September 2002 Volume 22 Number 3

Regional News

Arizona

Martha Grimm is taking a well-deserved break after completing work on Phoenix Art Museum’s Garden of Eden exhibition. Featuring eighty pieces from the museum’s couture collection, the exhibition includes garments from 1780 to today. Martha will spend her break at San Miguel Allende, an hour and a half north of Mexico City, studying weaving. Upon her return she begins work on the Mesa Southwest Museum’s exhibition How The West Was Worn featuring cowboy clothing from the Autry Museum.

Riots against the government in Arequipa, Peru prompted Nannette Skov to cancel her textiles conservation classes there in June and July. They did not prevent her from teaching at the National Archaeology and Anthropology Museum in Lima where she was pleased to have 15 students.

Termites, silverfish, cockroaches, and centipedes have been the tropical focus of Brynn Bender and Gretchen Voeks’ attention the past month as they work on creating a better environment for the collections of Kalaupapa National Historic Park, Hawaii. An upcoming trip to Death Valley to complete collection condition surveys and train staff in making appropriate storage mounts should find them thirsting for the tropics again. The last summer trip to Death Valley featured 125 degree temperatures.

Interning with Linda Morris this summer is Cheryl Podsiki. Cheryl will be assessing a large private collection of paintings. The Arizona State Museum will also be hosting Cheryl. She has been awarded a Kress Postgraduate Fellowship at the Arizona State Museum for 2002-3, and her work will include pesticide residue research.

Lara Kaplan, from the Winterthur-Delaware program, has begun her third-year conservation internship at ASM. Travis Lane (cleaning Navajo textiles), Kristen Sunter (soluble salts in pottery), and Erica Gilbert (toxic pigments)successfully completed summer internships in conservation research. Werner Zimmt has been named a Museum Fellow of the Arizona State Museum.

Nancy Odegaard and Scott Carrlee offered a workshop on spot-testing for registrars at the Western Museum Association Conference in Tucson.

Regional Reporter:

Gretchen Voeks
Senior Conservator
Western Archeological and Conservation Center
1415 N. 6th Ave.
Tucson, AZ 85705
ph. (520) 670-6501 x 251
fax. (520) 670-6525
Gretchen_Voeks@nps.gov

New Mexico

Jo Anne Martinez-Kilgore of Cariño Conservation of Books and Paper has taken on the task of reviving the moribund New Mexico Preservation Alliance. The first reorganizational meeting was held on 24 July in Socorro, New Mexico at New Mexico Tech.

Steven Prins is the Technical Consultant and Coordinator for a mural restoration project at the Historic Pritzlaff Ranch outside of Las Vegas, New Mexico. Biophilia Foundation is the owner of the Pritzlaff Ranch. There is a major restoration project for the murals found throughout the house that is underway this summer. The Native American artist, Velino Shije Herrera (aka, MaPeWi) painted the murals during the 1940s.

The project has an international team of workers. The Chief Conservator and Project Manager is Connie Silver from New York City. The architectural conservator, Michelle Risdat, who previously worked on projects at Falling Water and the Barnes Foundation, is assisting her. Lama Gyurmed, the manager of the Mindroling Monastery in Tibet, is an intern with the project. And finally, Richard Wolbers, of Winter-thur, and Norman Weiss, of Columbia University, also have been coming in to consult.

Velino Herrera is known for a set of murals that he did for the Penthouse of the Department of the Interior in Washington and for the reconstructed murals in the kiva at the Coronado State Monument in Bernalillo, New Mexico.

Eowyn Kerr, from the Conservation Program at Buffalo, is a summer intern in Steve Prins’ studio. In addition, Heather Foster, Amy McKenzie, and Emily Zinn are also working at the Prins Studio.

Steven Weintraub was in New Mexico in July and presented a workshop on museum environments held at the Coronado State Monument. The workshop was part of the IMLS funded Museum Infrastructure program that is being run by Susan Barger.

Teresa Myers will graduate from the Buffalo program in September ’02 and will remain in Santa Fe, splitting her time between the Conservation Department of the Museum of New Mexico and the Kronkright Center for Cultural Materials, Inc.

