Volume 19, Number 2 .... May 1997

Regional News

HAWAII

Susan Sayre Batton, paper conservator, reports that The Japanese Print conservation Project at the Honolulu Academy of Arts continues after 4 1/2 years, and celebrates 1997 with a series of exhibitions in honor of Ando Hiroshige, born 200 years ago. The Academy is devoting its rotating print exhibitions to the 53 Stations of the Tokaido, and sending 30 important prints to the Royal Academy of London's major Hiroshige exhibition, which opens in the summer. Last fall, the Academy welcomed home the exhibition Japanese Treasures from the Honolulu Academy of Arts, which had been on the road in Japan for a year in several venues.

This active exhibition schedule keeps Paper Technician Susan Thomas busy, as well as Susan Sayre Batton, who works on prints in her Los Angeles studio and makes five trips a year to Honolulu to work at the Academy. Susan Thomas has accomplished Herculean tasks behind-the-scenes, reorganizing the print vault, upgrading storage, computerizing records and print locations, and matting and framing for exhibitions.

Most notably, the Academy project established its own matting and conservation space, moving out of the Bishop Museum conservation department in late December. When finished, this space will serve all the curatorial departments, and is currently an active workspace with skylights.

Linda Hee is busy with several new installations at the Tropic Lightening Museum at Schofield Barracks including the development of an Archives Research and Study Room.

After years of avoiding the paperwork Laurence Pace, Pace Art Conservation Enterprises, Inc., finally applied for and received Professional Associate status in AIC. So far he has noticed no harmful side effects from doing that paperwork.

Larry has been assisting the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts with the reinstallation of five frescos by the late artist Jean Charlot at the Hawai'i Convention Center, which is currently under construction. The frescos were originally painted in 1956 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel in Waikiki. They were cut from the walls in 1985 prior to demolition of the building.

Regional Reporter:

Laurence A. Pace
P.A.C.E. Inc.
1645 Haku St.
Honolulu, HI 96819
(808) 833-1999

ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION

Teresa Knutson, Textile Conservator at Rocky Mountain Conservation Center, treated several Native American textiles belonging to the CIGNA collection. The Plexiglass housing and mounting fabric exhibited a grayish growth, resembling mold, rarely found in this semi-arid part of the country. Consultation with a microbiologist determined that the growth was composed of penicillin and yeast. The pieces were vacuumed, tacking boards fitted and recommendations made to reduce the humidity!

The RMCC Paintings Department recently completed work on a group of paintings from the National Park Service.

Abigail Mack, formerly of RMCC, has settled in Kripplebush, New York, and is doing contract conservation work for New York institutions. She is expecting a baby this spring.

RMCC now has its web page up and running. You can visit it at <http://www.du.edu/rmcc>.

Carmen F. Bria, Jr., and Camilla J. Van Vooren of the Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts finished the conservation treatment of the second of three wall murals by the noted regional muralist Allen Tupper True. The murals (ca. 1940) were painted directly on the plaster walls of a classroom building at the Graland Country Day School which was demolished in August of 1994. Because the 6' x 10' murals weigh 750 lbs., the conservators worked in conjunction with Duffy Crane and Heavy Hauling for the reinstallation, while Dry Creek Gold Leaf, Inc. did the framing.

In December, Judy Greenfield and Eileen Clancy taught an intensive course on Conservation Principles and Conservation of Numismatic Materials for students representing International Mint and Board of Currency members. The officials were attending a two-week program sponsored by the American Numismatic Association. Eileen has been treating the ANA collection of Colonial and Early American paper currency. Judy has been treating plaster originals for coins and medals in the ANA collections.

M. Randall (Randy) Ash recently visited Las Cruces, New Mexico to work on 2 large paintings and 1 mural done in the 1930's by the artist Tom Lea. She was pleased to have the opportunity to meet the artist while she was working there.

Gina Laurin, Objects Conservator, has recently moved back to Denver after years of residing and working in both the United Kingdom and Virginia. She has rejoined the Denver Museum of Natural History as a temporary employee for a five month project involving the treatment of Mesoamerican ceramics (incensarios). Both she and her husband are happy to be back in the Western United States and to be spared damp and rainy weather yet again.

