratory in this remote region of Peru.

The Skirball Museum, Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles is the recipient of an IMS grant to survey the condition and conservation needs of the collection. Conservators who will be working on the project include: Sharon Shore, Leslie Kruth, Georgette Grosz, Ron Tank and Zdravko Barov.

Joanne Page is now the Assistant Paper Conservator at LACMA.

Glenn Wharton, an Andrew Mellon Fellow in Objects Conservation at LACMA, spent two weeks this summer treating the Lehmann Gates of the New York Central Park Zoo with Phoebe Dent Weil. As part of his research in outdoor sculpture techniques, he visited Talix Foundry in Peekskill, New York and Lippincott Art Fabricators in North Haven, Conn.

Yvonne Szafran has accepted a position as visiting paintings conservator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She will be in residence from September 1985 through May 1986, after which she will return to the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The Urishi Study Group, organized by Barbara Roberts through the J. Paul Getty Institute and The Tokyo National Research Institute, visited lacquer workshops, lacquer restoration facilities, and national treasures in Japan during the month of June. The purpose of the visit was to initiate an exchange of information about the deterioration of lacquer objects and methods for their conservation. We look forward to the publication of papers written by participants of the group. The group consisted of: Barbara Roberts, Rosamond Westmoreland, Susanne Barchalia, Billie Milam, Beatrix Von Rague, Alena Skalova, Frank Preusser, Thomas Chase, Gary Carriveau, Steven Weintraub, Andreas Burmester, Nicholas Umney, Lee Jong Seok, George Kuwayama, Zhou Bao Zhong and Du Yu Min.

Aitchison and Watters, Inc. has recently opened their expanded paper conservation facility at 914 N. King Road #3, West Hollywood, CA 90069 (213) 650-7263.

Scott Haskins, painting conservator of the Art Conservation Laboratories in Santa Barbara, attended the recent FAIC Lining Refresher course in San Diego.

Rosa Lowinger, private objects conservator in Philadelphia, has moved to Los Angeles for the academic year 1985-86. Her husband, Fred Brandon, has been given a one year appointment as Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southern California.

Linda Strauss, Conservation Assistant of Decorative Arts at the J. Paul Getty Museum, has recently returned from the Attingham Summer School Session in England.

James Stahl has been appointed Conservation Technician in the antiquities conservation department of the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Elisabeth Mention will be taking maternity leave from the paintings conservation department of the Getty beginning 15 September through 15 March 1986.

Jane Bassett will be spending six months as an intern at the UCLA Museum of Cultural History starting fall 1985. Jane will be working on ethnographic objects under the supervision of Benita Johnson.

Susanna Pauli and Marcelle Andreasson begin nine month internships at the Getty paintings lab this September. Susanna was trained by Barbara Schleicher, private paintings conservator in Florence. She spent this past summer working at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Marcelle trained under Ben Hack of the Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Aarhus, Denmark.

Mary Anne Morris, Assistant Conservator of Photography, is returning to England this month after the termination of her one year appointment at the J. Paul Getty Museum. We wish her the best of luck with her graduate studies in art history. Following her departure James Evans will be assuming Mary Anne's responsibilities as Assistant Conservator of Photographs

Southern California

Alfredo Antognini and Gary Wade Alden are working August and September in Spain on the second year of a project to conserve an important 15th century altarpiece by Fernando Gallego in the 12th century Church of Lorenzo el Real in the city of Toro just outside of Madrid. A cooperative team of North American and Spanish conservators will also include Soni Veliz from the USA and Carmen Del Valle from the National Institute of Conservation at the Ministry of Culture in Madrid as team leaders; two other Spanish restorers; and an American student from the Winterthur training program. In conjunction with the restoration project, there will also be a technical study of the materials and pictorial procedures used by Fernand Gallego, and the construction of the altarpiece. Identification of the pigments, media and wood will be undertaken by scientists of the paintings conservation department of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A bilingual English/Spanish publication of the technical study together with historical discussion will contribute to the study of Hispano-Flemish painting, which has been largely absent from the technical literature.

Joan Samuels has joined the staff at BACC as paintings conservator. Gary Hulbert is the 1985-86 Mellon Fellow in paintings conservation at BACC and Ann Discenza from the Winterthur Training Program, will begin her internship at BACC in September following a summer project at the Bayou Bend Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

Rocky Mountain Region

The WCCFA has been working with the Colorado Council for the Arts and Humanities which has a large collection of artwork located throughout the state.

Carmen Bria, Jr., paintings conservator at WCCFA, lectured at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, as part of the NAWA show and seminar. He spoke about laws which affect artists, collectors and conservators.

