Volume 16, Number 3, Sept 1994, p.7

Regional News

Texas and Oklahoma

Perry Huston and Associates welcomes its new paper conservator, Hollie White. Among their projects are six 12' x 16' murals from the Chicago World's Fair for a theater in Wamego, KS. They are also continuing work on the Library of Congress murals for the Department of the Interior in Washington, DC. Perry Huston was awarded the Sheldon and Caroline Keck Award at the AIC meeting in Nashville.

Csilla Felker-Dennis will be conducting a CAP survey for the Reno County Historical Society.

Sandra Blackard recently resigned as Chair of the AIC Safety Committee.

Richard Trela was an exhibitor at the Texas Association of Museums and the American Association of Museums meetings for the Conservation Center, Panhandle Plains Museum. He recently finished work on 14 paintings of Texas Supreme Court judges for the Capital Restoration Project.

Cheryl Carraba has moved her studio. The new address is: Carraba Conservation, 2700 W. Anderson Lane, Suite 512, Austin, TX 78757, phone 512/452-5880. She has been working for the Capital Restoration Project on photocomposites that hang in the Senate chambers.

Many of the staff of the Henry Ransom Humanities Research Center Conservation Lab will be teaching for the Graduate School of Library and Information Science's Preservation and Conservation Program. Olivia Primanis, Mary Baughman, Pat Ingram and Maria Cavalcanti of the book conservation lab, presented a seminar in identification of historic binding structure. Karen Pavelka taught paper conservation techniques. Miranda Martin is teaching a two-day seminar on deacidification and Jim Stroud will provide special instruction on a large manuscript project. Interning in the paper conservation lab for the summer is student Andrea Harland of the Queen's University Conservation Program.

The Materials Conservation Lab of Texas Memorial Museum co-sponsored the course "Object Deterioration and Collections Care" with London-based International Academic Projects. Instructors for the course were Bob Child, National Museum of Wales, and Sally Shelton, San Diego Natural History Museum. Katrina Robb of Kalamazoo College was a pre-program intern in the Materials Conservation Lab. Pat Strong continued rehousing wax and plaster copies of seals and medallions as an independent study project. Jessica Johnson attended the Materials Science Meetings in Cancun last May where she presented a poster on some physical and chemical effects of acid cleaning ceramics, co-authored by Harold Erickson and Harry Iceland of the Department of Anthropology, UT at Austin.

The Texas Association of Museums is collecting information for Phase II of the Resource Sharing Project, designed to produce a directory of Texas museums and their resources, including conservation, to encourage sharing of staff and other resources.

As part of the national SOS! project, Oklahoma Museums Association is hosting statewide training sessions. For more information contact Cherie Cook at 405/424-7757.

In preparation for the 1997-98 Thomas Moran retrospective exhibition in assocaition with the National Gallery, Washington, DC, Gilcrease Museum has loaned 15 paintings to the National Gallery for scientific examination. These results will be used to compare Gilcrease Museum's Morans to other Moran collections with emphasis regarding artist's materials and techniques.

Regional Reporters:

Jessie Johnson
Materials Conservation Laboratory
Texas Memorial Museum
10100 Burnet Road
Austin, TX 78758
512/471-6090
and
Gayle Clements
Gilcrease Museum
1400 Gilcrease Museum Road
Tulsa OK 74127-2100
918/596-2780

Rocky Mountain Region

Rocky Mountain Conservation Center finished its year well in the black (congratulations!) and is looking forward to an NEA-funded environmental survey of its lab facility to be conducted this autumn. RMCC would like to thank all who serve on the Advisory Council for their special assistance in helping it to plan and move into its future. Paul Messier has completed an IMS-funded, object-specific survey of the Denver Art Museum's 19th c landscape photography collection. He was assisted by Carl Patterson and Wendy Fairchild. Following this survey Paul will be returning to Boston to start his own conservation studio. Diane Tafilowski, pre-program aide and photo/paper technician, has been accepted at SUNY-Buffalo. We are very proud of her and wish her well in her formal conservation studies.