Regional Reporter:

Diane Danielson
Rocky Mountain Conservation Center
2420 South University Blvd.
(303) 733-2712

ARIZONA

Gretchen Voeks, NPS-WACC, has been working on dioramas at the Tumacacori National Monument in Arizona, will be working on a museum management plan for the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in Oregon, and is continuing conservation efforts at the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii. Gretchen is organizing a lighting workshop by NoUVIR for April 25 in Tucson.

Nancy Odegaard, Arizona State Museum, recently lectured to the Art Conservation Program in Buffalo about materials characterization spot tests and legal/ethical issues in ethnographic and archaeological conservation. She is serving as ASM Acting Curator of collections July 1996-June 1997. Interns in the lab are Esther Chao, Angela Fox, Carrie Gibbs, Amanda Hunter, Terri Moreno, and Anthony Weatherwax.

Matthew Crawford, ASM, is working on the stabilization of wall murals from the Homolovi Site in Arizona.

Linda Morris reports that her private practice has moved to Rancho Vista del Cielo, 5175 S. Melpomene Way, Tucson AZ 85747.

Gloria Giffords, Fraser-Giffords Art Conservation, was recently appointed visiting professor in the Department of Mexican American Studies and research at the University of Arizona. She will be working on a biannual and bilateral border program. Her interns are Amanda Hunter, Tanya King and Adrien Lungren.

Terri Schindel recently became the conservator for the Arizona Historical Society - Central Arizona Division located in Tempe. She is also still completing projects in Colorado so the best way to reach her is 800-250-5142.

Andrew Owen reports that the new address for Phoenix Restorations is 4221 N. 16th St., Phoenix AZ 85016.

Regional Reporter:

Nancy Odegaard
Arizona State Museum, Bldg. 30
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
(520) 621-6314

BRITISH COLUMBIA

Cynthia Cripps has completed her internship at the UBC Museum of Anthropology and is currently working on several small contracts at various institutions around Vancouver.

Murray Frost has been providing preventive conservation review and consultation services to museum clients in Barbados, Alaska, British Columbia, and Yukon; art gallery clients in England, Kentucky, and British Columbia; and historic building clients in Antarctica. A visit to England was required to attend meetings with the British client.

Rosaleen Hill has moved to Canberra, Australia where she has taken up the position of Lecturer in Paper Conservation as part of the Conservation of Cultural Materials Program at the University of Canberra. Megan Cornish has filled the position of conservator with the B.C. Conservation Service which was left vacant by Rosaleen's departure.

Regional Reporter:

Cynthia Cripps
3149 W. King Edward Ave.
Vancouver, B.C. V6L 1V4
(604)737-8622
Cynthia_Cripps@bc.sympatico.ca
(Please send all future correspondence to the above address. Thank you.)

GREATER LOS ANGELES AND SANTA BARBARA

Robert Aitchison, Mark Watters and Lisa Forman are collaborating on a survey of the Galka Scheyer Collection of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, CA. The collection is primarily works by Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Alexei Jawlensky and Lyonel Feininger. In addition to an assessment of the condition of each work, technical notes are being provided for a catalogue of the Blau Reiter artists in the collection.

Aitchisonand Watters and Lisa Forman are also participating in a condition survey of works on paper in the University Art Museum at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Substantial funding for this project has been provided by the IMLS.

The Paper Conservation Lab at LACMA has recently hired Micol Hebron in the position of Conservation Technician. Micol has a Bachelor of Arts Degree from UCLA. She was the recipient of a 1995 Guggenheim "Studentship" in Venice, Italy, at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection working with, among others, Paul Schwartzbaum. Micol is a delightful addition to the lab and brings with her not only a knowledge of materials and good hand skills, but is great with computers and fluent in Italian and Spanish.

Paper Conservation at LACMA has been extremely busy these last few months. The big show of the season, "Exiles and Emigres: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler" opened February 19th. The exhibition includes over 200 pieces of ephemera, many of which needed treatment and mylar encapsulation (not to mention the 75 works of art on paper and photographs). The job was made easier by the Getty Research Institute's Conservation Lab generously allowing us to use their ultra-sonic welder - thank you Maryand Deborah! The show will travel to Montreal and Berlin with LACMA Conservation staff.

