Volume 15, Number 2, May 1993, pp.6-11

Regional News

Rocky Mountain Region

Lori Mellon, Rocky Mountain Conservation Center (RMCC)'s director, was invited by the NIC to serve on an advisory committee in Washington, D.C. to develop pilot workshops that will enable institutions to increase funds for collections care. RMCC conservators are presenting a series of 4 workshops for Colorado residents entitled, "What Does Conservation Mean to My Art?" The workshops are designed for artists interested in display, storage, media compatibility, materials, health issues, etc.

Cynthia Kuniej Berry, RMCC's Associate Paintings Conservator, has completed the conservation of a 17th-century copy after Jan Breughel the Elder's "The Entry into Noah's Ark," which was recently purchased by the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Paul Messier, Conservator of Works of Art on Paper and Photographic Materials, has worked with Timothy Vitale of the Conservation Analytical Laboratory to prepare 3 articles on their research into albumen prints. The articles are intended for publication in the Journal of the AIC and the Journal of Microscopy Research and Technique. In addition, Paul has recently completed a survey of nearly 70,000 film-based negatives held by the University of Colorado.

Beverly Perkins has left her position as conservator at Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, WY to establish a private practice in Temecula, CA, treating objects and performing surveys.

Bob McCarroll, Western Center for Conservation of Fine Arts (WCCFA) Chief Paper Conservator, teamed up with Helen Alten (Alaska State Museum), Andrew Todd (private objects conservator, Vancouver), and Carl Swenson (EMC Engineering, Denver), to perform an IMS Survey for Tongass Historical Museum/Totem Heritage Center, Ketchikan, AK in January. The survey looked at display and storage conditions at the Totem Heritage Center for a world-class collection of totem poles, the storage areas of the Tongass Historical Museum, plans for future expansion of the collections, and improvements to the HVAC system, storage and display.

Carl Patterson, Denver Art Museum, performed three CAP surveys this winter. Carl also presented an all-day workshop for the Registrar's Group of the Texas Association of Museums in Austin entitled "Roof to Basement: Controlling Environment for Collections."

Terri Schindel, South Pass City, WY, reports that she is organizing courses in preventive care, textiles, objects, and leather conservation to begin this spring. Terri has also spent five weeks on a care of textiles contract with Sharon Shore in Los Angeles.

The Colorado Preservation Alliance received a $4960 grant to write the Colorado Action Plan for Preservation. Margaret Child was hired as consultant on the project. Myra Jo Moon, Preservation Librarian, CSU, is project director. Karen Jones, Preservation Officer, Jefferson County Public Library, is project coordinator. The plan will set goals to coordinate the efforts of various Colorado institutions, will help develop public interest in preserving Colorado's heritage, and will serve as a focus for fund-raising.

Regional Reporters:
Constance Mohrman
WCCFA
1225 Santa Fe Drive
Denver, Colorado 80204
303/573-1973
and
Diane Danielson
RMCC
2420 South University Boulevard
Denver, Colorado 80208
303/733-2712

Greater Los Angeles and Santa Barbara

Donna Williams, Sculpture Conservation Studio, has completed and passed the Institute of Archaeology "Science for Conservators" Course.

Rosa Lowinger attended a conference in Havana, Cuba, sponsored by the National Conservation Center. The conference dealt with conservation problems in countries with tropical climates. After the conference Rosa taught a course on archaeological and ethnographic conservation in Havana for conservators from all over Latin America. Rosa has just been invited to teach a course in August for the Centro de Conservacion del Patrimonio Cultural in Caracas, Venezuela. She is very interested in communicating with conservators with an interest in Latin America.

Valerie Monier, recent graduate of the Institute Francais de Restauration d'Oeuvres d'Art, Paris, is spending six months in the paper conservation lab at LACMA sponsored by the Fondation Lavoisier. The same grant will sponsor Valerie for another six months at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Terry Shaeffer will be presenting a paper at the upcoming AIC meeting in Denver. She will talk about the second phase of the light bleaching project being sponsored jointly by the Getty.

Joanne Page participated in the second phase of the photo conservation course to be held at GCI, March 15-19. She is also participating on a special committee, headed by Michelle Cloonan, of the library school at the UCLA, to research possible educational opportunities in conservation and library preservation. On June 12, Joanne will be giving a lecture at the Natural History Museum about caring for photographic collections.

Victoria Blyth-Hill spoke to the Far Eastern Art Council in March at LACMA. The topic of her discussion was "The Connoisseurship of Conservation for Japanese Woodcut Prints."

