from The Guardian -
Street art: Scribbles behind the wardrobe
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from Bloomberg -
Scrub Sao Paulo's Graffiti? Not So Fast, London's Tate Says
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Yet another indication the graffiti art is moving main-stream, thus worthy of all the worries and concerns associated with its preservation - and even restoration.
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from BLDG BLOG -
Library of Dust
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A heady mix of ideas related to art, photography, chemistry and a dash of history and preservation. Not the usual post about heritage but definitely worth a ponder - and the disturbingly beautiful photos are to be enjoyed.
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from The Wall Street Journal -
Big Artists, Big Camera: Not a Typical Polaroid
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An interesting development following the intention of Polaroid to cease production of its instantmatic film. Perhaps, it takes the exclusivity of art-making (and a soaring price-tag does help in the process) to stir interest in the continuation and preservation of the technology, albeit with private funding.

Separately, taking issue with the concluding paragraph:

"Only the Polaroid process can guarantee that the picture you see is identical to the subject that stood before the camera. The 20x24, a lovely, archaic piece of technology, preserves the one form of photography you can trust."

This must stem from a philosophical misunderstanding - which is that even if there is extreme fidelity in the transfer of image, the very act of cropping or framing renders the representation, at best, a proxy for but never identical to "reality".

from Culture Grrl -
LA MOCA's Vuitton-Murakami Morass (and Brooklyn's non-response)
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When a museum become a mere (pretentious) shopfront - that's when everyone should go to a real shopping mall and stop wasting time immersing in a "life-style hub".
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from Inside Higher Ed -
At Libraries, Taking the (Really) Long View
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A succinct account of current challenges facing the preservation of digital records - and some tentative solutions ahead. Of interest is the trend towards an "open-source" approach, in which the inner workings of a project is freely communicated and with it the advance permission to "tinker" and improve upon by someone else. Such an "open-source" approach would also be a long-term viable solution for preservation work as a whole.
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from Museum -
Rethinking the Rembrandt Rule
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When museums have monopoly on preservation standards, then the "tyranny of collections" can and does arise to the detriment of preservation in general:

"Noting that historic sites have borrowed many standards and practices from the broader museum community, many attendees argued that strict adherence to these practices often undermines creativity and sustainability. They suggested that new standards of stewardship for historic sites should be modeled to reflect their distinct nature."

This note of caution should also be applied to contemporary collections when materials and techniques do not fall within the same paradigm as Old Masters paintings.
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from The New York Times -
Tall, Dark and Fragile
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The culmination of 8 years of research in an exhibition and perhaps a bit more technical information to go by, in so far as art conservation decisions are concern. However, to borrow a phrase from Einstein, the "perfection of means" does not necessarily bring us closer to the goal:

"[...] Reinhardt made himself readily available to repair paintings, or substitute fresh ones if necessary. When he offered to replace a damaged black painting in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection, curators balked. But we want our painting, they said. So battles over authenticity — over what constituted an original Reinhardt, or a particular Reinhardt, or an imperfect-but-acceptable Reinhardt — began during his lifetime and have grown knottier since."

from BBC News -
X-rays reveal Van Gogh portrait
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An interesting (but terribly expensive, surely) technique to use x-ray fluorescence mapping to create an image overlay.
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from The Bostn Globe -
Monet? Gauguin? Using art to make better doctors
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If the trend is to use art to sharpen observational skills of doctors and diagnosticians, then what should art conservators be looking at to sharpen theirs?
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