Volume 13, Number 3, Sept 1991, pp.7-12

Regional News

Hawaii

Laura Word, Chairperson of the Pacific Regional Conservation Center, will be leaving Hawaii to take the position of program officer in the Division of Preservation and Access at the National Endowment for the Humanities. In the seven years that Laura has been running PRCC, it has grown from a six-person operation with a $100,000 budget to a 12-person center with a budget of nearly $500,000. Dale Kronkright will be assuming the position of Acting Chairman of PRCC.

On leave from the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, Janice Schopfer recently completed a three-week project in the paper lab at PRCC. The project involved repair and rehousing of a rare 50-page 18th-century handwritten government document.

Linda Hee gave a public lecture on the care of quilts sponsored by the Hawaii Mission Children's Society and the Hawaii Quilt Research Project.

Four conservation graduate program interns are working on treatment projects in the PRCC objects lab this summer. In a project funded by the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Barbara Wojcik and Rhonda Wozniak from the Buffalo program are working on the stabilization and rehousing of feather kahili (royal standards used by the Hawaiian monarchy). Scott Carroll from Buffalo and Barbara Johnson from Winterthur are involved in an IMS-funded project to stabilize numerous carved wooden figures and personal ornaments from Bishop Museum's Pacific collection.

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

New Mexico & Arizona

The Museum of New Mexico's Museum of Fine Arts was awarded an NEA grant under which Patricia Morris is currently treating high priority prints. Under another NEA grant, she will be conducting a survey of works of art on paper at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Steve Prins and Karin Knight, assisted by second-year Buffalo Conservation Program students Jill Whitten and Robert Proctor, are treating a 2,000 square-foot WPA mural which covers the walls of the McKinley County courthouse in Gallup, New Mexico.

Bettina Raphael gave a talk for BLM archaeologists about conservation in the field on July 10.

Vicki Cassman (Cassman Textile Conservation) continued conservation projects in Chile this past summer and taught in the textile segment of the Winterthur training program.

Laura Downey (Fraser Giffords Art Conservation) will be entering the Buffalo State College Conservation Program.

Sharlane Grant (Arizona State University Libraries) assisted the University of Costa Rica library this summer with Earthquake Recovery and Preservation Planning. Substantial damage was caused in the December 1990 and April 1991 earthquakes. Sharlane plans to return again later in the fall.

Laraine Jones (Arizona Historical Society) made a presentation at the AIC meetings in the IMS workshop. In addition, she is coordinating a panel for the AASLH-Detroit meetings in August. She will talk about conservation surveys at the Arizona Paper and Photograph Conservation Group meetings in September and will be addressing the Rotary Club.

Nancy Odegaard (Arizona State Museum) was a member of the Fulbright Tour and Lecture Program in Central America this summer. Conservation program interns Scott Carroll (Buffalo State College) and Rebecca Snyder and Michelle Hebert (Sir Sanford Flemming, Canada) will be working at the Arizona State Museum beginning in September.

Jim Roberts (NPS-Western Archaeological and Conservation Center) is beginning an employment opportunity survey for possible work with the National Park Service.

Maree Lee Smith (Arizona State Museum) will be entering the Durham University (U.K.) Conservation Program.

Elizabeth Welsh (WAAC Newsletter Editor) will be teaching "Principles of Conservation" in the Museum Studies Program of Arizona State University's Anthropology Department.

regional reporters:
Nancy Odegaard
Arizona State Museum
Tucson, Arizona 85721 602/621-6314

and

Landis Smith
Museum of New Mexico
208 Gonzales Road
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504 505/989-9379

Greater Los Angeles & Santa Barbara

Glenn Wharton spent six weeks on-site at Kaman Kalehoyuk, Turkey, where he set up a field conservation facility. The excavation is under the direction of the Middle Eastern Cultural Center, Tokyo, Japan.

Yoshiki Kobayashi, private conservator of traditional and western paintings in Tokyo, Japan, spent two weeks in July working with Chris Stavroudis, private paintings conservator in Los Angeles.

Andrea Rothe, Conservator of Paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum, visited Prague, Czechoslovakia in late June. His trip was initiated by the Getty Conservation Institute, which hopes to establish future collaboration.

In July, the paintings conservation studio at the Getty hosted two Florentine specialists; Barbara Schleicher, an expert in polychrome sculpture and early Italian panels, and Giovanni Marussich, whose speciality is structural work on panel paintings.