In April, Vinod Daniel, head of GCI Environmental Section, will be conducting tests using the Vacudine Vacuum Chamber in the paper conservation lab at LACMA for testing fumigation using nitrogen.

Marie Svoboda, currently attending the Buffalo program, has accepted a third-year internship at the Boston Museum of Fine Art in the objects conservation studio.

Marcelle Andreasson, visiting paintings conservator from Denmark, recently spent two months at Conservart Associates, collaborating on paintings treatments with Suzanne Friend. Marcelle returned to Denmark in March to begin a private practice in Copenhagen.

Duane Chartier recently returned from a trip to Oklahoma City where he was installing one of five triptychs by artist Wilson Hurley for the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. The installation is an updating of traditional marouflage techniques using interlocking honeycomb panels and BEVA gel.

Aitchison and Watters, Inc. will be working on a large group of contemporary prints from the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo of Mexico City. They recently treated a gouache painting by Rouault from the Wright S. Ludington Bequest to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

Lisa Courtney Forman is pleased to announce the birth of her daughter, Olivia, on December 4, 1992.

Denise Domergue and the staff at Conservation of Paintings, Ltd. has completed the first phase of work on paintings from the Wright S. Ludington Bequest to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The five paintings treated included works by Matisse, Redon, Bonnard, Braque and Rousseau.

Benjamin Nistal-Moret has announced the establishment of his architectural conservation practice in Santa Barbara. Glenn Wharton delivered a paper, "Conservation of Archaeological Artifacts at Kaman Kalehoyuk" in Tokyo in March, as part of a Symposium on Middle Eastern Archaeology. The symposium was organized by The Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan (MECCJ). Glenn reported on Marie Svoboda's research on desalination of iron and John Twilley's investigations into Turkish and Japanese adhesives for ceramic repair.

This summer, John Griswold will be project manager for Ian Hodkinson, Director of the Art Conservation Program at Queens University, supervising four post-graduate interns: Leslie Galbraith, Trish Smithen, Jane Tisdale and Susan Braovac. They will spend 12 weeks in Fort Good Hope, Northwest Territories, Canada, conserving 19th- and early-20th-century murals and a painted vaulted ceiling with tin stars inside Our Lady of Good Hope, a 19th-century Roman Catholic missionary church.

Carol Kenyon, South Coast Fine Arts Conservation Center, reports that the Center is completing a five year conservation project for the old church at Mission San Gabriel. The project included the conservation of the early 19th-century Spanish Colonial reredos and its six life size, carved, polychromed, and gilded santos. The Center is about to start work on a mural of Old Santa Paula, painted by Douglas Shively, which hangs outside, over the front door of the Citizens State Bank in Santa Paula. They are also about half finished with the stabilizing and conservation of a group of drawings by some of Santa Barbara's more famous cowboy painters. The drawings were executed on the walls of the Ed Borien Room in Santa Barbara's historic El Paseo complex.

Sheri Saperstein, GCI Training Program, reports that the Getty ran a course in March 1993, "Preventive Care of Historic Photographic Prints and Negatives," Part II; instructors were Debbie Hess Norris and James Reilly.

Barbara Heller, Head of Conservation at the Detroit Institute of Arts, has joined GCI's Training Program for six months as a Senior Research Fellow. She will be working on issues related to preventive conservation, in particular on the development of teaching materials for courses. Marta de la Torre, Director of the Training Program, is serving as the Treasurer for ICOM. Nicholas Stanley Price, Deputy Director of the Training Program, is serving as Treasurer for the ICOM Committee for Conservation and as Coordinator of the ICOM Committee for Conservation Working Group on Training in Conservation and Restoration.

Scott Haskins reports that Fine Art Conservation Laboratories recently completed structural repairs of the murals in the Rotunda of the Los Angeles Central Library. The murals were painted in 1933 by Dean Cornwell. FACL is happy to announce that they've moved to a new location at 907 Philinda Avenue, Santa Barbara (across the street from their former location). The new lab is twice the size as the old one and many health and safety improvements have been added. The mailing address and the telephone number remain the same.

Nancy Reinhold, is leaving The Getty Museum, moving to Chicago and will be starting a private photographic conservation practice.

Elisabeth Mention reports that the Getty painting conservation department continues its collaboration with other institutions in restoring particularly difficult pictures. Will Real from the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh came with Whistler's Arrangement in Black: Pablo de Sarasate, which he is working on with the Getty staff.

Another cooperative conservation project is scheduled for June with the Wadsworth Atheneum. Steve Kornhauser, Chief Conservator, and Patricia Garland, Senior Conservator, will be bringing The Crucifixion by Nicolas Poussin, which will involve a particularly complex and delicate cleaning.