Narelle Jarry, Mellon Fellow in LACMA Paper Conservation, spent the month of April in Europe on her fellowship study grant. She began in London at the Institute for Paper Conservation Conference and continued studies in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin and Vienna. Her focus of study was Japanese papers used by European artists and Japanese influence - Japonisme.

Victoria Blyth-Hill attended the IPC Conference in London, first spending two days in Amsterdam to observe and discuss the conservation treatment of Matisse's major decoupage "La Perruche et la Sirene" at the Stedelijk Museum by conservator Andre van Oort.

Terry Schaeffer, Jonna Larsen, Victoria Blyth-Hill and Lisa Forman are the authors of "Monitoring an Aqueous Light Bleaching Treatment with a Portable Spectrodensitometer" which was presented as a poster at the IPC London Conference. Terry also attended "The Interface Between Science and Conservation" symposium at the British Museum, 2-4 April, before IPC.

Susan Sayre Batton worked on contract in the LACMA Paper Lab during the first three weeks of April. Her main project was the treatment of a group of Japanese woodblock prints, identified as Priority One in our IMS funded survey of 1995.

Irena Calinescu, Andy Williams,and Natale Majkut began a 3-month project sponsored by the IMS-CP grant program; they have been treating beaded artifacts in preparation for the Yoruba beadwork show coming up at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Caroline Sakaguchi and Batyah Shtrum are nearing the end of their training period in the Fowler lab as pre-training conservation interns. Caroline will be then embarking on a project to physically number museum objects, supervised by both the Registration and Conservation Departments. She will be implementing the materials and techniques of object numbering researched and studied by Jo Hill and Linda Clougherty.

In preparation for an exhibition of silk embroidery textiles at the Fowler, Jo Hill participated in a 10-day technical exchange at the Suzhou Embroidery Institute in China. With the assistance of translators and Foreign Office diplomats, Jo introduced the master crafts people to the general principles of conservation, and gave slide lectures and demonstrations on Western and preventive care of works of art. The silk embroidery exhibition at the museum will display modern works inspired by the environmental photographer Robert Ketchum, as well as textiles executed on traditional subjects with time-honored techniques.

Painting conservators Carolyn Tallent, Santa Monica, Carol Kenyon, Santa Barbara, and Carolyn Tomkiewicz, of the Brooklyn Museum, are each working on paintings from the estate of artist James Britton, a New Yorker associated with "The Eight", in preparation for in exhibition in Ventura in the fall.

The Staff of the Department of Antiquities Conservation at the J. Paul Getty Museum will be giving Thursday afternoon talks to the public beginning in February and lasting until the Villa Museum closes sometime in July 1997. The informal presentations, entitled "Conversations with Conservators," are designed to give the visitors a look behind the scenes at some of the treatments and projects that the conservators have carried out in the past few years.

Jerry Podany traveled to Tokyo to present a paper on "Developing and practicing an Emergency and Disaster Response Plan" at the international Symposium on Risk Management. He also was part of a committee which consisted of representatives from ICOM, ICCROM-UNESCO, ICOMOS and the Japanese government which drafted a declaration on risk preparedness entitled "The Kobe/Tokyo Declaration on Cultural Heritage at Risk."

Theo Skinner, conservator for the Museums of Scotland, will be visiting the Department of Antiquities Conservation at the Getty the last week in March. Theo will investigate techniques of safe and accurate drilling of marble since the Museums of Scotland is presently installing their collections in a new museum building and the need for improved mountmaking procedures is paramount to the conservators.

Antiquities Conservation will soon begin a collaborative project with the Louvre in Paris on the treatment of two large-scale marble griffin reliefs from the Louvre collection. After treatment the two reliefs will be exhibited in the opening exhibition of the new Getty Center.

Jerry Podany joined conservators from Italy, France and Germany at a symposium at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin (March 3-4) to discuss new advances in the restoration and conservation of large stone sculpture in museum collections. Jerry reported on a number of projects at the Getty and the developments which have aimed at improving stability of assembly as well as greater ease of reversibility. The department's efforts at computerized documentation were also discussed.

