Volume 13, Number 2, May 1991, pp.5-9

Regional News

Hawaii

The paper lab at the Pacific Regional Conservation Center has been busy with visiting conservators. Debra Evans (honorary member of PRCC and winner of the "most visits" award) spent ten days working in the lab in March. Janet English is working in the paper lab for 1-1/2 months. Janet is visiting from Oberlin, Ohio, and will be working on a wide diversity of objects: fine art drawings, an ancient Japanese document and a Spanish manuscript from Guam. Downey Manoukian is being kept busy with upcoming exhibitions at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

The objects lab at the Pacific Regional Conservation Center has been devoting a considerable amount of time to the planning and preparation for the move of the Bishop Museum's Anthropology collections into the new Castle Building on the Bishop Museum grounds. The NEH and NSF funded move will take place over the next three years and will involved compactorized storage of approximately 130,000 artifacts from Hawaii and the Pacific. Much of the labor for preparation of the artifacts and for actually transporting them will be provided by a team of 14 PRCC trained Collection Management Assistant volunteers.

Larry Pace will be presenting two public lectures at the Bishop Museum on the history of the oil painting technique and the conservation challenges posed by variations on the technique through history.

The objects and paper labs have been participating in conservation surveys around the state. To date, PRCC has carried out detailed condition surveys for 18 institutions in the state of Hawaii with four additional surveys to be completed by the end of 1991. The recently completed survey for Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaii was a particularly challenging one as it addressed long-standing mold and insect problems which affect a large percentage of the library's two million volumes.

regional reporter:
Jane Bassett
PRCC, Bishop Museum
P 0 Box 19000A
Honolulu, HI 96817 808/848-4113

Greater Los Angeles and Santa Barbara

As of June, 1990, Suzanne Deal Booth has left her position as Training Coordinator at the Getty Conservation Institute to become a private conservation consultant. Projects include the coordination/compilation of materials for Recent Lining Methods and Related Processes, a collaboration between the Royal Danish Academy and the Getty Conservation Institute.

Frank Lambert, Professor Emeritus in Chemistry, Occidental College, has worked closely with the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute over the past 8 years. Dr. Lambert will be pursuing other interests and will no longer be available for continuous consultation. His contributions to scientific research in the field of conservation have been greatly appreciated by those who have worked with him.

Sharon Blank's first six months at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County have been extremely busy, writing three grants and preparing for what is probably the biggest IMS conservation survey ever done (main museum, 2 satellite museums and 8 warehouses). She is officially in the History Division (yes, Barbie dolls, rubber raincoats, etc.) but has been given the responsibility of developing a conservation program for the entire museum.

The Natural History Museum of LA County was awarded a Conservation Project Grant from IMS. The survey team consists of Catherine Hawks (Team Coordinator), Victoria Blyth-Hill, Gerald Fitzgerald, Carl Patterson, Robert Waller and Steven Weintraub. They are working with in house conservator Sharon Blank and registrars Lella Smith and Maren Jones. The team spent one week in February burrowing into the collections and archives and are now in the process of evaluating their notes and making recommendations.

Victoria Blyth-Hill, Suzanne Deal Booth, Denise Domergue and Rosa Lowinger participated in a seminar on conservation organized by Sotheby's Los Angeles office. It was part of a series of 8 seminars called "The Informed Collector."

Lana McCaffrey is moving to Los Angeles in mid-May to be with her husband, who will be working there. Leaving her position as Textile Conservation Assistant at the North Carolina Museum of History, Lana looks forward to becoming active in the conservation community in the LA area.

Neil Rhodes and Shelley Svoboda, of the LACMA Conservation Center, have announced that they will be married on July 6, 1991.

Tatyana M. Thompson presented a lecture in February at the Armand Hammer Museum and Cultural Center on the care of paintings for curators and collectors.

As part of an ongoing series for museum studies graduate students, Tatyana M. Thompson, Mary Hough and Aneta Zebala have presented lectures on the conservation and care of paintings for the University of Southern California and California State University, Long Beach.

