January 2002 Volume 24 Number 1

Regional News

Arizona

Laura Downey has taken a position as Conservator at the University Art Museum, U. of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Laura had been working as Assistant Conservator at the Arizona State Museum where she directed a project to conserve 400 American Indian works of art on paper. Also working on this project were Amanda Hunter Johnson, Audrey Harrison and Miranda Belarde-Lewis.

Nancy Odegaard was recently named Coordinator for Historic Preservation for the University of Arizona. Also, she recently organized a NAGPRA workshop and consultation for American Indian Tribes in the Southwest to discuss levels of preservation, restoration, and storage of ceramic vessels in museum collections. Conservators participating in the program were Bettina Raphael, Ellen Pearlstein and Jeff Maish.

J. Brynn Bender has taken the position of Assistant Conservator for the Western Archeological and Conservation Center through a cooperative agreement with the U. of Arizona. Brynn is conducting conservation treatments and storage upgrades for a collection of 290 kachina dolls and is assisted by Audrey Harrison.

Gretchen Voeks continues to work on construction and moving plans for the new Western Archeological and Conservation Center, which will be built on the western edge of Tucson. The facility is scheduled for completion in 2004.

Linda Morris has completed her mural conservation project for the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Phoenix.

Regional Reporter:

Gretchen Voeks
Western Archeological and Con. Center
National Park Service
1415 N. 6th Ave
Tucson, AZ 85711
(520) 670-6501 ext. 251
GretchenVoeks@nps.gov

Greater Los Angeles /Santa Barbara

At the Getty Research Institute (GRI), conservators Albrecht Gumlich, Teresa Mesquit, Janelle Newcomb and Stephan Welch have been busy with two major exhibitions. The staff recently completed conservation treatments and installation of over 80 loans for The World from Here show at UCLA's Hammer Museum. Closer to home, the opening of Devices of Wonder at the Getty Museum marks the culmination of many years of work in surveying and treating the over 300 objects on display. The staff is now preparing 16th-18th c. collection materials for Naples and Vesuvius on the Grand Tour, the next show in GRI's own gallery.

Last December, LACMA welcomed Elisabeth Schlegel for a one-year Mellon Fellowship in Paintings Conservation, under the supervision of Joe Fronek. Elisabeth will be focusing on treatments related to modern and contemporary art during her internship at LACMA.

In January of 2002, Maeva Schwend began a 9-month internship in Textile Conservation under the direction of Catherine McLean. As LACMA's fourth Lampadia/Getty Fellow, Maeva comes to us from a new museum in Santiago, Chile, Museo de la Moda y Textil, where she is responsible for the textile and decorative arts collections.

The Conservation Center at LACMA is delighted to welcome Kyu-Jin Ahn as Mellon Fellow in Conservation Research for 2001-02. Kyu-Jin graduated from the Master Program in Conservation Science at De Montfort University in England and completed an internship at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London before joining LACMA. Kyu-Jin will be working under the supervision of Marco Leona.

Victoria Blyth-Hill and Marco Leona were in New York City for several days in early November. They gave an informal lecture at NYU to the conservation students on the subjects of Conservation Research and advanced training opportunities at LACMA. They also met with colleagues at the Metropolitan Museum. The announcements for summer internships for 2002, as well as Mellon Fellowships for 2002-03 in the Conservation Center have been sent to US and Canadian graduate programs.

The Sculpture Conservation Studio is pleased to announce the addition of Christeen Taniguchi, a graduate of the Penn. Architectural Conservation program to their staff. The studio has been very busy completing an assessment of the California Missions up and down the California coast. During the summer they did inventory, identification, documentation, and were in charge of packing and moving all the items that belong to the Frank Lloyd Wright, Hollyhock House in Hollywood. They are also still quite involved with assessments and conservation of Cypress Lawn Cemetery in Colma, California.

