Volume 8, Number 2, May 1986, pp.13-19

Regional News

Los Angeles

Wayne Haak has joined the department of Antiquities Conservation at the JPGM as a Conservation Technician. Eight years designer and picture framer for several major wholesale galleries. Three years at the Mingei International Museum of World Folk Art in San Diego as an exhibits preparator. One year at the San Diego Museum of Art as an exhibits preparator. Other skills include painting and pottery.

Judith Claire Dean (Claire Dean) will be joining the department of Antiquities Conservation in May, 1986. Claire will fill the position of Assistant Conservator. Claire earned her Post Graduate Diploma in Archaeological Conservation in 1984 from the University of Durham, Durham, England. She has extensive archaeological conservation experience and most recently she was conservator on the Princeton University Polis Archaeological Project, Cyprus.

Joe Fronek has joined LACMA's Conservation Center as the Senior paintings conservator. Most recently, Joe was the Chief Conservator at the Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas, Austin.

Glenn Wharton will be leaving LACMA in May. He will be site conservator for the Princeton Expedition at Polis, on Cyprus this summer. He plans to spend the fall traveling in India and South East Asia. When he returns in November he will be opening a private practice in Objects Conservation in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.

Helene Gilette is currently spending one month of her internship at LACMA working in the Decorative Arts Conservation Dept., at JPGM under the supervision of Billie Milam. She will be concentrating on the conservation and technical studies of European sculpture.

Don Menveg, Assistant Conservator in Objects Conservation at LACMA, recently attended a three week seminar in the Netherlands on French Polishing the History of Furniture Styles, and Specialized Tool Fabrication. The course was sponsored by the Amsterdam Academy for Restoration (S.A.A.R.)

Nancy Purinton has received an additional one year grant from the N.E.A. to continue her research on Persian Miniature Pigments and her work assisting with the Paper Conservation Lab at LACMA.

Mark Mitton has joined the staff in the Decorative Arts Conservation Department at JPGM as Conservation Technician. He will be specializing in the design and fabrication of mount assemblies for the Department. Prior to this position, Mark worked in the same capacity at both the Heard Museum in Phoenix and the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles.

Adam Avila has returned to LACMA as Conservation Photographer. He was a member of the Photography Department at LACMA from 1972-1980. From 1980-1985 he established a free lance business in art photography.

Victoria Blyth Hill, Paper Conservator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art has been selected as one of 12 conservators to participate in a 5-day workshop on the Conservation of Japanese Woodblock Prints. The goal of the course is to provide essential guidelines for the conservation of this fragile art form, demonstration and practical experience of some basic techniques of restorative treatment and an introduction to the history and connoisseurship of Japanese prints. The workshop will be at the Intermuseum Laboratory in Oberlin, Ohio from June 23-27, 1986, taught jointly by Keiko Mizushima Keyes, Paper Conservator and Roger S. Keyes, Ph.D., Art Historian. The course is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Japanese Woodblock Prints in San Rafael, California.

Southern California

The Fifth Southern California Registrars Meeting was held at the San Diego Museum of Art on 24 January 1986 with 78 registrants and a day-long workshop on "Safeguarding Your Collection from the Primary and Secondary Effects of Earthquakes." Speakers included Melvyn Green, Structural Engineer of Melvyn Green & Associates on "Structural Vulnerability of Museums and Historical Buildings"; Bruce Metro, Head of Preparations at the J. Paul Getty Museum on "Safeguarding Objects on Display"; and Louis M. Goldich, Registrar of the San Diego Museum of Art on "Safeguarding Objects in Storage." There will be no written proceedings from the meeting, but those interested in the information presented, or in joining the Registrars Committee Western Region, which is affiliated with the Western Museums Conference and the American Association of Museums, should contact Louis M. Goldich, Secretary/Treasurer, RC-WR, San Diego Museum of Art, P.O. Box 2107, San Diego, CA 92112-2107.

BACC will host a meeting of the Association of Cooperative Conservation Centers at BACC and the Sea Lodge in La Jolla, 7-10 May 1986. Directors and administrative assistants from eleven non-profit regional centers will attend. It will be the fourth such meeting in eight years.

Arizona

Nancy Odegaard, Arizona State Museum, Tucson, reports that they will begin a multidisciplinary study of the museum's kachina collection beginning in September. Curators, conservators, and historians will review the documentation, identification, attribution, and condition report phase of this project. Storage will be expanded for easier access to the collection.

The survey on the condition of the Cordroy Mexican mask collection has been completed and storage facilities have been upgraded. The stabilization of the museum's Hohokom pottery collection is continuing, and Nancy is happy to announce that her lab has been expanded.

Maree Lee Smith, intern with Gloria Fraser Giffords, will be assisting the conservation team, headed by Cap Sease, for the 1986 University of Arizona excavations in Kourion, Cyprus, this summer under the direction of Dr. David Soren.

The Campbell Conservation Center held their winter sessions in Arizona at the Arizona Historical Society and at the Western Archeological Center. Sessions on paintings, textiles, furniture, and architectural conservation were given.