Rosa Lowinger of Sculpture Conservation Studio in Santa Monica announces that Hiroko Kariya has joined her staff as a pre-program intern. Hiroko has just completed her BA in art history from SUNY-Buffalo. When she isn't supervising her new intern, Rosa is receiving excellent reviews for the off-Broadway play that she authored. Entitled "The Encanto File," it played at the Judith Anderson Theater at 42nd and 9th Avenue through 19 April 1991. Although the story is not about conservation, Rosa says that her next one will be.

Robert Aitchison and Mark Watters once again are doing business as Aitchison and Watters, Inc. and are celebrating their 1-year anniversary in their new location, 740 N. La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles. Monica Townsend, Mary Holmes and Lisa Forman are continuing to assist Mark and Robert in the studio and office.

Tatyana Thompson is coordinating a collaborative effort with Mark Watters, Glenn Wharton and Sharon Shore on a conservation treatment proposal for three Rauschenberg paintings at MOCA.

In February, Denise Domergue, Carolyn Tallent, Joseph Hammer and Pamela Gonzales of Conservation of Paintings, Ltd., Santa Monica, conducted a seminar on the conservation of contemporary art and a tour of their studio for the members of the Art and the Law Committee, an interest group of the California Bar Association. In addition, Carolyn spent a three-week working visit in Ohio, where she divided her time between the Intermuseum Conservation Laboratory in Oberlin and Yoder Conservation in Cleveland.

After 5 years at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Marcelle Andreasson, Associate Conservator of Paintings, has decided to return to Europe. She came to the US in 1985 as an intern at the J. Paul Getty Museum, after which she took her position at LACMA.

Lone Bogh, a paintings conservator from the Royal Museum of Art in Copenhagen, has just finished a 6-week stay at LACMA as part of an exchange program known as International Partnerships Among Museums, directed by AAM and ICOM. During her visit, Lone took part in the conservation of a 19th century Danish painting by Kobke and demonstrated traditional Danish restoration techniques.

As part of her IMS Fellowship in Conservation to survey and research Tibetan thangkas at LACMA, Susan Sayre Batton recently spent a week studying Himalayan painting collections on the East Coast. The highlight of the trip was visiting the Newark Museum's distinguished Tibetan collection, founded in 1911.

In March, Joanne Page participated in a panel presentation entitled "Toward a California Preservation Program". The California State Library organized the conference, which was one of four being held in different locations in the state, to develop a statewide plan to meet the preservation and conservation needs of California's libraries and archives. Joanne discussed the conservator's role in preservation, and networking among conservators.

Pieter Meyers has just returned from a working vacation in Japan, where he visited the cities of Tokyo, Kyoto and Nara. During his stay, Pieter gave lectures at the Ancient Orient Museum Tokyo; participated in a discussion of collaboration on lead isotope ratio studies at the Tokyo National Research Institute of Cultural Properties; and examined Sasanian silver objects both in museums and private collections.

Meredith Montague has just spent 10 weeks observing techniques and exchanging information with the textile conservators at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Meredith is currently working in LACMA's textile conservation lab as an intern from the art conservation program at Buffalo State College.

Catherine McLean has returned to work after a 10-week maternity leave to care for her new daughter, Sylvana Elektra McLean.

regional reporters:
Catherine McLean
Conservation Center, LACMA
5905 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036 213/857-6169

and

Glenn Wharton
549 Hot Springs Road
Santa Barbara, CA 93108 805/565-3639

Texas

Elizabeth Lunning has been appointed the Conservator of Works of Art on Paper at the Menil Collection in Houston. Elizabeth come to the Menil from her previous position of Associate Conservator in the Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Department at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Jan Sobato has been appointed founding director of the Bridwell Book Conservation Laboratory at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

The Houston Museum of Fine Arts has begun a collection survey funded by grants from the IMS and NEA, which is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 1991. Wynne Phelan is the project coordinator and paper conservator for the survey. Other conservators participating in the project include: Joe Fronek (paintings), Greg Landrey (furniture), Andrew Lins (decorative arts), Bettina Raphael (ethnographic objects), Jack Soultanian (sculpture), and Phoebe Dent Weil (outdoor sculpture). The Houston Museum of Fine Arts has also recently purchased an off-site building which will be used for conservation facilities.

The Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth will have an environmental survey done this spring by Steven Weintraub.

The Southwest Association for Conservation (SWAC) has been formally dissolved, and its bank balance donated to FAIC.

Barbara Brown and Holly Krueger attended the AIC Photographic Materials Group's winter meeting in Ottawa, Canada, where it was decided that the group's 1993 winter meeting will be held in Austin, Texas.

In January, Jack Soultanian was a visiting conservator at the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery at the University of Texas in Austin. While in Austin, he treated a sculpture that is on loan to the gallery from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and gave two public lectures.

Cheryl Carrabba and Sally Shelton gave presentations at the "Introduction to Museum Conservation" workshop in San Antonio in February. Marilyn Lenz and Anne Zanikos also participated in a roundtable discussion at the workshop.

In March, a team of specialists which included Tamsen Fuller (conservator in private practice, Philadelphia), Paul Marcon (Canadian Conservation Institute), John Simmons (University of Kansas), and Robert Waller (Canadian Museum of Nature) visited the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin as part of the conservation survey project being conducted by the museum.

March 11th-15th, JoAnne Martinez, book conservator at New York Public Library, worked at Booklab, Inc., in Austin.

During April, Eleanore Stewart, book conservator at Stanford University, and Mindell Dubansky, book conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, were visiting conservators in the Conservation Dept. at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the U. of Texas. While in Austin, Ms. Dubansky also spent a week working at Booklab, Inc.

On April 12, Mark van Gelder gave a presentation at the annual meeting of the Texas Association of Museums in Corpus Christi.

regional reporter:
Mark van Gelder
Conservation Department
Huntington Art Gallery, U of Texas
23rd & San Jacinto Austin, TX 78712 512/471-9204

San Diego

Fred Wallace, paintings intern at the Balboa Art Cons. Center (BACC), attended the Gerry Headley Memorial Forum on the cleaning of paintings, hosted by the Queens conservation program in Kingston, Ontario.

Janos Novak, conservation technician at BACC, and his wife Jennifer have a new son, Zoltan Alexander, born January 4, 1991.

Lauren Voparil has joined the staff at BACC. She is working as a pre-program staff assistant in the Paper Conservation Department.

regional reporter:
Marc Harnly
BACC
P0 Box 3755
San Diego, CA 92103 619/236-9702

Rocky Mountain Region

Carol Satersmoen, Registrar of the Colorado Historical Society, Denver, will be conducting a training session this spring for the state's regional property managers in the use of environmental monitoring kits. The kits were purchased through an IMS grant for each of CHS's eight regional properties.

Connie Wanke, Colorado Conservation Center, has moved her studio to a new address. She may be reached at 2074 South Adams, Denver, CO 80210.

Rocky Mountain Regional Conservation Center announces the addition of two new pre-program aides: Diane Tafilowski from Wayne State University, and Rebecca McDowell from the University of Colorado. Gina Laurin, RMRCC Objects Conservator, has been accepted by AIC to do a poster session at the annual meeting in Albuquerque this May entitled "Arsenic and Dead Bugs: Conservation Peculiarities in the American West." Gina will attend a two-week course at the Getty Conservation Institute this May entitled "Preventative Conservation: Museum Collections and Their Environment." Randy Ash, RMRCC Paintings Conservator, will be going to Venezuela on a State Department visiting scholar grant at the end of April for two weeks of teaching conservation in Caracas and Maricabo.

Kay Karol Horse Capture has established Ghost Pines Conservation, P. 0. Box 1041, Hays, MT 59527. It is a private practice specializing in ethnographic and Plains Indian art. At the April meeting of Recursos de Santa Fe, Kay Karol will be presenting a session for collectors and dealers of art of the Plains Indians entitled "Conservation and Ethics."