The Getty paintings studio is pleased to welcome Michael Gallagher from the Hamilton Kerr Institute as its Graduate Intern for 1991-92. Michael will be arriving in October and work at the Getty until late September 1992.

Carol Sussman has joined the staff at the Getty Conservation Institute as a student assistant. She will be working with Eric Hansen conducting research on the conservation of ethnographic, archaeological and proteinaceous materials. She is also completing her masters degree in art from California State University at Fullerton and working privately with Billie Milam doing objects conservation.

Vinod Daniel has joined the staff at the Getty Conservation Institute as a Senior Research Fellow, having previously obtained graduate degrees in chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India and Physical Chemistry at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas. He will be working with Shin Maekawa on a variety of preventive conservation projects such as dynamic moisture transfer in display cases and methods of environmental control.

The past few years have seen an increase in the public's awareness of the museum conservation field. In response to this interest, an "interactive exhibit" on the activities of the Antiquities Conservation Department of the J. Paul Getty Museum was opened in March 1991. Titled "Preserving the Past," the gallery, located on the first floor of the museum, presents different aspects of conservation in displays that invite the museum visitor to take a closer look at the techniques and methods that are used to protect and preserve the antiquities in the collection. The exhibit is a collaborative project between the Departments of Antiquities Conservation, Education and Academic Affairs, and Antiquities Curatorial. It will close September 29, 1991.

Dan Kushel, associate professor of the Arts Conservation Department, State University College at Buffalo, New York, recently spent a week as a Visiting Conservator in the Antiquities Conservation Department of the J. Paul Getty Museum. He presented a seminar on the xeroradiography imaging technique which has been used in the medical field for many years and has recently found applications in the conservation field. Several informative images were obtained of objects from the Decorative Arts, Paintings and Antiquities collections at the Museum.

Jerry Podany and David Scott spent two days examining representative objects from the Benaki Museum's (Athens, Greece) collection of gold jewelry. The jewelry was kindly made available by the Legion of Honor through Elisabeth Cornu and Lesley Bone. The objects were on display as part of the "Gold in Greece" exhibition, which closed in San Francisco at the end of June.

Eduardo Sanchez and Emily Dunn, of the J. Paul Getty Museum Antiquities Conservation Department, have completed the installation of a Roman mosaic in the San Antonio Museum of Art. During the past year the Antiquities Conservation staff at the Getty Museum has completed rebacking the mosaic fragments and has manufactured a support for them. The new backing included replacing the previous layer of modern plaster with a foamed epoxy. The fragments were then mounted to an aluminum honeycomb support to facilitate hanging. The mosaic is now on exhibition in the new Antiquities Gallery at the San Antonio Museum.

This fall, Nancie Ravenel will be arriving at the J. Paul Getty Museum Decorative Arts and Sculpture Conservation Lab to begin her third-year internship in the University of Delaware/ Winterthur Conservation program.

Congratulations to Nancy Yocco on the birth of her son Case Yocco Jones. He was born April 24, 1991.

The Fowler Museum of Cultural History Conservation Lab has been busy preparing for the opening of the new museum. Claudia Rubin Irmas and Kelly Kamborian, who having been helping with the move of our collections to the new building, are working temporarily in the lab as preprogram interns. They are assisting with conservation of Peruvian ceramics for one of the inaugural exhibitions. Maya Elston of the J. Paul Getty Museum Antiquities Department has also generously volunteered her time to help with the treatment of the ceramics.

Paula Volent has opened her new paper conservation studio at 509 Rialto Avenue, Venice, California 90291, 213/450-1883 fax-213/4S0-9552. Assistants in the studio are Denise Gelb, Michael Duke Pavoni, Nicolle Gelpi, and Maggi Spingola. Paula recently taught a three-day intensive training session at Graphic Studios in Tampa, Florida directed to the conservation implications involved in contemporary printmaking materials and techniques. Judith Walsh, paper conservator at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts will be working as a visiting conservator with Paula during the first weeks of September.

Marie Svoboda a pre-program intern in objects conservation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has been accepted into the Art Conservation Training Program at Buffalo State College.

Meredith Montague has accepted the position of Assistant Textile Conservator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Meredith has just completed a 12-month internship at LACMA as part of her requirements for a M.A. degree with a certificate of advanced study in art conservation from the Buffalo State College.

Joseph Hammer of Conservation of Paintings, Ltd., attended the seminar "Modern Artists Materials and their Conservation Implications" at the Conservation Analytical Laboratory, Smithsonian Institution, June 26-28.