Senior Conservator, Dale Kronkright, resigned his part-time position to take a position at the O’Keeffe Museum. He will be greatly missed by the MNM. In his position as Senior Conservator he made significant contributions in the areas of teaching, planning, and fund-raising for the Museum.

Laura Downey continues to settle in at the University of New Mexico Art Museum in Albuquerque. This summer the Museum is having a new HVAC system installed, and there has been enough work in the preparation, moving of the collections, and the installation activities to keep Laura out of trouble.

Susan Barger participated in a panel discussion, Fashion, Style and Preservation, on 27 June 2002 that was part of the festivities surrounding the opening of the exhibit, Millicent Rogers: Fashion and Identity (Millicent Rogers Museum, Taos, 30 June - 27 October 2002).

Regional Reporter:

M. Susan Barger, PhD
Project Coordinator
NMAM/MNM IMLS Museum Infrastructure Project
c/o TREX
Museum of New Mexico
P.O. Box 2087
Santa Fe, NM 87504-2087
505-476-5089 FAX 505-476-5102
sbarger@mnm.state.nm.us

San Francisco Bay Area

At the Western Regional Conservation Laboratory of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Debra Evans and Michelle Facini are conducting a study, with support from the Kress Foundation, of storage and exhibition methods for large format works on paper . The results will be presented at a future conservation meeting. They request that you let them know of any interesting, innovative, or just plain sensible methods for dealing with large format works on paper. They are particularly interested in knowing of

any exhibition installations of such work occurring in Fall-Winter 2002-2003.

Michelle Facini and Janice Schopfer presented innovative book installation methods at a special book exhibition session held at the AIC meeting in Miami. Debra Evans is preparing an article that describes the mounts.

In June, Irene Bruckle, Michelle Facini, Downey Manoukian, and Janice Schopfer collaborated in a weeklong project focused on the treatment of Toulouse-Lautrec posters.

The textile lab for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco has just completed a six-month conservation project to restore an 18th-century robe a la française. The McNeil Volunteer Recognition Award granted to Jean Scardina, a member of the dedicated lab volunteer staff, funded the project. A conservator from Scotland, Elizabeth Anne Haldane, was hired to work on the gown, which not only required many hours of conservation work to stabilize the shattered silk at the hem, but also required making reproduction fabric to replace missing ruffles, flounce, and stomacher. The gown will be on display this fall at the Legion of Honor.

The lab has received IMLS funding for the conservation of The Triumph of Justice. This is one of the three tapestries the FAMSF owns from the Triumph of the Seven Virtues series. Prudence and Fortitude have previously been conserved and have been displayed at the Legion of Honor. Sarah Gates is spearheading the conservation of Justice with the assistance of Joanne Hackett and Beth Szuhay.

Jo-Fan Huang, a shared conservation intern between the Textiles, Paintings, and Objects conservation labs, has left us to begin graduate work in the Winterthur program. Her absence leaves the textile lab without an intern for the first time in over nine years. We will miss her and wish her success in her endeavors!

In the Paintings Conservation Lab at the FAMSF, Carl Grimm, Tony Rockwell, Tricia O’Regan, and Charlotte (Seifen) Ameringer completed preparation of a group of over 80 American paintings from the DeYoung Museum’s collections. The paintings will travel as an exhibition entitled American Accents while the new DeYoung is under construction. The exhibition made its debut in Mobile, Alabama in late June. Carl and Charlotte accompanied the show to Mobile. The exhibition’s next stop is the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. The conservators have been busy with plans for the paintings conservation studio.

We are pleased to announce the arrival of Mary Schafer, a third-year intern from the Buffalo program, who will join us for a year in September. And finally a BIG congratulations to our outstanding pre-program interns – Lisa Sardegna will enter U Penn’s graduate program in Historic Preservation this fall while Jo-Fan Huang begins studies at the University of Delaware/Winterthur Program in Art Conservation.

Bonnie Baskin, conservator in private practice, has received a Donner Foundation grant, through the World Monuments Fund, to work five months a year at the National Museum of Cambodia setting up and operating a ceramics conservation lab. The lab will treat the museum’s collection of about 6,000 ceramics, dating from the first millennium BC, and will train three Cambodian ceramics conservators.