The WCCFA is finishing work on two large IMS Grant Projects for the Denver Art Museum. Being treated are a pair of large 15th century Italian oil on panel paintings by Bonifazio Bembo and a six foot high Guatemalan Colonial painting on panel with attached polychrome sculpture depicting the crucified Christ with the Virgin and St. John.

Both the WCCFA and the Colorado Conservation Center have surveyed the collections of the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka.

The Colorado Conservation Center has just completed work on a large show of 17th century engravings for the Winchester Museum at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. Part of the project involved recording watermarks using a process of photographic photographs were included in the exhibition.

Christine Young has taken the job of paper conservator at the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Christine was formerly with the Indianapolis Historical society. Christine has completed her publication titled, "So, You Want To Preserve History? Some Things You should Know: Making New Documents/Caring For Old." The booklet is part of a larger educational project sponsored by the Indianapolis Historical Society and funded by the Indiana Committee for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copies are available from the Indiana Historical Society.

The Colorado Conservation Center has completed work on a watercolor by James Stewart Ball for the Isabel Miller Museum in Sitka, Alaska.

Bob McCarroll, paper conservator at the RMRCC, attended the program, "Workshop: The Making of a Drying Screen," at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This workshop was hosted by the MMA Far Eastern Conservation Department as part of their Starr Fellowship Program.

Jose Orraca, photographs conservator, has presented a series of workshops on the care of photographs and has conducted surveys of photo collections in the Rocky Mountain Region. His expertise was made available through an NEA grant to the RMRCC.

The RMRCC hosted "The Care of Conservators," a three day seminar on health hazards to conservators. The seminar was presented by the Center for Occupational Hazards. The seminar which was presented by Monona Rossol was invaluable, and we urge others to attend when the course next becomes available. Ms. Rossol also gave a one day workshop to area museums on health and safety which was held at the Denver Museum of Natural History.

Oregon & Washington

Sonja Sopher of the Portland Art Museum, attended the paintings' refresher course held in San Diego during July as well as the photographic conservation seminar held in Rochester during August.

The Pacific Region Conservation Group will meet in Vancouver, B.C. 30 September. Miriam Clavir will host the group at the Anthropology Museum of U.B.C. Merv Hutchinson is program chair.

Robyn A. Pokorny, Thompson Conservation Lab, has been accepted as an artist in residence at the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts. As such she will be their first bookbinder in residence.

Recent projects at the Thompson Conservation Laboratory include relining the original scale drawing for the Astoria Column, a Great Northern Railway monument located in Astoria, Oregon. The drawing measures 89 x 42". Videotaping has been completed for another Istor Production. This one is entitled, "Paper Cleaning: Wet and Dry Methods." Videotaping is nearly complete for a tape contracted by the Oregon Historical Society about objects conservation. The lab is currently involved in the manufacture of a vacuum leaf caster and in the production of alum tawed parchment.

Salt Lake Region

Dale Heaps of the L.D.S.Church Paper Conservation Lab reports that it has been a quiet summer, but suggests that paper conservators who would like to obtain material generated from the 10th Anniversary Conference of The Institute of Paper Conservation called "New Directions in Paper Conservation" which was held during April at Oxford, England, should contact: Alan Howell, The Geological Society Burlington House, London, W-l VOJU England.

The Preservation Lab of the Marriot Library at the University of Utah is excited about plans to expand its facility. Jean Tarascio is due to return 14 September after completing her internship in Bookbinding at the Library of Congress.

From the conservation lab of the L.D.S. Church Museum of Church History and Art, Mia Strutaneau and Sharon Odekirk have just completed work on three major exhibits: "Flight of the Imagination", "Images of Joseph Smith" and "Hmong Tapestries."

The Utah Conservation Association met 4 September at the Brigham Young University. The subject of discussion was "Disaster Preparation."

Ellen McCrady of Brigham Young's Harold B. Lee Library in Provo reports that the library suffered a minor flood on 8 June on the first and second levels. The problem was caused by a faulty control valve in the lawn sprinkler system which allowed the system to run three hours longer than the scheduled 20 minutes. The Library's Disaster Preparedness Plan which was initially prepared by conservator Craig Jensen and was recently modified by Ellen McCrady, proved to be valuable. The water was discovered by a student custodian who reported the situation to her supervisor. The supervisor then consulted the emergency booklet and was able to notify the appropriate people by phone.

Terry Ciebach, a technician in the lab of the Harold B. Lee Library, has been accepted into Columbia University's 3 year training program for Library and Archives Conservators. Terry began her association with the Library in 1981.

Brook Bowman has just completed a consulting contract in Salt Lake City with the University of Utah's Museum of Natural History. The project involved the monitoring of environmental conditions at a new storage facility which houses important ethnographic and natural history collections. This research resulted in recommendations for design modifications of the facility.