Michelle Barger, a student in the Winterthur/University of Delaware Art Conservation Program, is spending eight weeks this summer at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Supervised by Sharon Blank, Michelle will be treating objects in the collection as well as packing artifacts to be moved to their new offsite storage.

Rosa Lowinger and Donna Williams of the Sculpture Conservation Studio are working on the Pacific Unity Sculptures in San Francisco. The sculptures were designed for the 1939 Exposition on the Treasure Island Naval Base. In addition, they are testing waterproofing agents for outdoor marble statuary, and they are interested in any information about materials for this purpose that conform to environmental laws.

Robert Aitchison has completed the treatment of a collection of 250 Edward Weston photographs and now will travel to Tokyo for a major exhibition.

Mark Watters with Cathy Gilbert of the Edward Dean Museum in Cherry Valley and Robert McGiffin of the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum were panelists for the California Association of Museums Annual Meeting on July 18 in Los Angeles. The subject of the panel discussion was "The Care of Collections and the Setting of Priorities for Conservation During Financial Hard Times."

Lisa Courtney Forman is pleased to offer conservation services for the treatment and maintenance of archival collections at 740 North La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90038, 213/938-4428.

Carol Daniels has just completed working the past year on Old Mission Santa Barbara's Spanish Colonial painting collection in the Museum as well as the Stations of the Cross in the main church.

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

and

John Griswold
549 Hot Springs Road
Santa Barbara, CA 93108 805/565-3639

Texas

Sally Shelton planned and chaired a panel on "The Ethics of Conserving Natural History Collections" for the annual meeting of the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries, held this year at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Sally is also the project coordinator for the long-range plan portion of the I.M.S. conservation grant project now underway at the Texas Memorial Museum.

Jay Krueger has been elected Secretary of the American Institute for conservation. The Collection Managers Committee of the Texas Association of Museums sponsored a pest control/integrated pest management workshop in Houston on June 29. Upcoming programs include a conservation workshop at the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio.

Miranda R. Martin, Book Conservator at Teacher's College in New York City, spent July and August working in the conservation lab of Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas in Austin.

In August, Sara McElroy provided a conservation assessment for the University Art Gallery at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. In October, she will be conducting a similar assessment for the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel, Mississippi.

Martha Simpson, a former intern in each of the conservation labs at the University of Texas in Austin, will begin the masters program in conservation at Buffalo State College this fall.

Amy Wood has begun working at the Huntington Art Gallery under a new program which will provide academic credit to university students volunteering in the Huntington's conservation department.

Sue Murphy and Karen Pavelka will be presenting a case study on the treatment of the page proofs of the first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses at the Association pour la Recherche Scientifique sur les Arts Graphique conference, which is being held in Paris from September 30 to October 4, 1991.

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

Pacific Northwest

Alice Bear, Julie Creahan, Barbara Roberts and Jack Thompson attended the IIC-CG Annual Conference in Vancouver, B.C. in May. Gail Joice's presentation, "Administering Collections and Institutions in Emergency Planning" at the AIC Natural Disaster Mitigation Presession has resulted in requests for the Seattle Art Museum's disaster plan from national and international museums and organizations.

Christine Runte, registrar at the Museum of Flight, attended a two-week course on Materials and Collections given this June at the Campbell Center in Illinois.

regional reporter:
Patricia Tuttle-Leavengood
215 2nd Avenue, So., Mezz. 2
Seattle, WA 98104 206/587-3725

San Diego

Monica Jaworski, paintings conservator of La Playa Art Conservation Services, has moved her studio to 1923 Cable Street in San Diego, telephone 619/224-7902. Monica was recently visited by Christoph von Imhoff, chief conservator at the Basel Historic Museum, after he presented a paper at the IIC Canadian Group meeting.

Sarah J. R. Murray has joined the staff at the Balboa Art Conservation Center (BACC) as an Associate Paintings Conservator. Sarah comes from the U.K. having graduated from the Hamilton Kerr Institute at the University of Cambridge. She served an internship and subsequently held an assistant paintings conservator position at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Michael Daligdig has been hired by BACC as an Assistant Photographer. Michael is a graduate of UC Santa Barbara in Art Studio and Latin American Studies.