Judy Greenfield attended a July conference sponsored by the National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE), "Coatings for Outdoor Metals Used in Artistic and Historic Works" and a hands-on class, "Care of Outdoor Bronzes", taught by New York sculpture conservator, John C. Scott.

Carmen Bria and Camilla Van Vooren taught a course called "Art Conservation: A Race Against Time" for the adult continuing education program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Robert McCarroll completed two CAP surveys in Lincoln, NE for the United Methodist Center and the National Museum of Roller Skating.

The Denver Museum of Natural History has been awarded an IMS grant to address the preservation needs of their Native American Featherbed Ceremonial collection. Beginning in October the collection will be cleaned, surveyed and rehoused. Abigail Mack has completed her internship and will graduate from State University College at Buffalo's Art Conservation Program this September. Jude Southward, recently returning to Colorado after completing her conservation training at Queen's University, is currently working four-fifths time as a conservator with the museum. As part of her private practice she worked this summer with the American Etruscan Foundation as project conservator on a site near Siena, Italy. A volunteer conservation group has been started at the Denver Art Museum to undertake various collections management and conservation projects. Carl Patterson reports the successful completion of an NEA-funded conservation survey of a large portion of the museum's Spanish Colonial collection. Conservators Keith Bakker, Dawn Wilson and Carmen Bria assisted in this large project. Carl also completed three CAP surveys and served on an NEH panel. He, M. Randall Ash and Judy Greenfield are serving on the Mayor's Interagency Maintenance Task Force for creating an artwork restoration and maintenance program for the city and county of Denver.

Regional Reporter:

Diane Danielson
Rocky Mountain Conservation Center
2420 South University Blvd.
Denver, CO 80208
303/733-2712

San Diego Region

Monica Jaworski has recently established a new business, "Peregrine Brushes and Tools", offering high-quality and specialty brushes, tools and supplies to conservators. She will also locate hard-to-find items by special request. Her new catalog will be produced shortly. For a copy please write or call: Peregrine Brushes and Tools, 2400 Kettner Blvd., Suite 229, San Diego, CA 92101; phone 619/231-4019.

"Examination of Dutch Flower Paintings", an article written by Sarah Murray, Associate Conservator of Paintings with the Balboa Art Conservation Center, has been published in Bulletin no. 2: 1994 of the Hamilton Kerr Institute. The article concerns the technical analyses Sarah carried out in an investigation of the methods and materials used by three 17th c Dutch flower painters. BACC was pleased to have Holly Anderson, a third-year student with the Buffalo State College Program in Art Conservation, as a summer intern in paper conservation. Also joining the staff for one year beginning this last summer is pre-program student, Karen Abend.

Marc Harnly (Getty Museum) and Theresa Andrews (private practice Oakland) worked with BAAC this last summer treating a collection of photographic prints in the collection of the Museum of Photographic Arts, funded in part by the IMS.

Regional Reporter:

Frances Prichett
Paper Conservation
5235 35th Street
San Diego, CA 92116
619/283-0368

Greater Los Angeles and Santa Barbara

Vinod Daniel, WAAC Board Member at Large, will soon be leaving GCI to assume the position of Scientific Officer for the Australian Museum.For his new address in Sydney see the Membership Column.

Jo Hill has joined the staff of the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History as director of conservation. Andrea Williams, a retired grants officer with studio art training, Eric Silvers, a recent UCLA graduate, and Rachel Norris, a pre-program conservation intern, are some of Jo's volunteer assistants in the labortary. The new lab phone number is 310/825-1146.