Linda Strauss has been promoted to Director of Collections, Exhibits, and Conservation at the Autry. Probably the most unwieldy title at the museum. Tania Collas has left the Autry to become the Conservator at the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park. Everyone at the Autry wishes her well. As part of the change, Linda and Tania's private practice, Conservation of Fine Art Objects will be closing its doors. Thanks to all who have referred clients to us. Please take us off the list.

Regional Reporter:

Virginia Rasmussen
Conservation Center
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 857-6168
vlr@lacma.org

Hawaii

Recently completed conservation projects of Art Care by Gregory Thomas include an 11' x 8' High Renaissance style oil on canvas of the ascension of Christ from the Maria Lanakila Catholic Church in Lahaina, Maui. Greg and his wife Rose Mary attended the dedication of the painting, after they reframed and assisted in the reinstallation in the church.

Other conservation treatments completed by Greg are a partial transfer of a 4' x 6' oil on canvas seascape by Lionel Walden which was glued down to fiberboard with a PVA emulsion-like adhesive, a severely torn oil painting by John Young for the Honolulu Academy of Arts, an oil on canvas beach scene by D. Howard Hitchcock from a private collection, and the cleaning of a figurative acrylic on canvas by Peggy Hopper for the Honolulu Advertiser. Most interesting was a condition survey of the fourteen Stations of the Cross, chromo lithographs in Father Damien's Church of St. Philomena, at Kalaupapa, Molokai, conducted for the Kalaupapa Historic National Park.

Laurence Pace and Rie Pace completed work on 9 paintings by Charles Bartlett belonging to the Honolulu Academy of Arts, which are now hanging in an exhibit at the Academy covering the artist's career. They are working on a large oil by Alexandra Nechita, which had previously undergone an inappropriate tear repair. They also completed work on the small oil portrait of King Kamehameha, which belongs to the Honolulu Academy of arts.

Regional Reporter:

Laurence A. Pace
Pace Art Conservation Enterprises Inc.
1645 Haku St.
Honolulu, HI 96819-1640
(808) 833-1999 tel.
(808) 839-0320
lapace@lava.net

New Mexico

Bettina Raphael is pleased to announce the opening of her recently constructed studio and new home of the Southwest Conservation Lab for artifact conservation and preservation consultation. Address: 611 Cortez Street, Santa Fe, NM 87505. Tel. (505) 989-9065. Visitors are welcome! One of the on-going projects she will be carrying out in the studio is a treatment program for the collection of CCC-period tin light fixtures from Bandelier National Monument. She will also continue to serve in a part-time capacity as Conservator at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe.

Teresa Myers has joined the Conservation Division of the Museum of New Mexico as an objects intern from the Buffalo University Program. She will be in Santa Fe until the fall of 2002.

Brin Bender has left the Museum of New Mexico and has taken a job as an objects conservator with the Southwest Resource Center of the National Park Service in Tucson, Arizona.

Laura Downey has come from Arizona to be the Museum Conservator for the University Art Museum of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Steve Prins of Santa Fe is looking for an associate or assistant conservator and a studio assistant/technician for his paintings conservation business. He says that the studio assistant/technician position would be a good entry level position for someone wanting to spend a year or so in Santa Fe before going to a program.

Regional Reporter:

M. Susan Barger, Ph.D.
Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM
(505) 466-3709

Pacific Northwest

Elizabeth Czerwinski has left the comfort and security of home and two little girls to get back to work. Beyond the never routine daily routine of conservation in a small outdoor museum, this year Museum staff and the Friends of Interurban 1223 will commence a joint conservation and restoration treatment of our 1912 Interurban. Over the next five years, this project will return the vehicle to its 1925 appearance and to working condition. Elizabeth would love to talk to anyone with experience restoring vehicles and equipment of this nature and/or working with volunteer/diversely skilled crew on a long-term project. If anyone would like to contact her, please phone 604 293 6526 or email at czerwinski@city.burnaby.bc.ca.