After more than a year of construction and relocation, the new Oakland Museum of California Conservation Center is now open and functioning. The custom-built 3500 sq.ft. facility is adjacent to the main museum campus, and includes areas for object, painting, and paper conservation, as well as office, photography, storage, and conference spaces. Even the solvent cabinets and chemical shelves have dedicated exhaust fans! John Burke misses the rambling West Oakland Lab, but is comforted by his new Ikea furnishings.

One of the first events in the new lab was the first of the AIC Professional Development workshops. The inaugural 4-day workshop was Mastering Inpainting presented by James Berstein and Debra Evans and was enthusiastically attended by conservators from the Western States and Canada.

John Burke also recently completed an IMLS survey of the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz, a workshop on Anoxic Pest Eradication at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and his 15th year with the JFKU Museum Studies Program. This year’s course was co-taught by John, Debra Evans, Molly Lambert, Alina Remba, Tim Vitale, and Mark Harpainter.

Julie Trosper has been heavily involved in the move and development of the new lab. At the same time, work is moving forward on an IMLS grant for conservation of five of the museum’s outdoor sculptures, including works by DeSuvero, Forakis, and Huntington. Donna Williams of Williams Art Conservation in LA is project conservator. Other museum outdoor sculpture projects include Rickey’s Two Red Lines and a massive Fletcher Benton. Private lab treatments have also resumed, ranging from Mesoamerican artifacts to stuffed and crystal Snoopys for the new Charles Schulz Museum. Julie is also currently working on an IMLS conservation survey of the Whaley House Museum in San Diego.

After setting up her new hot table, Milada Machova is also again actively involved in treatment of several paintings from the museum collection. One of them is a large Elmer Bishoff canvas damaged while part of a retrospective traveling show, others are paintings going on loan or getting ready for an exhibit next year. Private collectors are also served again bringing works of French, Dutch, and Russian artists from 17th and 18th century as well as well Californian artists from early to mid 20th century. The OMCC staff is also pleased to welcome Pamela Skiles, painting conservation student from the Buffalo State Art Conservation Program, for her third year internship.

Conservation Technician Sven Atema earned MVP for his performance during the lab relocation, including installing most of the lab furniture. He is currently assisting with the Rickey project and the repair of a large marble statue of Columbus for San Jose’s City Hall.

Regional Reporter:

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

Pacific Northwest

J. Claire Dean and Hiawatha Johnson are valiantly trying to tie up loose ends regarding the annual WAAC meeting, and they are now battling with that awful fear that no one will show up after all their effort. They look forward to welcoming all of you to Portland in October. Claire has also dragged Hiawatha into the field to assist her with a graffiti cleanup project at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, Oregon.

The same project also saw Meg Abraham bringing her laser expertise and equipment to shine a light on the problem. It proved to be a very useful experiment which will be heading for publication shortly.

Monica Shah has quit her job at the National Park Service, to focus on her private conservation business again. Monica is editing a new journal for the NPS. It is a science-oriented journal for the public which will cover both natural and cultural resources, focusing on research in the national parks. She also received a large contract to do a conservation assessment of two archaeological sites and a site management plan for them.

Ellen Carrlee’s contract at the Juneau Douglas City Museum was renewed for another year. Ellen finished the preparation of several exhibits just in time for the summer tourist season. She is also taking care of many new objects that have come into the museum. Ellen attended the AIC meeting in Miami and presented her research paper on low temperature pest control to the Objects Specialty group. She also had a good time working at the Archetype Books booth.

Scott Carrlee and Lara Kaplan have been busy conserving an Athabascan birch bark canoe at the Sheldon Jackson Museum in Sitka. Lara is doing a summer internship at the Sheldon Jackson Museum.

Scott has been continuing the Statewide Outreach Program of the Alaska State Museum by providing conservation assistance at smaller museums around the state. This year he has worked with museums in Haines, Cordova, Kenia, Homer, Seward, Kodiak, and Unalaska.

Jan Cavanaugh, Paintings Conservator, is teaching a course on Art and Conservation this fall term in the Art History Department of the University of Oregon at Eugene. The course addresses the history, principles, and theoretical issues of art conservation.