Montserrat Le Mense recently completed her third year internship at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) working on the restoration of a fifteenth century Spanish tryptich which will be featured in an exhibition in September, "From Aragon to Castille: the restoration of two Spanish Paintings from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art". The large restoration project involved the efforts of several conservators over the past three years and Montserrat's contributions led to new insights in the attribution of the panels. LACMA provided funds for Montserrat to travel to Spain for two weeks and pursue research on Spanish panel paintings. In June Joe Fronek delivered a paper at a symposium organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in conjunction with the exhibition, "Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges". His paper described the examination and treatment of LACMA's "Portrait of a Man", which had been previously questioned as a Christus but has now been more firmly attributed by scholars. Barbara Schleicher, a conservator in private practice at the Pitti Palace in Florence, visited paintings conservation at LACMA for the month of July to work on Italian panel paintings in preparation for the upcoming reinstallation of the European galleries later this year. Funds for the visit were provided by a private donor. Paintings conservators at LACMA have now carried out several moisture relaxation treatments on paintings using the new Willard Low-Pressure Suction Table. In July an Adolph Gottlieb with pronounced cracks and deformations was treated using combined consolidation and moisture relaxation with the Willard. Lisa Courtney Forman is the new Assistant Paper Conservator at LACMA. Prior to joining the permanent staff in May, Lisa worked on an IMS survey of the museum's extensive Japanese woodblock print collection. As a challenging first project, she prepared over 140 photographs for an August opening of "the camera i: Photographic Self-Portraits from the Audrey and Sydney Irmas C ollection". She will also be travelling with the exhibition, scheduled to show in Ohio, New York and possibly Japan, Spain and Denmark. Ken Grant, a second year student from the State University of New York at Buffalo, was a summer intern in the Paper Conservation Lab under the direction of Victoria Blyth-Hill. His main focus was the treatment of ten engravings by the 17th c French artist, Robert Nanteuil, to be displayed in the museum's medals gallery. His third year internship will commence at the Library of Congress in October.

Dr. Terry Schaeffer and Victoria have just completed a memo to the staff of LACMA (curatorial, registration, operations and technical services) which outlines suggested light exposures for exhibition of paper-based and photographic art. The task seems simple, but the section on photographs was difficult to present in easily understood terms. They would like to offer this information to conservators for comments and corrections. Contact either of them at LACMA if you would like to receive a copy. Victoria spent two weeks in Turkey with her husband, Charles Hill. He was invited as an artist for a two-week residency in the ancient town of Gümüzlük near Bodrum in southwestern Turkey, two minutes from the Aegean. She hoped to work on a chapter on conservation for Dr. Pal's next book on Tibetan art and not on her tan! (Only she will tell. . .).

Mark Watters has completed conservation of 61 watercolors, drawings and prints by William Blake for the Huntington Library art collection. This coming fall there will be an exhibition of some of the Huntington's extensive Blake holdings. Robert Aitchison will be working on a Carleton Watkins folding screen with mammoth plate albumen photographs of "Views of the West" as part of an NEA conservation grant given to California Museum of Photography in Riverside.

Kate Duffy, Mellon/NEA fellow in conservation science at LACMA, recently undertook a technical examination at Mockingbird Canyon, an important ethnographic site in Riverside, CA. The site, containing pictographic art, was used for ceremonial rituals by Native Americans indigenous to the southeastern part of California, particularly the Luiseno Indians. The examination is part of a larger study by the Riverside park system to assess the site and initiate a proper plan of site management. Samples were taken from representative rock formations and examined by microscopy, x -ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometry. The results indicate that this area has been consistently used in ceremonies up through the 19th c.