Scott Carroll from the Alaska State Museum received a grant from the L.J. Skaggs and the Mary C. Skaggs Foundation to bring a conservation student to Alaska to work on various conservation projects for next summer. The main project will be the conservation of an Athabascan birch bark canoe and the conservators will be assisted by a Native Athabascan craftsman. Scott welcomes two other conservators to Alaska, Monica Shah who works in Anchorage both privately and with the National Park Service and Ellen Roblee who works for the Juneau Douglas City Museum. Now there are three conservators working in the State.

At the end of November J. Claire Dean returned from 7 weeks in South Africa teaching, helping with the development of two rock image sites for tourism and the establishment of a new museum of rock art, all current activities underway at the University of the Witwatersrand, Rock Art Research Institute. The trip was extremely satisfying and relatively uneventful compared to previous visitsy—no black mambas this time! Claire has asked Hiawatha Johnson to act as this year's WAAC Secretary, and the two of them are now busy planning the next WAAC meeting, which will be in Portland, Oregon in October.

It's been a busy summer for Jamie Hascall with a variety of mount making projects to stabilize objects following Seattle's February earthquake. In May he traveled to Stockholm to attend the PRE-MAL International Seminar and Workshop on Integrated Pest Management to learn techniques of anoxic pest control so these services can be available to regional collections.

John Kjelland spent the summer with his 35-foot mobile conservation van on site at Grant-Kohrs Ranch NHS, National Park Service treating two railroad cars and a grain binder.

Regional Reporter:

Peter Malarkey
(206) 378-1051
pmpc@att.net

Rocky Mountain

Jude Southward of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science attended the CCI workshop on Adhesives and Con-solidants for Skin, Leather, and Textiles.

Jude and Matt Crawford are busy with projects at the museum including testing recycled polyethylene "lumber" for storage supports in the Zoology Department and completing an IMLS funded project involving installation of new cabinetry and construction of mounts for 600 oversized Osteology specimens.

Karen Jones hosted a seminar on environmental monitoring with Jim Reilly of the Image Permanence Institute as the featured presenter. The event was well attended with participants from numerous institutions in Colorado and Wyoming.

Conservation is 10 years old at the Denver Art Museum. Jessica Fletcher and Carl Patterson gave a lecture "Conservation: A Decade Past and A Decade Forward" to the museum Volunteer Council. The event was a fundraiser and proceeds will be used towards the conservation treatment of the painting Eagle's Nest Lake by E. Blumenshein.

Carl has also been busy helping with the planning for the new Daniel Libeskind designed museum building. Deb Juchem has just finished an IMLS grant funded survey and rehousing project for ecclesiastical vestments at the DAM.

Camilla Van Vooren of the Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts conducted two collections care workshops in New Mexico. The grant-funded project was sponsored by the New Mexico New Deal Art Preservation Alliance.

Carmen Bria is working with the National Cowboy Museum and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City on their "America's Treasures" conservation project.

Hays Shoop treated murals painted by Italian WWII POWs in Douglas, Wyoming. The murals are in the Odd Fellows Hall and Hays felt right at home.

Eileen Clancy and Judy Greenfield traveled to Guernsy State Park Museum in Wyoming to survey the first Civilian Conservation Corp park/museum project completed in the 1930's. Eileen also surveyed collections at the Plains Indians and Pioneers Museum in Woodward, Oklahoma.

David Harvey is now in private practice and can be reached at Artifacts, 2930 South Birch Street, Denver, Colorado 80222, 303-300-5257. Victoria Montana Ryan is teaching this semester at Queen's University.

Regional Reporter:

Eileen Clancy
1227 Santa Fe Drive
Denver, CO 80204
(303) 534-3667
eileenclancy@juno.com

San Diego

Paintings Conservator Nora Jean Smith attended the WAAC Annual Meeting at the J. Paul Getty Museum in October. She reported that everything, from the venue, the talks and the tours, to the refreshments, was absolutely first-rate. She also overheard one attendee remarking that everyone there was so nice!

Frances Prichett, paper conservator in private practice, was pleased to supervise a summer internship for Amanda McGurk, second-year student in the MA Conservation of Fine Art Program at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, for four weeks during August and September.