Fred Wallace, graduate student from the Buffalo Art Conservation program, is completing his year-long internship in the Paintings Laboratory at BACC. In September Fred will begin a year as a Fellow in paintings conservation at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

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

Rocky Mountain Region

The Rocky Mountain region was well represented in Albuquerque by a large Denver contingent including: M. Randall Ash, Judy Greenfield, Gina Laurin, Victoria Montana Ryan, and Hays Shoop from the Rocky Mountain Regional Conservation Center; David Bauer, Carmen Bria, Jr., Carl Grimm, Robert McCarroll, Connie Mohrman and Heidi Rupp from Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts; Laura Wait, Laura Wait Fine Binding and Conservation; Jeanne Brako, Colorado Historical Center, and Carl Patterson, Denver Museum of Natural History. Others attending from the region were Kay Karol Horse Capture, Ghost Pines Conservation, Hays, Montana; and Bob Inge from Lake City, Colorado.

Kay Karol Horse Capture reports an NEH survey of the American Indian collection of the Western Heritage Museum, Billings, Montana, to be performed later this summer with reinstallation of the permanent collection following treatments spread over three years. Some simple treatments are to be performed by Kay Karol in the museum exhibition area as a live exhibit. This fall Kay Karol will perform a CAP survey for the Moss Mansion Historical House in Billings.

Jeanne Brako has taken a position as Collections Manager/ Conservator at Colorado Historical Society, Denver. She continues to head Art Conservation Services on a part-time basis. Her new daytime telephone number is 303/866-4693.

Carl Patterson reports another long list of activities including: presentations at the Texas Association of Museums annual meeting, "Surveying the Situation" in April; at the Association of University Museums meeting in Boulder entitled "Conservation Ethics in Natural History Museums"; at the American Association of Museums annual convention in Denver, a session on "Long-range Conservation Planning"; and at the Colorado-Wyoming Association of Museums meeting in Cortez, Colorado, "Developing a Long-range Conservation Program: A Colorado Case History". Patterson was a panelist at the annual meeting of the Society for Preservation of Natural History Collections held in Ottawa this spring and recently appointed to the long-range planning board for the Colorado Historical Society.

Robert McCarroll, Chief Paper Conservator, WCCFA, treated seven Japanese screens onsite at the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma. The screens are part of an October reinstallation project. Laura Howard, undergraduate art major at Hastings College, Hastings, Nebraska, is observing in both the paper and paintings department at WCCFA this summer. Among recent visitors to WCCFA was Nicolas Boyer, Assistant Director for Conservation at the North West Museums Service, Blackburn, Great Britain.

Bob Inge has just completed preservation of the Nestles/Hills Brothers archives and is beginning another long-term project with the Proctor & Gamble archives.

The Rocky Mountain Conservation Center (RMCC) recently dropped the "Regional" from its name to reflect the fact that it now serves institutions throughout the country. The RMCC recently was awarded two grants. An NEA matching grant for $7,000 was awarded for new laboratory equipment and the Colorado Council Arts and Humanities (CCAH) matching grant for $4,000 was awarded for conservation workshops to be given throughout the state.

Cynthia Kuniej Berry has joined the staff of the RMCC as an Associate Paintings Conservator. Previously, she conserved paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Paul Messier will join the staff of the RMCC as a Photographic Materials/Paper Conservator in October. Previously, he conducted research at the Smithsonian's Conservation Analytical Lab. The also worked with Jose Orraca in New York City.

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

San Francisco Bay Area

The Oakland Museum History Department is planning an exhibition entitled "At Ringside", a history of boxing in the East Bay. Julie Goldman, from the WRPCL and Lee Ann Daffner, who has been accepted into the Buffalo Graduate Conservation, conserved over 100 photographs for this show. "At Ringside" will be a handsome exhibition, largely due to their great efforts.

The Oakland Museum has recently been awarded a NEH Preservation Grant for improving the storage conditions and accessibility of the ethnographic collections. A climate control roomette will be built for the most sensitive objects and new cabinets will be purchased to rehouse the rest of the collections. The conservation staff was active in development of the grant and will be very involved in the rehousing project, which we hope to begin in the Summer of 1992.

The summer intern in the Objects Conservation Laboratory at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco is Lori van Handel from the Queen's University conservation training program in Kingston, Ontario.

Elisabeth Cornu has just completed a three-week study trip to museums and archaeological sites in six Central American countries in June 1991, as part of the Central America Fulbright Program. The program culminated in a preventative conservation conference at the Museums of the Central Bank of Costa Rica, in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Lesley Bone is busy coordinating the conservators on the Stanford Memorial Church post earthquake repair project. She is also working on the first stages of an exhibition on Teotihuacan objects.

Tracy Power has been busy working on the facing of some large mosaic angels in Stanford Memorial Church prior to major construction work.

In June, Julie Goldman worked with Victoria Blyth-Hill in the paper lab at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on a group of Kawase Hausi prints for the Japanese Pavilion summer rotation.