Duane Chartier spent two weeks in June at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, Oklahoma City, where he orchestrated the moving of a plaster sculpture, "The End of the Trail" by James Earle Fraser. The sculpture was originally exhibited at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco as a full-scale model for a bronze sculpture. It won the gold medal but was never executed in bronze. The sculpture later was transferred to Visalia, CA where it stood outdoors for approximately 50 years before coming to Oklahoma. The twenty foot high sculpture weighs almost four tons and is extremely fragile. The present moving involved mapping out stress points and cracks, padding the sculpture and constructing a steel cage around it. The sculpture was then lifted by crane 65' over trees and then carefully manoeuvered into a new museum space. In July Duane Chartier and Suzanne Friend treated the mural "Apotheosis of Power", 1930, by Hugo Ballin in the old Southern California Edison Building (1 Bunker Hill). The painting is oil on canvas marouflaged to a plastered concrete wall. The mural was damaged during the January Northridge earthquake when a horizontal reinforcing bar vibrated, causing cracking and detachment of the plaster and canvas over the bar. The painting was surface cleaned and the damaged area was faced. The canvas and plaster were cut along the existing crack lines in order to excavate the crumbled plaster. The affected area was then reattached, filled, and inpainted. Debra May, Jenene Hamilton, Krisin Basalone and Michael Pavoni assisted in the project.

Glenn Wharton served as site conservator at Kaman Kalehöyük this summer. He continues to work with staff Japanese archaeologists to establish a conservation/research facility at the central Anatolian Phrygian/Hittite site. Marie Svoboda accompanied Glenn as assistant conservator and Mei-An Tsu (Winterthur) as a student intern.

Cynthia Moyer is working as an Assistant Conservator in Decorative Arts and Sculpture Conservation at the Getty Museum, specializing in the treatment of gilded surfaces. Cynthia comes to California after 16 years of private practice in New York State.

Gordon Hanlon was promoted to Associate Conservator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Getty Museum. Jane Bassett gave a workshop in June to neighborhood museums in Salt Lake City on the retrieval of water damaged collections. Joe Godla has been working on ways to visualize artist's intent without actually manipulating the object. Through the use of the image manipulation software, Adobe Photoshop, he has been applying original colors to images of faded marquetry panels. Brian Considine finds himself working almost full-time on the move to the Brentwood facility.

George Johnson has been investigating new thermoplastics and their use as mounting materials. Mark Mitton will be giving a paper titled "An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Rubble" at the Association of Preservation Technology conference in Seattle, addressing earthquake damage prevention. The Getty Paintings Conservation Department welcomes back Gianni Marussich from Italy. Gianni is a specialist in structural work on panel paintings and will continue work on a set of Louis XIV gold ground paintings which he began last year. Katrina de Carbonnel and Insun Cho, also involved in the project, are cleaning and inpainting the paintings. Isabelle Tokumaru, the current intern, will be leaving in October to take up her position as Mellon Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The Antiquities Conservation Department spent several months conducting a survey of all of the objects in the collection of the California Afro-American Museum (CAAM). At the end of the survey a small exhibit on preventative conservation was jointly planned for CAAM. The exhibit "Make It Last" opened in one of CAAM's galleries in April of 1994 and will continue until January 1995. The Education Department at CAAM has planned several activities in conjunction with the exhibit. For more information contact them at 213/74-7432. Martha Simpson, the 1993/94 Antiquities Conservation intern, will be leaving the department in late September for a post- graduate internship at the Objects Conservation Department at the National Gallery in Washington DC. The 94/95 intern Julie Unruh will start in late September. Julie is an objects major from the Art Conservation Department of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

Linda A. Strauss has left the J. Paul Getty Museum to begin a private practice in Hollywood, CA. She will be specializing in decorative arts and sculpture, but also has an interest in arms and armor, scientific instruments, mechanical and historic objects. She can be reached at 5747 Briarcliff Road, Los Angeles, CA 90068; 213/467-6693; internet e-mail: M.STRAUSS@genie.geis.com

Carolyn Tallent, aka WAAC Newsletter Editor, has moved her paintings conservation practice to: 537 San Vicente Boulevard, Apt. 211; Santa Monica, CA 90402. Phone and FAX remain 310/458-6834

Regional Reporters:

Sasha Stollman
Wharton & Griswold Associates, Inc.
549 Hot Springs Rd.
Santa Barbara, CA 93108
805/565-3639
and
Virginia Rasmussen
Conservation Center
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036213/857-6168