Regional Reporter:

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

Rocky Mountain Region

Judy Greenfield took the course Color Fills for the Conservation of Ceramics and Glass at the Campbell Center in May. The intensive, six day class, taught by Hazel Botha from South Africa, introduced new materials and techniques for creating translucent fills.

Denver Art Museum conservators Carl Patterson and Jessica Fletcher are pleased to announce that the museum has received a grant from IMLS to treat fifteen Spanish Colonial paintings. Work will be done by staff of the WCCFA, including Carmen Bria, Camilla Van Vooren, and Hays Shoop. The project is viewed as an exciting collaboration between the conservators and curatorial staff of the museum.

In April, Eileen Clancy and Barbara Johnson completed treatment of historic exhibits at Guernsey State Park Museum in Wyoming. The park was the first park project of the WPA-CCC, and the exhibits have been declared a national landmark. Eileen has just completed a survey of the photograph collection at Mount Rushmore National Monument.

Carolina Dominguez Gila has been accepted as the Frolich Conservation Intern at the Denver Art Museum for 2002. Carolina received her bachelors degree in conservation at the University of Seville in Spain.

Jude Southward returned to Siena, Italy to carry out field conservation at a nearby, 3rd century B.C. Etruscan habitation site. The excavation of the site, known as La Piana, is funded by the Etruscan Foundation.

Jude was accompanied this year by objects conservator Gina Lauren. The two carried out treatments on numerous materials from the site, including fourteen small vessels, five bricks, and a very large storage jar.

Matthew Crawford has been working on numerous treatment and exhibit mounting projects, including a major stabilization treatment of an Inuit seal skin kayak, in preparation for the opening of the new west atrium of the museum and reopening of the Crane North American Indian Hall, late in September, 2002.

Rosie Richardson, an archaeology student from the University of New Mexico, has joined the conservation lab as an intern for the summer. Among other tasks Rosie assisted with the removal, cleaning, and waxing of five life-size bronze wolves that are being relocated in order to make room for the museum’s new underground parking garage.

Victoria Montana Ryan has returned from her year as Assistant Professor for Paintings Conservation at Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario. She is now engaged in her private practice Art Care Services located on Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Regional Reporter:

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

Texas

Richard Trela, Conservator/Director at the Conservation Center, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, reports that he completed a survey of 27 pieces of World War II warplane nose art for the American Airpower Heritage Museum, completed the cleaning of PPHS’s newly acquired oil painting, Evening Sky 1922 by Victor Higgins, and completed the repair of two clay figurines by Buddy Holly dating to the early 1950’s.

Richard gave two talks in the Registrar’s Workshop for the Texas Association of Museums Annual Meeting in Lubbock. They were: Handling and Storage of Museum Objects and Packing and Shipping of Museum Objects. He also was a co-presenter with Ken Grant (conservator at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Univ. of Texas at Austin) for a conference session on environmental management. Ken and Richard also participated in the “Conservation Roadshow” at the meeting, where conservators field questions from conference participants on conservation and collections care.

Martha Simpson Grant, objects conservator in private practice in Austin, along with Anne Zanikos (Zanikos, Inc., San Antonio) also participated in the “Conservation Roadshow” at TAM. In addition, Anne and Martha were panelists for a conference session on how conservation issues and priorities may differ for museums, collectors, and dealers.

Stephanie Watkins, Head of Paper Conservation at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, recently presented information on humidification and flattening at the Archives Conservators Discussion Group at the AIC meeting in Miami. She has also assumed the duties

of Treasurer for the Photographic Materials Group until the next election. Theresa Andrews remains the secretary for the group.

Jean Baldwin has resigned her position in the conservation department of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center and joined the staff of the Library of Congress. We wish her all the best and much success in her future endeavors.

Mark Van Gelder (Art Conservation Services of Austin) recently treated the Texas governor’s portrait of George W. Bush that hangs in the capitol in Austin. Mark reports that he was: “just doing his part to defend our capitolism symbol in the war against evil factors infiltering.” Bravo Mark!

Betsy Manship at Art Restorations, Inc. reports that Maria Sheets attended the AIC annual meeting in Miami. She presented information from the CIPP Certification Committee regarding certification issues and their impact on conservators in private practice. She also challenged the CIPP members with a mock certification test. She says we may need to think about what we wish for.

