Volume 8, Number 3, Sept. 1986, pp.15-18

Regional News

Bay Area News

BAACG officers have been elected for 1986/87: Keiko Keyes (President); Genevieve Baird (Vice President); Anita Noennig (Secretary); Leslie Bone (Treasurer); Ann Rosenthal (New Board Member at large). Continuing board members: Elizabeth Cornu, Robert Futernick, Robin Tichane, Michael Bell (Newsletter Editor), Barbara Shanley (Membership Secretary).

The staff at Daedalus paper conservation lab in Oakland has been working on two major projects this year. The Wiltsee Memorial Collection housed and displayed in the Wells Fargo Bank History Room is a collection of stamp covers from the days of the Pony Express. The stamp covers bear the marks of the companies that delivered correspondence to territories not yet part of the United States. The collection was originally mounted for display more than forty years ago. The display also includes photographs and documents about the early days of the Western States. The conservation staff is removing the artifacts from stained and acidic backing materials and treating those severely damaged from old display materials. The new display panels have the original text information reproduced on ragboard by photosilkscreening. The project must be completed for the reopening of the remodeled History Room this fall.

Just completed--a group of 200 views of early Mexico by draughtsman Casimiro Castro from mid to late Nineteenth Century. Small, detailed pencil sketches, watercolor studies for color lithographs, hand colored proofs for colored lithographic views had been mounted in a photograph album by a relative of the artist. Deterioration of the album pages was causing damage to the individual pieces. Freed from the crumbling pages, the works are ready to be prepared for display in a new museum for Mexican paintings in Vera Cruz that is also to open this fall. The museum owes its existence to the hard working Governor of Vera Cruz, Augustin Acosta Lagunas.

Anita Noennig is now the senior conservator at Daedalus. Claire Antonetti began working with Anita last summer after having designed a conservation facility for the rare book collection at the University of Oregon. Anita and Claire are assisted by Holly Anderson, Carol Brighton and Cathy Churchill. Nancy Westsmith from the Bancroft Library has given valuable assistance on these special projects.

The Teotihuacan Mural Project of the AOA has acquired an intern for the summer, Steven Rickerby, from the Courtauld Institute Postgraduate Mural Degree Program. The project involves the aluminum mounting of 15-foot long serpent. For further information on this project please contact: Lesley Bone, Associate Conservator, AOA, de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA 94118.

Los Angeles

Steve Cristin-Poucher has been named head of Objects Conservation at the Conservation Center, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Sharon Blank is now the Assistant Objects Conservator at LACMA. Sharon, a 1985 graduate of the Winterthur/University of Delaware Art Conservation Program, is moving to the West Coast after having worked with Nikki Horton at the National Museum of American History, Washington, D C.

Laurie German is now working fulltime in Objects Conservation, LACMA, assuming the internship position vacated by Susan Lansing.

Rosa Lowinger has completed her grant in Objects Conservation, LACMA. In August 1986 she is moving, temporarily, to Charleston, S.C. with her family and she will set up a private practice in objects conservation. Her new address is: 84 Ashley Avenue, Charleston, SC 29211. Phone: (803) 723-7177. We hope to see Rosa back in L.A. soon!

Helene Gilette has completed her internship in Objects Conservation, LACMA, to fulfill the requirements for a conservation degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo (formerly known as the Cooperstown Program). She has accepted an advanced internship to work with Andrew Lins, Objects Conservator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her position is funded by a Kress Foundation grant with matching funds from the Getty Foundation.

Two student volunteers will be assisting Steve Cristin-Poucher in preparation for the installations in LACMA's new Robert O. Anderson wing, scheduled to open in November 1986. David Rausch is from the Museum Studies Program at USC and Peter Kozely is an engineering student at UCLA.

Pat Reeves, former Senior Textile Conservator, LACMA, continues to work for the museum on a part-time, contract basis.

Ann Svenson, Assistant Textile Conservator, LACMA, and Robert Perlman were married in February 1986. They now live in Maui, Hawaii and Ann is setting up a private textile conservation practice on the island. Her new address is: PCB - Suite 110, Maui Mall, Kahului, Hawaii 96732.

Rosanna Zubiate is the new Assistant Textile Conservator, LACMA. She is a recent graduate of the 3 year program at the Textile Conservation Centre at Hampton Court Palace, London, England.