Regional Reporter:

Frances Prichett
Paper Conservation
5235 35th Street
San Diego, CA, 92116
(619) 283-5011 tel.
(619) 283-3682 fax

San Francisco

Molly Lambert participated in a group review of a conservation treatment plan to remove non-original paint from the exterior of the Gamble House in Pasadena (Greene & Greene, 1908). A revised treatment plan will be developed by conservator John Griswold and Payton Hall of Historic Resources Group and resubmitted to the Getty Grant program.

Molly also worked with the Charles M. Schulz Museum to stabilize and move a wall mural from a 1950s tract house in Colorado Springs, CO to the new Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, CA. The large mural was painted by Schulz directly onto the wall of his young daughter's bedroom during the time he was developing the Peanuts characters. Characters in the mural include an early Charlie Brown jumping over a candlestick and a quadrupedal Snoopy.

Since closing to the public on October 7, The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco's packing and moving plans have shifted into high gear. A great deal of effort is now going into preparing objects for exhibit and storage in the new building, set to open in early 2003. Donna Strahan and Mark Fenn are concentrating on the highest priority objects identified from previous surveys. All materials for the new storage and exhibition spaces are being tested.

Debra Fox continues to treat paintings on paper in preparation for exhibit at the New Asian. Meg Geiss-Mooney is concentrating on textile storage and packing issues along with preparing them for display in the new galleries. Blanche Kim is continuing to treat objects for the New Asian galleries as part of a two-year contract begun in October 2000.

Jane Williams is treating lacquer objects in the permanent collection and preparing case studies for a book on treatment issues in lacquer conservation. She will be spending the month of December in Tokyo at the National Research Institute of Cultural Properties. Tonja King is a third year Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation fellow working at the Asian for her third- year internship. Lisa Lee continues to keep the files and records in order. Jennifer De Joseph and Jennifer Kim are volunteering part time on various special projects for the move. Tisha Hong has completely reorganized the library and offprint files.

Meg Geiss-Mooney, textile/costume conservator, recently installed the costumes for the exhibition "Red, Hot & Blue—A Tribute to America's Musicals" currently at the Blackhawk Museum in Danville, California.

At the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco Paper Lab Debra Evans conducted preservation assessments of rare book collections at the National Tropical Botanical Garden and at Grove Farm, both on Kauai. While on the island, she also presented a book preservation seminar for staff members of several libraries and museums there.

Debra, colleague Janice Schopfer, and graduate fellow Michele Facini recently spent a great deal of time working with artists' books in the process of installing over 180 books from the museums' Logan collection in an exhibition entitled Artists' Books in the Modern Era. The exhibition will be on view at the Legion of Honor through January 6th.

For the same exhibition, in a project directed by Bob Futernick, six computers were installed to show nearly 5,000 digitized images, enabling the visitor to view all illustrations in the books on view. Debra has also been working on upgrading the museums' storage for illustrated books, a project she described in an article in Fine Arts magazine.

Michele Facini spent several days this fall conducting research using a portable spectrophotometer owned by the University of Delaware Art Conservation Program. She tested Japanese prints at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and explored 19th century watercolor materials at the Metropolitan Museum. Both visible and ultraviolet light sources were utilized with the hopes of eventually identifying colors nondestructively using this inexpensive, portable analytical tool.

Karen Zukor, in private practice in Oakland, CA, made two trips to England this year; in March she traveled to Oxford to take a five-day workshop on Chinese Bookbinding (history, materials, structures and repair) with Chris Clarkson. The week included trips to the Bodleian Library to see its extensive collection of Chinese volumes and in particular, the older books that had been repaired with Chinese techniques.

In September, she attended the 'Past Practice—Future Prospects' conference organized by the Department of Conservation of the British Museum. This 3-day meeting included historical solutions to the preservation of a wide range of artifacts. The majority of attendees were British or European; few Americans were able to attend, as the opening date of September12th made travel for some impossible.