Cher Goodson has opened the new addition to Art Restorations, Inc. Everyone is enjoying the increased breathing room. Trish Brewer has joined the Art Restorations, Inc., staff as a conservation technician in objects and paintings.

Elaine Miller has returned from her European vacation in which she attended a seminar on stain removal in soft bodied porcelains sponsored by the UKIC and toured Boulle conservation labs in England and France.

Michael van Enter recently went to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to work on Pennsylvania’s battlefield monument.

Chela Metzger, instructor in Book Conservation at the Preservation and Conservation Studies program of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Texas at Austin has the following news: the PCS program is pleased to announce the 7 students admitted into the 2002 entering class are: Maria Clara Mosciaro, Preservation Administration; Rebekah Sanchez, Conservation; Beth Heller, Conservation; Stephanie Koslo, Preservation Administration; Brandon Burke, Preservation Administration; Holly Robertson, Conservation; Rachel McArthur, Preservation Administration.

Internship sites and supervisors for the program’s third-year conservation students are: Dan Paterson, Library of Congress, supervisor: Maria Nugent; Rebecca Elder, Harvard University Libraries Preservation Center, supervisor: Ethel Hellman; Frank Truillo, University Conservation labs, supervisor: Maria Fredricks; Jamye Jamison, Newberry Library, Supervisor Susan Russick.

Preservation Administrator students practica for summer 2002: Sarah Rodriguez, University of Notre Dame Libraries, supervisor: Liz Dube, collection needs assessment project; Maria Esteva, University of Maryland Libraries, supervisor: Christine McCarthy, collection needs assessment project; Marlan Green, University of Texas at Austin General Libraries, supervisor: Aaron Choate, OAIS digital repository

planning. In spring 2002, Jill Hawkins completed an audio preservation practicum at the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum, supervisor: Tina Houston. For fall 2002, Jenny Hudson will undertake a practicum in library development, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, supervisor: Sue Murphy.

Preservation Administrator student, Victoria Naipavel-Heiduschke, visited ZFB in Germany, June 2002.

Students in new digital preservation faculty Pat Galloway’s class have written a proposal for long-term email management for the Texas state government. The plan is being discussed with stakeholders in the management of state records.

Nora Lockshin and Sarah Reidell presented papers at the ANAGPIC conference held at Harvard in April 2001. Marlan Green gave a talk for the 2002 AIC annual meeting as part of a Electronic Media Group panel.

Chela Metzger and Ellen Cunningham- Kruppa jointly presented a paper at the ARSAG conference in Paris, May 2002. Chela also was invited last October to teach a one week hands-on workshop as part of the ICCROM Curso para AmTrica Latina Conservacion de Archivos y Bibliotecas in Santiago, Chile.

Karen Pavelka presented at the 2002 AIC annual meeting as part of the Electronic Media Group Panel. Hal Erikson will be teaching a workshop and lecturing on Enzymes and Their Use in Conservation in partnership with AIC and the Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education.

Pat Galloway is writing the review article on digital preservation for the upcoming issue of the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. (2003).

Regional Reporter:

Ken Grant
Exhibition Services Department
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
University of Texas at Austin
P.O. Box 7219
Austin, TX 78713
tel: 512/471-9117
fax: 512/471-9646

kgrant@mail.utexas.edu

Greater Los Angeles / Santa Barbara

As usual, the Objects staff at LACMA is busy with a variety of projects. Islamic tiles, both individually and on panels, are being treated and mounted for an upcoming exhibition Art of the Mongols. John Hirx has just finished his stint has vice-chair for the RATS session and has moved on to his next role as Chair for next year.

In addition to tile work, Sabrina Carli is treating LACMA’s Stela of Shen, an inscribed Egyptian limestone that was encased in concrete and is being remounted in an aluminum honeycomb box. Don Menveg is preparing furniture for an upcoming Arts and Crafts exhibition.

Laramie Hickey-Freidman is continuing to treat works of art for an upcoming exhibition of Tibetan art entitled Circle of Bliss. Maureen Russell has completed treatment of polychrome sculpture for the Trends exhibition of European painting and sculpture.