Decorative Arts and Sculpture Conservation moved to their new labs at the Getty Center in mid-March. Interns in the lab include John Williams, formerly of the Sculpture Conservation Studio, who is working with the mountmakers to construct earthquake supports. Stephanie Griswold of the Buffalo Conservation graduate program will be spending six months of her internship year in the lab, working on the glass, silver and sculpture collections. Frederik Rouchet of the IFROA conservation program in Paris will be working in the lab on marble sculpture for four months.

Scott M. Haskins was invited to participate in a TV program for flood victims in the Sacramento area in January. The disaster relief call in show on Channel 3 TV was on the air from 12 noon to 8 P.M. victims within a wide geographical area were able to call in on an 800 number with salvage and preservation questions. Also in Jan., Scott was featured on a public access TV program in the Santa Barbara area for the genealogical society.

Linnaea Dix, a recent graduate of the Historic Preservation graduate program at the University of Pennsylvania, has joined Wharton & Griswold Associates to participate in several architectural conservation projects.

Glenn Wharton conducted a seminar on the Care and Maintenance of sculpture at the Taiwan Museum of Art, May 6-8. The seminar was attended by museum employees, artists and public art officials from various institutions in Taiwan. Subjects covered during the seminar included current issues in conservation in the US, design and fabrication of sculpture, and the key elements of establishing maintenance programs for sculpture collections. Glenn also delivered a lecture in Tokyo on March 8 on the Status of Archaeological Conservation in Turkey.

Julie Unruhhas decided to move to New York City to perform contract work. She will be missed at Wharton and Griswold Associates, where she has served as assistant conservator for the past year.

Regional Reporters:

Virginia Rasmussen
Conservation Center
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(213) 857-6168
Julie Unruh
Wharton and Griswold Associates
549 Hot Springs Rd.
Santa Barbara, CA 93108
(805) 565-3639

NEW MEXICO

Judy Bischoff, conservation scientist at the Art Conservation Department, Buffalo spent a week at the Mus. of New Mexico's Conservation Department providing orientation and workshops on the use of the Museum's new Nicolet FTIR; the instrument includes a micro-sampling split-pea attachment.

This year's MNM McCune Foundation pre-program intern is Cruz Lopez, a traditional santero and contemporary artist. Cruz completed treatment of a fire-damaged 19th century bulto of San Juan under the supervision of Chief Conservator, Claire Munzenrider. The bulto withstood a fire at the morada in Abiquiu, NM, and was sent by the brothers to the Museum for treatment. The bulto was conserved in time for the centuries-old Good Friday procession by the hermanos through the village of Abiquiu.

Jeanne Brako consulted on the conservation of Pueblo and Navajo textiles for the new wing to open in August at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. Jeanne reviewed textiles with Project Conservator, Landis Smith, for evidence of use/wear, treatment and mounting requirements. As part of her consultation in Santa Fe, Jeanne gave two presentations to Museum staff and interns on cultural evidence and conservation treatment of primarily Navajo and Pueblo textiles.

Dale Kronkright taught a two-week block on fibrous proteins in cultural materials at the Art Conservation Program at SUNY, Buffalo in February.

An interdisciplinary graduate seminar in architecture at the U. of Pennsylvania focused on the development of a site plan/re-design of the Mus. of New Mexico's Coronado Monument, an important early Puebloan village and kiva (with murals). The seminar was led by U. of P. faculty, including architectural conservator, Frank Matero. On-site sessions included a panel presentation by Chief Conservator, Claire Munzenrider, and MNM Museum of Indian Arts and Cultures director and curators (Native American and non-Native staff).

Bettina Raphael travelled to Houston in March to work with Head Conservator, Carol Mancusi, on sculpture at the Menil Collection.

Paper conservator, Patricia Morris completed a survey of American Indian paintings on paper at the School of American Research, Santa Fe in March.

Paul Smutko, Curator of Collections at the Museum of International Folk Art (a unit of the Museum of NM), used the Conservation Department's nitrogen anoxia bubble to complete the nitrogen anoxia of over 3,000 objects in the recently accessioned Neutrogena collection.