Denver Institute for Art Conservation will host the Conservation Information Network Training Seminar to be given by the J. Paul Getty Institute. The course will be held at the facilities of Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts on May 24 and 25 following the AAM meeting in Denver. DIAC is a newly-formed non-profit organization supporting research and education in art conservation.

Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts is pleased to announce the addition of Camilla Van Vooren to its staff. Camilla will begin work as Assistant Paintings Conservator at WCCFA in October after completing her internship at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

During March, WCCFA paintings conservators Carmen F. Bria, Jr. and David Bauer treated the Allen True murals at the Colorado State Capitol. Carmen F. Bria, Jr. conducted an annual survey of collections at the Wildlife of the American West Art Museum, Jackson, Wyoming in February. Robert McCarroll, WCCFA Chief Paper Conservator, is treating the 1870 architectural drawings of the New State House, Carson, Nevada. The seven large drawings by architect Joseph Gosling, are property of the Nevada State Museum.

Carl Patterson has conducted eight CAP surveys this winter through out the states. He will participate in a panel assessing the first year of the Conservation Assessment Program to be held in Washington, D.C., this spring. In November, Patterson completed a course offered by the Smithsonian Institute on testing display and storage materials for museums. He has given a lecture entitled "The Chemistry of Materials Found in Natural History Collections" at the University of Colorado. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County hosted Patterson at their Lunchtime Lecture Series in March to present a paper on materials for installation and storage. Patterson also presented "Living with Collections in the Home" at the Curators' Lunchtime Series of the Denver Museum of Natural History in March.

regional reporter:
Constance K. Mohrman
WCCFA
1225 Santa Fe Drive
Denver, CO 80204 303/573-1973

San Francisco Bay Area

Ongoing work at the Oakland Museum Conservation Center includes finishing an IMS grant for the upgrading of paintings storage, identification of photographs and earthquake mitigation. Julie Goldman and Alida Francis, registrar at the Mexican Museum, are currently working on quake mitigation in the History Department object storage areas.

The Oakland Museum recently submitted their third IMS grant which is designed to address pest control management. If awarded, they will be improving conditions at their collections storage facility and purchasing a mini fumigation bubble for use with carbon dioxide.

The Oakland Museum Conservation Center and the object lab at the Fine Art Museum of San Francisco are working together on an NEA grant to analyze and treat part of the museum's Arthur and Lucia Mathews Collection. This collection, which includes polychrome objects, furniture and frames, is being prepared for a traveling exhibition.

Debra and Brad Evans are now parents to Juliet Rose Evans as of January 6, 1991. Debra will be back to work at the lab in early April. Debra says, "It is the most beautiful baby in the whole world."

Ongoing work at WRPCL includes the second year of a two-year IMS grant to survey and treat many of the Achenbach's master drawings.

Theresa Andrews, WRPCL's Buffalo State College Conservation intern, beginning in October 1990, will be studying under Debbie Hess Norris in the Winterthur Museum/ University of Delaware's spring Photo Block.

Julie Goldman has returned to the lab following a three-month stay in Tokyo, Japan working in the studio of Mari Yamaryo treating 18th and 19th century Japanese prints and a project at LACMA, treating the Yoshitoshi prints for the Japanese Pavilion's spring rotation.

The Asian Art Museum's November 17, 1989, earthquake insurance claim has been settled, so work on the 22 damaged artworks has begun. Glenn Wharton and John Griswold will be working on seven large sculptures. Linda Scheifler will repair the 15 smaller objects. This project is scheduled to continue until mid 1991.

Faith Bilyeu was on leave from the museum during February and March during which time Lee Ann Daffner worked as Conservation Technician contributing the much needed support for the successful installation of the Tibet Exhibition: "Wisdom and Compassion."

regional reporter:
Therese O'Gorman
Oakland Museum History Department
1000 Oak Street
Oakland, CA 94607 415/273-3806

Pacific Northwest

Helen Alten, Conservator of the Alaska State Museum, will be supervising installation of the Russian-America Exhibition to open this spring in Juneau. Helen will be instructing volunteers in condition survey methods for the 805 loaned objects. Mary-Lou Florian of the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria will co-teach with Helen a workshop on basket conservation and preservation to be held in Sitka, Alaska March 18-20.