Virginia Rasmussen will be taking over as regional reporter from Catherine McLean. We should all like to thank Catherine for the sterling work she did for this column.

Regional Reporters:
Catherine McLean/Virginia Rasmussen
LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90036
213/857-6169
and
Sasha Stollman
Glenn Wharton & Associates
549 Hot Springs Road
Santa Barbara, CA 93108
805/565-7639

Texas

Sylvia Navarro, who received her degree in conservation from the School of Arts in Barcelona, has been volunteering in the Conservation Department at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, (HRHRC), and at the Materials Conservation Lab at the Texas Memorial Museum. Sylvia will be returning to Barcelona at the end of March.

Barbara Brown served as the local arrangements coordinator for the 1993 Winter Meeting of the AIC Photographic Materials Group held in Austin on February 28-March 2. A pre-meeting workshop focused on the preservation of historic and contemporary color photographic materials, as well as the latest developments in color digital imaging systems. Transcripts of presentations may be available in upcoming issues of the Topics in Photographic Preservation Journal, AIC Specialty Group publication.

The HRHRC welcomes Miranda Martin to their conservation department. Miranda comes to the department from the staff of Teacher's College in New York.

Jim Stroud attended the planning session for the upcoming Science for Preservation Administrators Workshop which will be held in September by the Commission on Preservation and Access.

The University of Texas Graduate School of Library and Information Science, in conjunction with five other library schools, has received a grant from the NEH to provide continuing education to library and archives preservation and conservation professionals. The Preservation Intensive Institutes will be one week courses covering various topics of interest. For more information, contact Sally Buchanan at 412/624-9447.

Forum speakers sponsored by the Preservation and Conservation Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin for this Spring include Norbert Baer, Norvell Jones, John Stokes, and Mark Roosa.

Two students from the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Mary Pedraza and Maria Najera, and their teachers have been working with the conservators at the Materials Conservation Laboratory of the Texas Memorial Museum constructing padded hangers for the museum's historical costume collections.

Cheryl Carrabba, of Carrabba Conservation in Austin, is working on a committee with the Texas Association of Museums to write and publish a Disaster Planning and Resource manual for museums in the state of Texas. The project is funded by IMS and intended to produce a manual which will have national applications and impact.

The American Association of Museums will hold its annual meeting in Fort Worth, May 16-20.

Regional Reporter:
Mark Van Gelder
Huntington Art Gallery
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-1205
512/471-7324

Hawai'I

Linda Hee, Objects Conservator, gave a lecture on quilt care at the Kaua'i Museum on January 30, 1993, in conjunction with the museum's annual Hawaiian quilt show. Linda continues to supervise the Bishop Museum Anthropology collection move. Phase I, including immigrant and historic materials, is nearing completion; Phase II, including all fiber materials, is now in process.

In January, Downey Manoukian, Paper Conservator, spent a day on the island of Kaua'i, helping the Sheraton Kaua'i Hotel assess the condition of 700 prints on paper, damaged as a result of Hurricane Iniki. Downey spent a week in February with the Western Regional Paper Conservation Laboratory, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where she worked on a photograph conservation project.

Diana Dicus, Objects Conservator, conducted two one-day collection management training sessions in January for the Kaua'i Historical Society. In April, Diana will conduct a Lana'i Cultural Project staff training in conjunction with the repatriation of cultural materials to the island of Lana'i. Diana will represent PRCC in May at the Campbell Center Disaster Mitigation Conference, presenting some case history information from PRCC's experience with Hurricane Iniki on Kaua'i.

Conservation technician Melissa Arnold continues working on the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts (SFCA) funded Kahili Project with Linda Hee, cleaning and stabilizing standing kahili. In November and December 1992, Melissa assisted contract conservators, Dale Kronkright, San Francisco, and Ron Harvey, Tuckerbrook Conservation, Maine, with the cleaning of the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts statue of Queen Lili'uokalani in preparation for the sovereignty centennial in January 1993. Dale and Ron also conducted a PRCC contracted survey of Oahu outdoor sculpture for the Mayor's Office on Culture and the Arts.

Regional Reporter:
Diana Dicus
Pacific Regional Conservation Center
Bishop Museum
P.O. Box 19000-A
Honolulu, Hawaii 96817
808/848-4112

San Diego

We apologize to the Balboa Art Conservation Center (BACC) for not acknowledging in the last newsletter that it was, indeed, their painting conservators who were working on the Thomas Moran painting Mountain of the Holy Cross.