Rocky Mountain Region

The Colorado Conservation Center has been working for several months on a large grant for the Western History Division of The Denver Public Library. Under Boetcher Foundation and NEA Grants the Center is surveying and beginning restoration work on over 1000 rare and valuable maps in the collection. The current grant covers maps pre-dating 1900. The grant includes survey, remedial conservation work, encapsulation, workshops, and computerizing the collection. The work is being done both on site and at the Colorado Conservation Center.

Connie Wanke, Conservator, Colorado Conservation Center has been asked to participate in a Print Symposium at the Colorado Graphic Arts Center. The Symposium, funded by the Mayor's Commission on Cultural Affairs and the Colorado Council on the Arts and Humanities will include studio tours of artists, technical demonstrations, seminars and lectures on the history of prints. A special section will be held on conservation and archival practices for artists and collectors.

The Colorado Conservation Center just completed work on a Grant for the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka Kansas. The Center is also currently working for the Denver Art Museum, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, The University of Alaska, and a number of other western art institutions.

The Yellowstone Art Center has awarded a large contract to the Colorado Conservation Center for the conservation of their one-of-a-kind collection of Ledger Art of the Crow and Gros Ventre Indians. Funded by the Montana Arts Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the grant covers the restoration of 66 rare drawings and paintings.

Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts is currently working with the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, the Kansas State Historical Society and the Denver Art Museum to complete conservation projects under I.M.S. and N.E.A. grants. Emmett Carl Grimm, director and chief paintings conservator, and Dr. David Curry, curator of American Art at the Denver Art Museum, have been working closely together to uncover the original image of one of Edward Hick's Peaceable Kingdom from the museum collection; the painting had been overpainted on at least four different occasions to cover extensive drying cracks.

Carmen Bria, Jr., paintings conservator, has been treating the extremely deteriorated Portrait of Andrew H. Reeder by Cyrenius Hall, 1888, a 6 ft. X 8 ft. portrait owned by the Kansas State Historical Society, one of four grant pieces from KSHS being treated at WCCFA.

WCCFA is pleased to announce that it has recently been invited to become a member of both the National Institute for Conservation and The Conservators in Private Practice.

Robert McCarroll, Paper Conservator at the RMRCC, has been selected to be one of several conservators and art historians to participate in an intensive 10 day workshop on Far Eastern Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This workshop, sponsored by the Kress Foundation, will cover the traditional preparation of fusuma (decorative sliding doors) and tokonoma (picture alcove) for a shoin-style (study) room in the Met's new Japanese galleries.

Mary McGrath of Dublin, Ireland is spending 2 months at the RMRCC as a visiting conservator of paintings. This is a return visit for Mary who spent one year in 1983-84 at the RMRCC as its paintings conservator. Mary recently lectured in Lander, Wyoming on collections care. This lecture was made possible by a grant to the RMRCC from the NEA.

Hawaii

PRCC at Bishop Museum is planning a series of workshops this summer for museum personnel. This will continue the efforts of the Center to promote basic conservation practices and awareness in the Pacific region. The Center is also busy preparing for two summer work projects involving four students from graduate conservation programs.

Laura Word, PRCC Chairman, has just returned from the Burke Museum in Seattle, WA., where she spent five days doing a conservation needs assessment of their ethnology collection. Laura is also busy working with architects and staff on designs for a new conservation facility at Bishop Museum.

Natalie Firnhaber, left the Objects Lab in November 1985 to begin working at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

Jane Bassett, was hired January 1, 1986 as assistant objects conservator. She is already busy working with Laura Word on a Roman mosaic and an Egyptian limestone relief. She is also working with Laura Word on the treatment of a reconstructed Turkish room which has suffered extensive termite damage.

Laura D'Alessandro, PRCC's Andrew W. Mellon Fellow for 1985-86 has recently completed preparation of 70 Micronesian artifacts from the Bishop Museum's ethnology collection for exhibition at the University of Hawai'i.

Lynne Gilliland, has recently finished a survey of the Bishop Museum's daguerreotype collection. She visually examined and microscopically cleaned eighty-two daguerreotypes. Lynne traveled to Likiep in the Marshall Islands for two weeks to train museum personnel in the curatorial care of a collection of papers and photographs. These papers relate to the first site in Micronesia to have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Lynne left PRCC in early April to begin her new position at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Leslie Hill Paisley, recently returned from maternity leave after the birth of her new daughter, Chloe. She is busy working on lab improvements in the paper lab and several local grant projects for the Hawaiian Historical Society and Bishop Museum.

Gregory Thomas, traveled to Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii to do a survey of Hitchcock paintings and sketches. Greg also did a survey of twelve paintings by regional artists belonging to the Honolulu Academy of Arts. He is now preparing these paintings for exhibition in 1987. Last fall Greg returned to Cooperstown, NY to present his slide-lecture series on the history of painting technology to the new class in the Art Conservation Department (SUCB).