In September 1986, Marcelle Andreasson joins the LACMA conservation staff as the Assistant Paintings Conservator. Presently Marcelle is an intern in paintings conservation at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Previously, she worked at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm and with Bent Hacke in Denmark. Her initial study in conservation was at the Instituto per l'arte e restauro, Florence, from 1981-83.

Suzanne Friend will be the LACMA NEA Fellow in Paintings Conservation for 1986-87. She has just graduated from Queen's University Conservation Programme, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. During the past summer, Suzanne was an intern at the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Virginia Rasmussen, a third-year student in the Winterthur/ University of Delaware Art Conservation Program, will intern in paintings conservation at LACMA for 11 months starting in mid- August.

Nancy Purinton will continue at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for another year on a NEA-Mellon grant. She will assist Victoria Blyth Hill in the paper conservation laboratory with the treatment and preparation of artworks for the new Anderson building. She will also continue research on the pigments found in Persian miniatures.

Caroline Rieger, a student at the New York University Conservation Program, worked as a summer intern in the paper conservation lab at LACMA under the direction of Victoria Blyth Hill. There, her projects included the care of a contemporary Japanese print collection and an experiment with mixed media on a variety of papers. Caroline also assisted in the treatment of some oversized works of art on paper. In addition, she worked 1 day a week with Leslie Kruth in her private paper conservation studio.

Sharon Shore at Caring for Textiles, Los Angeles, is the recent recipient of a contract to conserve and mount five 17th century Spanish clerical textiles for Hearst Castle, California State Historic Park.

Carol Kenyon announces the relocation of the South Coast Fine Arts Conservation Center, Inc. to 3 East de la Guerra Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101. Formerly this was the studio location of the Art Conservation Laboratories of Santa Barbara, Inc. The Center, directed by Carol Kenyon, specializes in Spanish Colonial works of art and is presently working for several of the California Missions. The staff includes Patricia Zavagno, Mel Knowles, and Mark Lozano, and is equipped for the conservation of paintings and other objects of art. You are invited to visit their studio. Their phone number is (805) 965-2273.

Conservation Services of Santa Monica announces that Camilla van Vooren is apprenticing with paintings conservator J. L. Greaves.

The Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) has hired six new staff members this past July. Irena Averkieff, former Editor at the UCLA Museum of Cultural History for the past three and one half years, has accepted the position of Publications Coordinator at the GCI.

Also formerly with the UCLA Museum of Cultural History, Benita Johnson has been appointed Training Program Coordinator at the GCI after having spent seven years as the Conservator at the Museum. Benita graduated from the Queen's University Art Conservation Programme in 1978.

John Perkins has left Parks Canada, Atlantic Region in Halifax where he has been the Senior Conservator of Furniture and Wooden Objects for the past six years. John has assumed the position of Documentation Program Projects Coordinator and will manage the GCI's conservation information network.

Barbara Snyder is working on database and network development as the Documentation Program Assistant after having left her position as Systems Integration Engineer at the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Amy Taketomo has left her position of Senior Research Chemist in polymer development at Analytichem in Harbor City to accept the position of Assistant Scientist in Materials Science at the GCI.

Steve Weintraub has been appointed Head of Conservation Processes. He comes from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where he was the Associate Conservator for Objects for the past eleven years. Steve is a graduate of the NYU program in art conservation.

Jerry Podany has accepted the position of Conservator/Department Head, Antiquities Conservation, J. Paul Getty Museum.

Susan Lansing has joined the staff of the Department of Antiquities Conservation, J. Paul Getty Museum. She will fill the position of Conservation Assistant for one year. Among her first duties will be to assist in the evaluation of matting agents added to acrylic coatings for bronzes. Susan has spent the last 7 months working as an intern in Objects Conservation, LACMA.

James Stahl, Conservation Technician in the Department of Antiquities Conservation, J. Paul Getty Museum, presented a paper on new developments in mountmaking for seismic protection at a recent symposium at California Afro-American Art Museum on "Earthquake Damage Mitigation Methods for Art Objects on Display."

Maya Barov will be working with Paolo and Laura Mora, Giorgio Torraca and other distinguished members of a team of scientists and conservators from Rome at the House of Menander in Pompeii for three weeks in September. Maya will present a short seminar on this work when she returns.

Southern California

Ann Discenza will be the 1986-7 Mellon Fellow in paintings conservation at BACC, and Marc Harnly will join Janet Ruggles in the paper conservation laboratory of BACC in October for a one-year fellowship. A donation from Dr. and Mrs. James Lasry will enable BACC to investigate the use of CAT-Scan technology in the examination of polychromed sculpture, working with Drs. John W. Hilton and Deborah Reimer at Sharp Cabrillo Hospital.