Betsy Court and Sarah Murray, BACC Paintings Conservators, will be leading a project to assess the City of San Diego's Art Collection. Conservation treatment of works most in need will also begin this year.

BACC's Conservation Technician Janos Novak is completing a survey and treatment project of the Timken Museum of Art's frame collection.

Janet Ruggles and Marc Harnly, BACC Paper Conservators, are beginning a survey of the South Asian Art Collection of the San Diego Museum of Art which will include the large collection of paintings in the museum's Binney Collection. Marc is also finishing a survey of the entire collection of San Diego's Museum of Photographic Arts.

Paintings Conservator Alfredo Antognini has established the San Diego Conservation Center (619/544-6841), which will treat paintings, including panel paintings, and polychrome sculpture. He recently constructed a very cost effective vacuum hot table for use in his practice.

Regional Reporter:
Frances Prichett
5235 35th Street
San Diego, California 92116
619/283-0368

Pacific Northwest

Mark Smith has formed a new partnership with Karen Barrow known as Century Aviation. They specialize in disassembly, transportation, and reassembly of historic aircraft which includes restoration and preservation. They have just competed coordinating the seven-month disassembly and transportation of the Howard Hughes's HK-1 Flying Boat Spruce Goose from Long Beach to McMinnville, Oregon.

Jack Thompson will edit and publish Lotta Rhame's book Skinn, published in Sweden 1991. It will be translated by David Greenbaum and published by Caber Press a division of Thompson Laboratory. Rahme studied and produced leather for many years in Sweden as well as North America, with the Dogrib Indians and the Inuit. The book is about traditional skin preparation.

Jack will be presenting a poster about the environmental monitoring at Alcatraz, at AIC/Denver. He has begun production on a videotape about knife sharpening which will be available from Istor Productions, 7549 N. Fenwick, Portland, OR 97217, and Colophon Book Arts Supply.

Tamsen Fuller has completed her move from Pennsylvannia to Oregon. She has finished a general survey and assessment for the New Mexico Museum of Natural History, Albuquerque, and a cornhusk bag survey for the Nez Perce NHP, Spalding, ID. Tamsen will be doing an object-by-object survey of part of the ethnographic collection at High Desert Museum, Bend, OR. This summer she will be part of a team working with the Oregon Historical Society, Portland.

Jody Utter gave a talk on conservation framing techniques to a group of collectors, artists and dealers at the 1993 Art Fair, Seattle, WA.

We would like to thank Patricia Leavengood for her long tenure and hard work as regional reporter; Alice Bear has kindly agreed to take over.

Regional Reporter:
Patricia Leavengood
215 Second Avenue South
Seattle, WA 98104
206/587-3725

Arizona & New Mexico

Bettina Raphael has begun a full-time private practice as of February and can be reached at 505/988-2487. Bettina travelled to Antigua, Guatemala in February to co-teach a 5-day course organized by Toby Raphael and sponsored by the United States Information Agency on preventive conservation for Guatemalan museums and archives.

Landis Smith travelled to Tucson in February to work with Nancy Odegaard, Arizona State Museum, and to consult with various materials scientists and anthropologists on her Pueblo ceramics research project. Landis taught a one-day workshop on identifying and monitoring environmental threats to collections for the Dept.of the Interior Training Program in Tucson in March.

David Rasch, Associate Objects Conservator, Museum of New Mexico, travelled to Los Angeles in December as a consultant to the conservation team working on the Rauschenberg retrospective at MOCA. He advised them on the care and exhibiting of taxidermy birds.

Susan Barger attended "Preservation of Earthen Architectural Heritage" sponsored by Craterre-EAG and ICOMOS at the School of Architecture in Grenoble, France this past fall. She is currently working under an NEA-Getty grant to examine durability in historic adobe plasters; this is a one-year pilot study at the University of New Mexico's Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Dawn Wilson has recently arrived in New Mexico from Baltimore to establish a practice in the conservation of frames and gilded objects. She can be reached at 505/852-2867.

Patricia Morris surveyed works of art on paper under an NEA grant at the University of Arizona Art Museum, Tucson, in January.

The Museum of New Mexico's Palace of the Governors received a Getty project identification grant to do an architectural preservation survey of the building. Architectural conservator, Frank Matero, and architect, Victor Johnson, will carry out the assessment in coordination with Chief Conservator, Claire Munzenrider.

Paintings conservator Maite Leal has joined Steven Prins & Co. She received her Certificate of Conservation at the Instituto Per L'Arte e Il Restauro, Florence, 1992.