At the end of this year the Legion of Honor Museum will be closing for two to three years of renovations--seismic upgrade and expansion. During that time, the Western Regional Paper Conservation Laboratory will be housed at Crown Point Press in downtown San Francisco. An extensive cataloging and rehousing project for the prints and drawings in the Achenbach Foundation, the graphic arts department of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, will also occur during this period. Bob Futernick is in the process of developing an innovative database and imaging system to handle the large volume of objects and improve collection accessibility.

Conservators at WRPCL are approaching completion of an IMS grant for treatment of master drawings from the Achenbach Foundation. WRPCL has a new assistant, Sue Grinols, a recent MFA graduate from Rochester Institute of Technology.

Inge-Lise Eckmann, after 18 years with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, has resigned her position as Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs. Because of her background as a conservator of paper and paintings, she was a great advocate for conservation concerns at the administrative level of the museum, and she retained the title of Head of Conservation. With Inge-Lise's resignation, Senior Conservator Will Shank has accepted the position of Chief Conservator at SFMOMA.

Lucy Pearce, a graduate of the Courtauld Institute and a former intern at London's Tate Gallery, has begun a two-year appointment as a Getty Intern in paintings conservation at SFMOMA. She will begin a research project on the Mexican paintings in the museum's permanent collection. With Associate Conservator Neil Cockerline, Lucy aided with the infrared examination of the Oakland High School murals which were treated and transported by Japanese conservator Yoshiki Kobayashi.

In June, SFMOMA Conservation Technician Rick Peterson attended a workshop in Oberlin, Ohio, on the conservation of picture frames.

Will Shank will travel to London in September for the International Conference on the Packing and Transportation of Paintings, organized by the Tate Gallery, C.A.L., the C.C.I., and the National Gallery of Art (Washington).

The Director of the Asian Art Museum cut four full-time positions from the museum effective May 19, 1991 because of a financial shortfall. These cuts were Conservation Technician, Associate Registrar, Library Assistant and a Development Officer.

Abby Hykin, third-year student at the Buffalo State College Conservation program, begins her internship year with us this month. In addition to the routine (and unpredictable!) museum work, Abby will be completing research into the repair of broken rhinoceros horn. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has kindly offered its scanning electron microscopy facilities in Ashland, Oregon, to assist with this project.

Settlement of our Loma Prieta earthquake insurance claim enables us to add Katy Untch to the department in November for a one-year appointment as Adjunct Assistant Conservator. During this year, the final repair of earthquake-damaged art will be completed.

Geoffrey I. Brown, formerly Senior Conservator of Objects and Textiles at the Lowie Museum, has been appointed Curator of Conservation at the Kelsey Museum, University of Michigan. He is heading the conservation lab and is planning new museum facilities. Although he has discontinued his private practice in El Cerrito, CA, he will continue his consulting and survey practice.

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

About Our Colleagues in Central American Countries

A four-day lecture/workshop program was held at the Central Bank Museum in San Jose, Costa Rica, entitled "Building Partnerships/ Preserving Patrimony," under the joint sponsorship of the Smithsonian Institution/Fulbright Program and Central Bank Museum of Costa Rica.

During this workshop, a Spanish translation of "A Guide to Handling Anthropological Museum Collections," a handbook written by Nancy Odegaard and illustrated by Grace Katterman, which is soon to be published by WAAC, was used as a resource. Several dozen copies with the Spanish title, "Guia para el manejo de colecciones antropologicas de museos," were distributed in Costa Rica. See related article on page 5. Thirty museum professionals representing each of the Central American countries participated in the lecture/workshop, along with seven North American conservators and one Smithsonian coordinator. Nancy Odegaard and Elisabeth Cornu were part of the North American conservation team and presented lectures on preventative conservation and storage techniques. Prior to the workshop, the North American team traveled to the countries of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama and Costa Rica to visit museums and archaeological sites.

The museum participants from the Central American countries have formed a Central American Conservation Association under the leadership of Raul Aguilar Jimenez, Restorer in Private Practice, Apartado 856-1100 Tibas, San Jose, Costa Rica.

reporter:
Elisabeth Cornu

Pre-Conservation Studies Degree

The University of Denver, in concert with the RMCC, will be offering a 5-year BA degree in Pre-Conservation Studies beginning in the Fall 1992 semester. For more information call 800/871-2468.

reporter:
Diane Danielson
Conservation Coordinator
University of Denver
Rocky Mountain Conservation Center