Kenneth Wyrick, formerly of ACL, writes from Santa Barbara that he is continuing his work with the Pan American Foundation as director of research and development. He is working to form Art Collections Conservation Network (ACCN) which will be a computerized network for the exchange of conservation information Kenneth continues to do private work in a studio connected to his house.

Rocky Mountain Region

David C. Bauer, a graduate of the Cooperstown program and former Assistant Conservator at the North Carolina Museum of Art, has joined the staff of the Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts in Denver as Associate Conservator, August 1, 1986.

Carl Grimm, Director; Chief Paintings Conservator at WCCFA, and J. William Shank, Paintings Conservator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, exchanged positions for two weeks in July for information exchange as well as a refreshing break.

Madeleine Hexter, having been the recent pre-professional paintings conservation intern at WCCEA, has moved to Delaware to begin her first year in the Winterthur/University of Delaware graduate program in art conservation. Congratulations and good luck to you Madeleine.

The Colorado Conservation Center recently went to Provo, Utah to survey a collection of J.A. Weir works of art on paper. Brigham Young University has additionally awarded the Center a contract for $10,000 to begin work on the restoration of the collection.

The Colorado Conservation Center and the Chicago Conservation Center will be working jointly on a survey of the works of art in the collection at the Museum in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The survey will include paintings, paper, and objects. Connie Wanke of the Colorado Conservation Center will be guest lecturer at the Denver Art Museum Asian Art Society meeting in November 1986. Her lecture will concern the care of Japanese prints. Connie Wanke, of the Colorado Conservation Center, was recently awarded a commendation from Children's Hospital in Denver, Colorado, for her past consultation and assistance to their Art and Antiques consignment shop, La Cache. Ms. Wanke, as well as a number of other area professionals donate their services to help the shop with items received.

Salt Lake Region

Five full-time positions in the Brigham Young University Library's Preservation Department were transferred in early July 1986 from staff or administrative to faculty status, as part of an overall library reorganization. This upgraded the status of the conservator (Robert Espinosa) and three conservation assistants (Anna Stenstrom, Randy Silverman and one other to be hired), as well as that of the librarian who supervises bindery preparation. The implications are far-reaching. The new policies that accompanied the status change are expected to permit, encourage and support professional activities such as attendance at national conferences, research, publication, and participation in local and national organizations. Job-related skills and achievements, including good administrative and supervisory performance, will continue to be rewarded as they were before. Most persons affected will move into a higher salary bracket. A total of twenty-one library employees were granted faculty status in the reorganization. Evaluation for hiring, promotion and tenure will be done by a committee of peers. Library faculty will work the full year, not the academic year, because the library has to be open all year round; they will be called librarians, not professors; and they will not be required to "publish or perish." Aside from such obvious exceptions, they will be working under the same personnel policies now in use for teaching faculty, by and large. Like the teaching faculty, they must ordinarily have a formal degree (or its equivalent, in conservation) to be hired at the assistant (starting) level. After six years, they are normally evaluated for promotion and for permanent status (tenure). If they do not achieve permanent status, they have to look elsewhere for a job. In this and other ways, faculty status encourages professionals to move around more, which will have an invigorating effect on the profession, the individual, and the institutions involved.

Oregon & Washingon

Your reporter (Jack Thompson) is writing these notes on a train traveling between Leeds and York, in England. Two days were spent in the Boyle Library at the University of Leeds, which, until about 1978, had a division for leather science within their Food Sciences department. The library's holdings in leather related publications was interesting, but not unusual or extensive. There were 10 M.A. and Ph.D. theses which contained useful information. A side trip was made to Lincoln, to examine the Lincoln Cathedral copy of Magna Carta (dated 1215), which will be touring in the U.S. from June, 1986, through January, 1988. Jack Thompson has been selected as conservation consultant for Magna Carta while it is in the U.S.

Sam Bush, a furniture conservator in Portland has designed the exhibit case, and Thompson has designed and installed environmental controls to maintain approximately 50 RH, and an alarm system which will go off if 10 ft. candles of light is exceeded. Control of RH is something of a problem in that at some exhibition sites, Magna Carta will be removed from the case each night and be returned each morning...! [Sam and Jack will coauthor a paper about this exhibit case for a future WAAC issue].