Steven Prins & Co., with the help of Robert Proctor, completed conservation of a full ceiling painting and proscenium mural at the historic Scottish Rites Masonic Temple, Santa Fe. They are currently providing technical advice, as well as varnishing and finishing paintings for Judy Chicago's Holocaust Project at the Spertus Museum, Chicago.

Gloria Fraser-Giffords spoke at the Tucson Museum of Art about Mexican Colonial Art and Architecture and Mexican Colonial Painting as part of public programs for the exhibition, "Spirit of the Flesh."

Jim Roberts and Gretchen Voeks (National Park Service, WACC) have been funded for 2 national park surveys and will be hiring two new assistants. WACC hosted a Property Management course in January. Visiting conservators/lecturers included Ed McManus and Martin Burke.

Jo Willey has completed a detailed survey of the Casas Grandes pottery (over 1000 pieces from northern Mexico) and made a presentation in the U. of A. anthropology department about the project. Jo leaves ASM for a 6-month visit home in Australia and then begins a Mellon Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in objects conservation.

Nancy Odegaard has been awarded a sabbatical leave for 1993-94. She will begin the time off with a visit to Australia and then will make short trips from Tucson to look at collections and talk with conservators.

Reporters:
Landis Smith
208 A Gonzales Road
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505/989-9379
and
Nancy Odegaard
Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
602/621-6314

San Francisco Bay Area

Grey DeVore Beaudin was born to Jill Sterrett Beaudin (SFMOMA) and Russ Beaudin on December 18, 1992. Lucy Pearce (SFMOMA) travelled to Mexico City in November in relation to the research she is doing on the easel painting techniques of Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Tammy Flynn has left SFMOMA to relocate in Toronto, Canada.

Textile conservator Bruce Hutchinson has returned to the Bay Area and has opened a textile conservation laboratory for cleaning, preservation, and stabilization of historic and artistic textiles. Emphasis will be placed on large-scale works.

Julie Thompson is starting her own private practice and is sharing studio space with Carrie Ann Calay. Carrie Ann joined Overmire, a co-op of independent collections management consultants, in December, serving as the group's consulting conservator. She attended the NEDCC course in preservation microfilming at UCLA in early February on behalf of the group.

Shira Ilyse Freeman was born to Jane Klinger (National Archives) and Jesse Freeman on January 6, 1993.

Mark Harpainter, private furniture conservator, conducted a survey, in February, of the Oregon Historical Society's furniture collection.

Elisabeth Cornu, de Young Museum Object Conservation Laboratory, has been away installing and deinstalling the Arms and Armour show. In March she taught a UNESCO Preventative Conservation and Exhibition Management course for Caribbean countries in Kingston, Jamaica.

Dale Kronkright is teaching objects conservation for the spring semester at the Art Conservation Department, Buffalo State College, while Jonathan Thornton is on sabbatical. Dale will be teaching the Save Outdoor Sculpture (SOS) volunteer training course in Hawaii and Oahu at the end of March.

Alison Luxner, Winterthur intern, now at the Western Regional Paper Conservation Laboratory,(WRPCL), spent two weeks in January working with Gary Albright at the Northeast Document Conservation Center on a photograph conservation project. In recent months WRPCL has welcomed the expertise of visiting conservators Debra Fox, Downey Manoukian, Sarah Melching and Kathleen Orlenko.

Anne Rosenthal, private mural conservator, and Tony Rockwell collaborated on several mural projects recently, one involving the cleaning of a smoke-damaged WPA mural by Moya del Pino from the GSA in Stockton, California. In December, they treated an imposing mural cycle by Jules Guerin, in the Illinois Continental Bank, Chicago. Earlier Anne had attended the University of London sponsored site visits of fresco conservation projects in Florence, Arezzo, Orvieto and Siena.

During the summer of 1993, Linda Scheifler Marks, object conservator at the Asian Art Museum, will return to Ulaan Bataar, along with other museum personnel. They will begin the condition reports, photography and some basic cleaning prior to catalogue photography of Mongolian objects for an international exhibition planned for 1995.

In the textile Conservation Laboratory, de Young Museum, everyone has been busy preparing the costumes and fans for the Art Nouveau Dress exhibit. Denise Krieger Migdail will be attending the CAL stain removal course in April. Several local consultants including Michael Wolf, Tracy Powers, Nancy Sloper Howard and Mark Gilberg have been giving Sarah Gates proposals and ideas for the treatment of the odd beetle infestation in the collection.

Jeanne Marie McKee, formerly of San Francisco, has relocated her art conservation practice to Mill Valley, California.

Regional Reporter:
Theresa Andrews
SFMOMA Conservation Department
401 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94102
415/252-4050