The lab has a new pre-program intern, Elizabeth Werner, who is working on tiles, as well as outdoor sculpture maintenance. Kyu-Jin Ahn is current Mellon Fellow in the Conservation Research Laboratory at LACMA. During the course of her first year, Kyu-Jin has taken part in several analytical investigations on works of art in the museum collection. Recently she has started a study on the use of laser for removal of tarnish from silver objects, in cooperation with the museum’s Laser Research Laboratory. Kyu-Jin will be pursuing this project in the course of the next year. 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 previous to her arrival at LACMA.

Joe Fronek is completing the treatment of Charles-Joseph Natoire’s Proserpine Giving the Water of Beauty to Psyche, a large 18th-c. canvas LACMA acquired last year through funds provided by the Ahmanson Foundation. The painting is due to be installed in the galleries in September.

Elma O’Donoghue traveled to Munich in July to install the exhibition Central European Avant-Gardes at the Haus der Kunst.

Judy Dion completed an Ahmanson Summer Internship at LACMA. Judy surveyed over 100 paintings in the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Masters. She also treated three small paintings from the collection.

Elisabeth Schlegel continues her Mellon Fellowship at LACMA for another year. Elisabeth is currently working on several projects, including treatments on paintings by Francisco Goitia and Fernando Leal.

Yadine Larochette was LACMA’s Frost Summer Intern in textile conservation this year. Yadine, having just finished her first year at Winterthur, examined LACMA’s collection of Islamic textiles. The focus of her work was weave structure and pattern analysis.

As part of her research for the upcoming deconstruction of LACMA’s campus and new building by architect Rem Koolhaas, Victoria Blyth-Hill has toured new, temporary, and mature labs and storage facilities around the country. Beginning with MOMA (including MOMA-Queens), the Thaw Paper Conservation Center at the Pierpont Morgan Library, and the Metropolitan’s Paper and Objects Labs in New York City. She has also visited the MFA and Strauss Center at the Fogg Museum in Boston, and the Freer/Sackler Labs and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. More to come!

Sandhya S. Jain (Camilla Chandler Frost Summer 2003 Paper Conservation Intern) spent ten weeks conserving the thangka The Union of Chakrasamvara and Vajravaraji, to be exhibited in The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art at LACMA in October of 2003. Sandhya used microscopic analysis and material, identification to develop a new compensation method that will be published and presented next year.

Paper conservation at LACMA will be open for business during Margot Healey’s maternity leave (August through November 2002) and Soko Furuhata’s return to Japan in August. (She returns to LACMA in September 2002). Chail Norton will be holding down the fort during their absences. Paper conservation will continue to work on the consolidation and compensation of the 14th-century Nepalese Thangka that Sandhya Jain started treating for The Circle of Bliss.

In Decorative Arts and Sculpture Conservation at the J.Paul Getty Museum, Brian Considine hosted a group of conservators from the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris to discuss non-interven- tive furniture upholstery. Brian recently completed editing the latest edition of Marquetry by Pierre Ramond. Published by the Getty and Edition Vial, the book will be out by the end of 2002. In the spring, Brian continued the authenticity study of a set of Limoge enamels of the Passion of Christ by bringing them to London to study side-by-side with similar pieces from Berlin and the V&A.

Ton Wilmering, head of the Wooden Artifacts Division of the Conservation Training Program at the Tainan National College of the Arts in Taiwan, and Michel Jamet, a professor in the Furniture Conservation division at IFROA Paris each spent a month in the department carrying out technical studies of the Getty’s furniture collection.

Mountmaker Margo Delidow from the Detroit Institute of the Arts spent a week at the Getty working with Mark Mitton, George Johnson, McKenzie Lowry, and B.J. Farrar.

Andrew Lins consulted with Julie Wolfe on a maintenance plan for the steel and bronze sculpture That Profile by Martin Puryear.

Lisa Ellis, Graduate Intern in the department, attended the course Conservation of Glass in Florida, organized by John Maseman and taught by Stephen Koob. Lisa’s primary research project this year involved the study of barrier coatings used with epoxy on wood.

Jane Bassett hosted the two-day visit of Christian Goedicke of the Rathgen-Forschungslabor, Berlin to discuss new advances in luminescence dating of fired materials.