Tamsen Fuller announces the opening of a private practice in object conservation in Corvallis, Oregon, specializing in the conservation of ethnographic, archaeological, and natural science collections. For an interim period Tamsen will also continue her long-established conservation practice in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. Her new address in Corvallis: 325 Southeast Alexander, Corvallis, OR 97333; 503-752-1475.

Peter Malarkey has established a private painting conservation practice in Seattle. In addition to the treatment of easel paintings, Peter will be engaged in mural painting treatments in late 1991 and 1992. Peter's address: 119 Northwest 75th, Seattle, WA 98117 206-784-6426.

Sonja Sopher, Paintings Conservator at the Oregon Art Institute, is engaged in the treatment of 5 paintings for the new Seattle Art Museum building. Paper Conservator Elisabeth Chambers is completing a survey of 20,000 prints in the Oregon Art Institute collection.

Jonathan Taggart announces the establishment of his sculpture and object conservation practice on the northwest coast of Oregon. He has worked for the past three years out of Connecticut and New York City. Taggart lived in the Pacific Northwest for a decade before entering the University of Delaware-Winterthur Conservation Program. He specializes in onsite treatments of objects, particularly bronze, stone and modern sculpture, as well as in conservation assessments. Taggart Objects Conservation: P. 0. Box 2309, 607 Pacific Way, Gearhart OR 97138-2309; 503/738-0810.

regional reporter:
Patricia Tuttle-Leavengood
Art Conservation Services
15 2nd Avenue South
Seattle, WA98104 206/587-3725

New Mexico & Arizona

As of January 1991, painting conservator, Karin Knight has moved to Santa Fe from New York to join the staff of Steven Prins & Company.

Nancy Odegaard will be looking for a post-graduate fellow to work with her at the Arizona State Museum to fill a one-year fellowship in ethnographic art conservation, funded by the Getty Grant Program.

In May, Martha Little will be repeating the advanced conservation workshop she taught on 19th century cloth bindings at the University of Iowa's Center for the Book.

Landis Smith, of Santa Fe, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Isabel, on December 26. Mother and baby are well and enjoying some months at home.

regional reporters:
Landis Smith
Museum of New Mexico
208 Gonzales Road
Santa Fe, NM87504 505/989-9379

and

Gloria Fraser Giffords
2859 N. Soldier 7rail
Tucson, AZ 85749 602/7494070

About Our Colleagues in Central American Countries

In 1990, from July 15 to October 15, a group of seven museum professionals from Central American countries--conservators and registrars-- received fellowships under Fulbright/Smithsonian/ Banco Central de Costa Rica funding to learn about conservation and collections care in North American museums. The group spent 2 weeks at the Smithsonian Institution, 9 weeks at different US museums, and one final week at a wrap-up session at the Smithsonian Institution. Four of the Fulbright fellows spent their 9 weeks in the western United States: Mr. Raul Jimenez from Costa Rica and Mr. Rafael Rivera from Panama at the Rocky Mountain Regional Conservation Center; Ms. Myriam Davila from Nicaragua at the Center for Central American Art & Archaeology in Boulder, Colorado; and Ms. Lucrecia Rojas at the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco Objects Conservation Lab. We have encouraged the Fulbright fellows to keep us updated about conservation activities in their countries via the WAAC Newsletter.

Mr. Manuel Lopez from the National Museum in San Salvador has written that Mrs. Leticia Vasquez, Conservator of Paintings, is coordinating conservation work at the National Palace of the City of San Salvador, a national monument with 104 rooms. The work includes restoration of murals, period rooms, paintings and decorative objects such as stone, glass and iron furnishings. Seven paintings (portraits of past presidents of El Salvador) are being conserved. The intended use of the National Palace will be as Metropolitan Museum for the City of San Salvador.

Elisabeth Cornu
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, CA 94118 415/750-3649