Conservation scientist, Susan Barger is teaching two Spring semester courses at the University of New Mexico, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. The courses are: "Materials Science of Art"; and, along with Kathleen Howe, Curator of Photography at the University Art Museum, "Objects of Art (the examination of art objects)".

Susan Barger and Malin Wilson (former curator and art appraiser) have recently opened an art consultation business in Santa Fe to provide archival and curatorial services.

Regional Reporter:

Landis Smith
5 Baya Court
Santa Fe, NM 87505
(505) 466-0475
lsconserv@aol.com

PACIFIC NORTHWEST

Working with the Cultural Resources Division of the local county government, Sarah Melching has written quot;Matting, Framing and Handling Guidelines for Public Art in the Collection of King County, Washington." It is a guide that is intended to assist both artists and framers who are involved with public arts projects.

In January J. Claire Dean spent several days camping in the East Mohave desert (one of her favorite spots) while attending a rock art congress focused on the rock images of the area, during which she led a discussion session on the conservation issues surrounding the rock art there. February saw her spending two weeks in the field near El Paso, Texas, dealing with vandalism to a pictograph site at Hueco Tanks State Historic Park.

Upcoming work includes time in April and early May to write and to prepare for the busy summer season including presenting a paper at the Society for American Archaeology meetings in Nashville, and organizing and chairing the President's Session (this year dedicated to conservation issues) of the annual American Rock Art Research Assn. meetings being held in La Junta, Colorado.

With the aid of an IMS grant, the Portland Art Museum engaged Barbara Roberts to advise and guide them in stabilizing storage shelving and artwork to withstand seismic activity. A crew of six, mostly Museum technical staff (including senior conservator, Sonja Sopher, and assistant conservator, Elizabeth Chambers) worked together for two weeks in the main storage vault to accomplish this task.

Jack Thompson has just completed a survey of artifacts scheduled to go into a new museum (the Crate's Point Interpretive Center of the Wasco County Historical Museum) being built at The Dalles, Oregon; and will soon return to The Dalles to begin preparing artifacts for exhibit, and working with local volunteers to do basic cleaning. In a separate but important point, Jack's web page has generated enough business (conservation work, plus sale of publications, and videotapes) to more than pay for itself.

In January,Julie Creahan returned to her position as Conservation Technician/Collection Care Manager at Seattle Art Museum after spending a year in Costa Rica. As a volunteer while in Costa Rica, Julie conducted a conservation assessment of museum storage at The Museum of Costa Rican Art (MAC- Museo de Arte Costarricense) and worked with the museum to implement improvements to art storage. A member of the MAC staff will visit Seattle later this year to become acquainted with collection care methods and materials used at SAM.

Marta Pinto-Llorca, who served as Acting Collections Care Manager in 1996, has become Collections Care Associate at SAM. The new textile storage and research room at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, funded by a 1995 IMS Conservation Special Projects Grants, is completed and operational thanks to Marta's efforts as project manager with the invaluable help of project assistants Vicki Parry, Barbara Robertson, Rock Hushka, and consulting conservator Sandra Troon. After serving as SAM Conservation Assistant in 1996, Sandra Troon is now working as Conservation Technician for paper conservator Alice Bear.

Regional Reporter:

Jamie Hascall
Hascall Museum Services
2335 N. 61 St.
Seattle, Washington 98103
(206) 525-6941
jhascall@accessone.com

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

Sarah Gates, Head Textile Conservator at the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, is busy writing letters of recommendation for interns Beth Szuhay, Tamsen Schwartzman, and Elise Schlick, all of whom are applying to graduate programs in either textile conservation or museum studies for fall 1997. A new addition to the pre-program roster is Melissa Potter, who moved to the Bay Area from New Mexico. Her initial projects (other than being "lab gopher" for three months) included lining all the old wooden drawers in permanent collection storage and assisting with low temperature pest control treatments.

English tapestry conservator Robert Allen is returning to help with the finishing touches on the Triumph of Fortitude, the 16th c. Brussels tapestry he worked on last year for 8 months. Robert's time was underwritten by one of the last NEA treatment grants. He is very generously donating the additional three weeks in June and will also be presenting a paper at the San Diego AIC meeting on the work undertaken at the Textile conservation Studies, Hampton Court Palace, where he is permanently employed.