Christian Dressen, a graduate student in conservation at the University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, has been working with Arlen Heginbotham on a technical examination and authenticity study of a late 16th-century French cabinet by Hugues Sambin. Consulting on the project have been Sharon Shore, as well as Didier Pousset, dendrochronologist, and Aubert Gerard, conservator, from the Regional Center for the Restoration and Conservation of Works of Art in Vesoul, France. Arlen has also been working with Raquel Carreras, a dendrochronologist from Havana, Cuba, on tropical wood identification. Last spring, Arlen traveled to the Wallace Collection in London and to a private collection in Scotland to study surface treatments on Boulle cabinet sculptural figures.

Sanchita Balachandran continues her graduate internship in the Antiquities Conservation department of the J. Paul Getty Museum. She will complete this internship at the end of September 2002.

In October Andrea Rothe will be retiring from the Paintings Conservation Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum after 21 years. Andrea’s future plans include eventually relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area where he will join his wife Jean. Tiarna Doherty, the present Graduate Intern in Paintings Conservation, will join the staff as Assistant Conservator on October 1.

At the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, volunteer conservation intern Jennifer Alcoset recently completed a MLIS degree at UCLA. She has worked in the departments of Conservation and Preservation, Special Collections, Registration, and Collection Development at the Getty Research Institute. She is pursuing a career in collections management within the library/museum field.

Ava Romanowska is also interning at the conservation lab at the Fowler. She has a B.A. degree in Art History and has worked at the Christopher Clark Fine Art gallery the past two years. She hopes to pursue art conservation as a career and enter a program in the near future.

At Sculpture Conservation Studio, the California Mission Assessments are almost completed, and the Missions are very pleased with the information they have received. Mervyn’s, who sponsered the assessment, hopes to follow up with a question and answer session between the Missions and the conservators. The City of Inglewood has received a grant to work with the studio on the conservation of the Helen Lundeberg History of Transportation petrachrome mosaic mural. The mural consists of 60 panels, each 4 feet long.

Viviana Dominguez, a paintings conservator from Argentina, just completed a thorough assessment of a wall mural in Hollywood along with the help of the studio. Rosa Lowinger and Catherine Hayes just completed a SOS Assessment of the Big Wave sculpture over Wilshire Blvd, dividing Los Angeles and the City of Santa Monica. Sculpture Conservation Studio welcomes Traci Lucero who is now working with with the group as a conservation intern.

The Natural History Museum of LA County hosted Paulette Reading, a Buffalo conservation student, as a summer intern funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Paulette worked with NHMLAC conservator Tania Collas on projects in the History, Mineralogy, Anthropology, Ornithology, and Mammalogy collections. Paulette’s work ranged from treating an ornate 19th-century painted locomotive headlight to rehousing a pre-European contact Native American Channel Islands seagrass skirt to designing microenvironments for sensitive minerals.

Lisa La Vine has joined the staff of Griswold Conservation Associates as office manager/conservation assistant. John Griswold and Cyndi Eastright recently completed treatment of Henry Moore’s Three Upright Motives for the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. John and Lisa also completed treatment of the fiberglass Vaquero outdoor sculpture by Luis Jimenez in Houston, Texas.

Under the direction of John Griswold, Cyndi Eastright, Liz Werden, Jennifer Kim, Marie Tadros, and Jane Tsong have completed the fourth phase of a six-phase treatment of the 24-foot-tall Ezcaray Retablo. The 17th-century altarpiece is to be installed this month at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Financial support and technical assistance for the project are being provided by the J. Paul Getty Trust. Claire Dean has assisted in completion of the work and supervision of the installation.

Stefanie Griswold and John Griswold have completed studio treatments of artifacts for Hearst Castle and the Southwest Museum. Bud Goldstone has provided engineering expertise in the conservation treatment of the Selig Zoo Animal Sculptures by Carlo Romanelli, to be installed at a new entrance to the Los Angeles Zoo. John and Stefanie have recently returned from their third trip to Chicago performing the assessment of over 400 Malvina Hoffman sculptures for the Field Museum. John has also just completed a study of the exterior wall shakes of Greene and Greene’s Gamble House in Pasadena, California, with laboratory assistance from James Martin of Orion Analytical, LLC.

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