San Francisco Bay Area

The Asian Art Museum recently prepared for an exhibition of objects from Xi'an, China including several objects of the Qin Emperor's (221-210 BC) terracotta warriors. The exhibition opened August 3 and continues through October. It will travel to the Kimbell Museum and the Honolulu Academy of Arts before returning to China. Katharine Untch, continuing on as Associate Conservator of Objects at the AAM, attended the Third International Conference on the History and Use of Metals held in Sanmenxia, China last April. She returned this summer to Sanliurfa, Turkey to provide regional conservation services for three neighboring archaeological sites. Accompanying her were summer interns Tania Collas, second year graduate student at Buffalo State College, and Cynthia Cripps, second year graduate student at Queen's University. Julie Goldman attended the School of Oriental and African Studies conference, "Towards a Definition of Style: The Arts of Tibet", presented at the Victoria and Albert Museum last June.

Ria German joins the staff of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as an advanced level Getty intern in paintings conservation in October. An item-by-item condition survey was completed for the SFMOMA photography collection with generous funding from the Getty Grant Program and the IMS. The 18-month survey project was undertaken by staff conservator Jill Sterrett Beaudin, NEA fellow Theresa Andrews and consulting conservators Marc Harnly and Pauline Mohr. Additional consultation was provided by Debbie Hess Norris. Leslie Kruth will be the consulting conservator at SFMOMA for the upcoming exhibition of the work of architect William Worster. Her funding comes from the NEH. Will Shank, SFMOMA chief conservator, was a participant in a summer course at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid which took place in August in El Escorial. The course, on the conservation problems of contemporary art was organized by Pilar Sedano Espin, chief conservator of the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. The fabulous new SFMOMA building will open to the public in the Yerba Buena section of San Francisco in January 1995. Staff conservators, already on site part-time, are preparing the permanent collection for exhibition in its new home as well as consulting with curators on the opening exhibition: "Public Information: Desire, Disaster, Document".

Jane Klinger has left the National Archives and is now the chief conservator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her new address is: USHMM; 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place SW, Washington, DC 20024-2150.

Laura Downey recently repaired two Manuel Neri paper pulp torsos from 1974. The two bodies, constructed differently, had suffered numerous structural breaks from handling and displayed unsightly, very white repairs that no longer matched the surrounding yellowed and soiled surface. She has now completed her internship at the Western Regional Paper Conservation Lab of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and finished her degree from The Art Conservation Department of the State University College at Buffalo. She will assume the position of Assistant Paper Conservator at Balboa Art Conservation Center in San Diego at the end of September. Other staff members Debra Evans, Sue Grinols, Pauline Mohr and Janice Schopfer completed treatment and rehousing of 176 playbills from the collection of the Society of California Pioneers. Bob Futernick continues to head the very extensive computerization, cataloging and rehousing project for the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts (FAMSF). Over 50,000 items have been newly cataloged, photographed and barcoded for registration and retrieval. In preparation for the reopening of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor the slide format documentation will be transferred to digital imaging and made available to the public by appointment in the new print study room. In April, Bob, Dale Kronkright, Sarah Rosenberg and Glenn Wharton presented a panel discussion to AAM on behalf of AIC. The subject of the panel was "Conservation Strategies for Diverse Collections".

Regional Reporter:

Theresa Andrews
4341 Edgewood Avenue
Oakland, CA 94602
510/482-4698

Pacific Northwest

Sarah Melching received a Carolyn Horton Award from the AIC Book and Paper Group (BPG) which facilitated her attendance at the Second Annual ARSAG Symposium in Paris in May. The title of this year's meeting was "Environment and Conservation of Graphic, Photographic and Audiovisual Documents." Sarah was also elected Assistant Program Chair for the BPG. For the next two years she will be helping to plan the BPG session at the AIC Annual Meeting. Ideas are welcome!