The FAM is happy to announce the addition of new Textile Curator, Diane Mott, formerly of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. She and Melissa Leventon, Head Curator, are keeping the textile Lab extremely busy as they are collecting very actively, "hand over fist" one might even say, everything from costume to archaeological fragments.

Sarah Gates is joining a group of English conservators in March on a UKIC-organized tour of 10 east coast textile labs. She hopes to take a video camera along to document all the pros and cons of lab facilities in order to help design the "new de Young".

Staff conservators at the FAM are continuing to try to implement an integrated Pest Management program at both the de Young and the Legion. Michael Wolfe of RODEX continues to be involved and to help us with proposals and estimates. The cost-effectiveness of an IPM program vs. actual treatment of infestations seems to be one of the most effective arguments.

In the Paintings Conservation Studio at the FAM Uhich Birkmaier completed the treatment of Anthony Van Dyck's Marie-Claire de Croy, Duchess d'Havre and Child, an NEA-sponsored project. Tony Rockwell has recently completed cleaning Picasso's Still Life with Skull, Leaks, and Pitcher,an oil on canvas painting in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The painting had considerable grime and smoke deposits trapped under a varnish layer.

Architectural conservators Molly Lambert and Mary Hardy spent several weeks in April conserving decorative cast concrete balustrades on Bernard Maybeck's Recital Hall in Berkeley, built in the 1920's. While on a week's vacation in the Bay Area, Carolyn Tallent spent an afternoon observing and helping color match the Jahn mortar fills. In May, Molly will begin an alternate week commute, S.F. - L.A., to develop a conservation plan for the MetroArts division of the MTA in Los Angeles, for the public art in the transit system.

SFMOMA Painting Conservator Paula De Cristofaro, during a recent courier trip to Spain, interviewed students at the Reina Sofia, visited the Prado, and went to Toledo to view Spain's treasures.

SFMOMA hosted the AIC Photographic Materials Group Winter Meeting in February 7-8, 1997. 100 conservators from all over the world met to hear papers presented on various topics relating to photography and photographic conservation. Jill Sterrett, SFMOMA Paper and Photographs Conservator, did much of the planning and organizing of the event. For information about the papers that will be published contact the AIC National Office.

SFMOMA Chief Conservator Will Shank had the first public showing of his photographic work at Caffe Centro in San Francisco, March 1 - April 30. He specializes in photographs of architecture from cities throughout the world.

Neil Cockerline, SFMOMA Painting Conservator, is National Chairman for the 66th Annual Convention of the Circus Fans Association of America meeting in San Francisco, June 10-14. During the convention many items from his personal collection will be on exhibit, including historic posters, photographs and costumes. He has been preparing a series of recent acquisitions for exhibit including "spec" wardrobe used in the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus from circa 1916-20.

Paloma García-Añoveros, former Kress fellow at SFMOMA, has started her new position as collection manager at Lucasfilm Ltd.

Bradford Epley, a third-year intern from the State University College at Buffalo, spent the month of January working on painting treatments in the conservation studio of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Karen Zukor and staff welcomed an intern from Germany, Dirk Schönbohm, for a month-long internship at her Oakland studio. Dirk is in his third year at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, studying conservation of graphic art, archival and library objects. He is also a trained bookbinder who has worked at the Berlin Archives and the Library of Worcester College in Oxford.

Alejandro Reyes-Vizzuett, conservator in private practice, has completed treatment of a life size limestone sculpture, Cupidon from 1804 by Gilles Lambert Godecharle. The sculpture belongs to a private collection in New York and was damaged during transit. Alejandro has also worked on the consolidation and cleaning of a fifteenth century Italian polychrome wooden crucifix. The life size crucifix belongs to the collection of the Hearst Gallery at Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California.

In February and March, John Burke, Kathy Gillis, and Susana Zubiate of the Oakland Museum Conservation center conducted a conservation survey of the Campbell Historical Museum and Ainsley House in Campbell, California.

The Conservation Center is currently involved in a project using anaerobic pest control methods to treat a large collection of southwestern art and artifacts which were recently donated to the Oakland Museum by the estate of Lois Chambers Stone in Berkeley.