At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Michelle Barger and Matt McGinley are happy to announce the birth of their daughter Tess Elaine Barger McGinley born August 23rd. Michelle will be returning to work in January, just in time for the preparation of Eva Hesse Exhibition. Sharon Blank has been consulting on this exhibit, which opens in February.

We are pleased to announce that Amanda Hunter Johnson is starting in our newly created advanced fellowship position as the Haas Conservation Fellow in Contemporary Art. Amanda has just completed her final year of graduate studies from the University of Delaware/Winterthur Program in Art Conservation. Her third year internship took place at the Palace of the Legion of Honor at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Amanda majored in paper conservation with a minor in photograph conservation. The fellowship will involve working with the staff conservators at SFMOMA in all specialties with particular focus on the issues inherent to contemporary art.

Regional Reporter:

Paloma Añoveros
Tel&Fax: 510/339 7477
columba@pacbell.net

Texas

Stephanie Watkins, Head of Paper Conservation at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin attended the SCMRE RELACT course, The History and Treatment of Works in Iron Gall Ink, with Dr. Han Neeval and Ms. Birgit Reissland from ICI in the Netherlands, and Julie Biggs, private conservator, during Sept. 10-14, 2001.

Annabelle Malhere, a book conservation student from France, interned in the book and paper labs of HRHRC between September and November 2001. She was studying in Austin as part of her training for a master's degree in conservation at the University of Paris. She continues her internship in at the University of Liege in Belgium.

In mid November, Anne Zanikos, along with Perry Huston presented a half-day workshop on Conservation to gifted high school students as part of The National Chemistry Associations National Chemistry Week. This year's topic was Science and the Arts. They presented on Conservation as a career and then did some hands-on demonstrations of cleaning paintings, preserving works on paper, and microscopic examination at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio.

Betsy Manship at Art Restorations, Inc. in Dallas reports the following three items: A new Conservation Technician has joined the staff of Art Restorations. Naoko Fukumaru comes from Japan as a West Dean Graduate and internships at The Met. The staff is now learning Japanese and she is learning to drive in Dallas.

Cher Goodson attended the WAAC meeting at the Getty Museum. She brought back lots of impressions of the Getty, had a great time at the meeting and learned much. While she was attending the meeting, Cher was being recognized by the Dallas YWCA as a 2001 Woman of Achievement. The honor comes with an inscribed glass vase and a mention in the local news.

Art Restorations, Inc., is growing again. They will be adding another 2,000 square feet in July. Additionally, they are looking to fill two positions. If there are any wood and furniture or metals conservators out there looking to relocate,consider the Dallas area. See the Jobs section for details.

Richard Trela completed the treatment of two more WWII Bomber folk art works this past year. This work was the topic of a paper he presented at the AIC Annual Meeting in Dallas in June. He also reports a $25,000 donation to the West Texas A&M University Foundation from the Texas DAR for a WTAMU Senior/Graduate student internship at the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum Conservation Center. This graded course begins with the Fall 2002 semester and is to be funded in perpetuity. According to the DAR this is only the beginning!

Richard also competed the treatment on 14 historic objects for PPHM's new exhibit: People of The Plains. Included are famed Texas cattleman Charlie Goodnight's saddle and the horns of his albino steer, archaeological ceramic and glass, metals, porcelain, and Native American artifacts. Along with primary conservator, Connie Wanke of Denver, he completed the two-year treatment of a 10-foot square, 100 year old hand-colored map for The Museum of The Great Plains in Lawton, OK.

Elizabeth Lunning was named Acting Chief Conservator at The Menil Collection in March, 2001. Additionally, she continues in her role as Conservator of Works of Art on Paper, a post she has held since 1990.

Brad Epley, Assistant Paintings Conservator at The Menil, contributed an essay on the working techniques of the Surrealist painter Victor Brauner to the catalogue of the exhibition Victor Brauner: Surrealist Hieroglyphs. The essay is entitled "Victor Brauner's Use of Wax."