Artech welcomes two new staff members. Richard Larson, previously with the Scottsdale Center for the Arts, is the new shop department head with specialties in case and mount work. Bob Beane, formerly with USA Air via Lyle North, is the new head of the installation department.

Art/conservation historian Elizabeth Darrow served as art and conservation historian for the American Museum of Natural History's boat trip on the Baltic. Approximately 50 people, including Senator Claiborne Pell's wife, attempted to understand the role political history has played regarding art and its preservation in the Baltic countries, many formerly controlled by the USSR. She also went to Amsterdam and Lisbon to view Gothic churches cleaned with lasers. Future travel will take her from Istanbul to Berlin on the Red Prussian, the Russian version of the Orient Express.

Jane Lucas announces her departure from the profession with her marriage to James Lee Hansen. She will become a "housewife" and partner to Jim in his sculpting business. Best wishes! The business is now fully transferred to Troy Lucas. He reports that they have recently received a contract to begin work on nine large oil murals by Flemish artist Emil Jacques mounted to the chapel walls of St. Mary's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland. In Medford, OR they visited the So. Oregon Hist. Soc. to evaluate two WPA murals by Hal E. Bishop and several theatrical backdrops by Peter Britt.

In August Jonathan Taggart worked at the Church of the Covenants in Cleveland on their carved wooden reredos. He was recently involved with projects at the Nelson-Atkins Museum and CAP assessments at the Clatsop County Historical Society. His recent restoration of the "Elk" in Portland, in conjunction with the City Water Bureau and Metropolitan Arts Commission (MAC) completes the first joint project of these two governmental bodies. Jonathan will be working with MAC in the anticipated continuation of the SOS! program with a challenge grant to complete condition surveys of outdoor sculptures in Portland.

Regional Reporter:

Alice Bear
Conservation of Works of Art on Paper
P.O. Box 24262
Seattle, WA 98124206/323-5219

Hawai'i

Conservation Services (CS), formerly the Pacific Regional Conservation Center, contracted the services of Tracy Power (private practice San Francisco) in June to work on a variety of sculptures, including pieces for the city of Honolulu, Iolani Palace and the Bank of Hawai'i. She was assisted by Melissa Arnold, conservation technician at CS. Leslie Guy, a second year Winterthur student completed her eight-week summer work project at CS in ethnographic object conservation. Dana Kauai Iki Olores is the new Collection Care Intern for the Bishop Museum. He attended the two-week course, "Archaeological and Ethnographic Core Curriculum", at the Campbell Center in July. Sayre Batton worked on paper projects at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Linda Hee completed another phase of the anthropology move at the Bishop Museum. CS conducted clinics on the Big Island of Hawai'i and at the BYU, Laie, Oahu campus. It also conducted three training sessions for the staff and volunteers at the Waipahu Cultural Garden Park.

Dr. Suzanne Lomax, a chemist from the National Gallery of Washington DC, gave a talk in May at the University of Hawai'i entitled "The Application of Chemistry to the Examination of Works of Art". The presentation was co-sponsored by the American Chemical Society and the BYU-Hawai'i Chemistry Department.

Laurence Pace spent several days in Guam taking paint samples from a variety of Japanese World War II artillery pieces as well as a torpedo and a bomb. These will be analyzed in Honolulu to determine the original paint layers and their pigment composition. He also gave a brief presentation and demonstration of sampling techniques to the participants of a workshop sponsored by the National Park Service entitled "Conservation Management of Historic Metals in Tropical Environments". The Judiciary History Center in Honolulu awarded a contract to P.A.C.E., Inc for the conservation treatment of two portraits of former judges painted in 1911 by Theodore Wores. The Honolulu Academy of Art has been awarded an NEA grant for the conservation treatment of the 1951 painting, "Savage Rose" by Pousette-Dart. The treatment will be carried out by P.A.C.E., Inc.

Regional Reporter:

Laurence Pace
2109 A Liliha St.
Honolulu, HI 96817 808/595-7500