John continues to maintain and develop the United States section of the Virtual Library Museum Pages on the World Wide Web, the largest listing of Museum sites on the web. Any museum that would like to be listed on the service should submit the form available at www.museumca.org/usa.

Regional Reporter:

Paloma Garcia-Añoveros
Lucasfilm Archives
P.O. Box 2009
San Rafael, CA 94912
(415) 662-1553
paloma@kerner.com or
PalomaGAE@aol.com

OKLAHOMA

The Oklahoma Conservation Congress (OCC) Executive Board members met in Stroud, Oklahoma during February to plan the upcoming year's agenda. Programs discussed were a workshop in May on volunteers in the workplace and understanding copyright laws for publications. A workshop to be sponsored by OCC and held during the Oklahoma Museums Association annual meeting in Woodward, Oklahoma was also discussed. The agenda for the workshop will be announced later.

As part of the Oklahoma Museums Association's celebration of Oklahoma Museums Week, May 12-16, OCC will participate with a booth in the state capitol on Museums' Day, May 13. This event allows OCC to publicize their contributions made to the preservation/conservation of cultural heritage throughout the state last year.

Copies of the booklet "The Numbering of Objects for Museums, Historical Houses, and Private Collections" were mailed out to the nine chairpersons of the AIC specialty groups for their editing comments. The booklet was prepared by the Gilcrease Museum Conservation department after collaboration with members of the AIC/AAM Registrars Sub-Committee on Marking.

OKRA (Oklahoma Registrars Association) newsletter is available again. Contact Gail Kana Anderson, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, 410 West Boyd Street, Norman, Oklahoma 73019 for more information.

Regional Reporter:

Gayle S. Clements
Thomas Gilcrease Museum of American
History and Art
1400 Gilcrease Museum Road
Tulsa, OK 74127-2100
(918) 596-2780

TEXAS

At the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Ken Grant began working in February as assistant conservator in the Paper Laboratory. Ken came from the National Gallery of Art where he was a Mellon Fellow in Paper Conservation. While at the Gallery, he conducted extensive research into the technical aspects of the graphite pencil portrait drawings of J. A. D. Ingres. He can be contacted at: kgrant@mail.utexas.edu.

Ivan Berry has joined the Exhibits staff as a Technical Staff Assistant II.

Barbara Brown recently participated in the Photographic Materials Group winter meeting in San Francisco. She presented a paper entitled "Rescuing a Crew of World War II Navy Servicemen: Salvage Operation for a Panorama Print & Negative."

In March, Jim Stroud attended a conference in New York at the Real Estate Institute in preparation for the extensive third floor remodeling. In the meantime, remodeling of the HRC proceeds, with a new elevator opening onto the 4th floor (Conservation & Cataloging).

The Texas Memorial Museum has a new director, Dr. Ed Theriot, previously at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.

Also at TMM, Jessica Johnson recently presented a paper at the American Schools for Oriental Research (ASOR) meetings on "Preservation of Archaeological Metalwork in the Field".

Kathy Hall has been researching the deterioration of the Paluxy River dinosaur trackways, currently displayed in a shelter outside the Texas Memorial Museum.

Marilyn Lenz advised on bird care for a modern art exhibit entitled "Out of Bounds" at the Huntingdon Art Galley, and helped to catch some escapees.

Regional Reporter:

Kathy Hall
Texas Memorial Museum
The University of Texas at Austin
Materials Conservation Laboratory
10100 Burnet Road
Austin, Texas 78758
(512) 471-6090

SAN DIEGO

Betty Engel recently delivered a lecture to the American Society of Appraisers, San Diego Chapter, entitled "What you see is not always what you get: case studies in the conservation of paintings".

Sung Yu, formerly Curator of Oriental Art at the San Diego Museum of Art, and Alfredo Antognini, have recently collaborated on several projects, including the conservation of a Quan-yin sculpture and two earthenware equestrian figures from the early Tang Dynasty.

Regional Reporter:

Frances Prichett
Paper Conservation
5235 35th Street
San Diego, CA 92116
Tel: (619) 283-5011
Fax: (619) 283-3682