from KFSK Radio -
Conservator works on Alaska documents
go to web-page
go to audio (MP3)

When the museum or archives cannot come to the conservator, the (paper) conservator goes to the museum and archives. Maybe this could be the model to help smaller museums and heritage centres that cannot afford permanent in-house staff.
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from The New York Times -
A Rebel Form Gains Favor. Fights Ensue.
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It is indeed an ironic twist that performance art - the art form which resists commercialism by being stubbornly rendered as not collectible - is now facing questions about its core value as some artists insists on reperformance, sometimes using the guise of preservation to deflect criticism.
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from The New York Times -
Online, It’s the Mouse That Runs the Museum
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It is less about being populist than understanding that if it is the victorious that writes history, then authority is not winning people over as it has been before.
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from The Observer -
Enlightened age for the arts in Britain is cast into shadow
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And to end the year with an eye on what is happening in UK museums that could serve for all as a lesson (from the past) and a warning (from the future), perhaps:

"The culture shift began with free entry to museums and has developed down the years to force once standoffish institutions to engage with wider School trips, outreach and working with diverse communities have come to rank as highly as research and fundraising."

And,

"The fear is that a collapse in private philanthropy combined with a political arms race of expenditure cuts and quango-bashing could soon return our galleries and museums to the dark days of charges, closures and pandering to the familiar."

from The Art Newspaper -
Heritage marketing: Love is not enough
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Heralding the rise of a new breed "museum worker" - the interpretation expert - whose job is to make historical information more tasteful and digestible for the (imaginary?) general public. What a load of condescending bung!
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from The New York Observer -
Copy That! Wait, Don't. Whitney Ponders Problem of Replication in Modern Art
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Yet another take on the issues surrounding the preservation of contemporary art. Perhaps, it is more useful to see such diverse preservation efforts not in a monolithic or unified way but as pragmatic measures in the race against time. Let's argue less about (impossible) philosophical ideals and think more about setting acceptable standards beyond which all manner of approach is (to be) welcomed.

See earlier link to various papers published online on the 2007 conference held at the Tate mentioned in the article
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from The New York Times -
When Ancient Artifacts Become Political Pawns
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"But the larger truth is that all patrimony arguments ultimately live or die in the morally murky realm of global relations, meaning that modern governments like Egypt’s and Iraq’s may win sympathy today by counting on Western guilt about colonialism when asking for the return of art from ancient sites within their current borders. At the same time there’s no international clamor for Russia to return storerooms of treasures it stole from Germany at the end of the war, or, for that matter, for Sweden to fork over the spoils of a war 350 years ago with Denmark. It’s about emotion, not airtight logic and consistent policy."

Perhaps, the way to take all these twists and turns of events is to realise that when a field of professional work becomes sufficiently mature, petty politics moves right in. Welcome to the world ...
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from The Art Newspaper -
Disposing of cultural artefacts in university collections
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Treating all artefacts in a collection as "equally valuable" would seem like an enlightened approach - but in fact it is a mask to hide unthinking wasteful practices and a deep reluctance to make (and live with) subjective decisions.
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from -
Rice [University] students changing art of art storage
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Definitely a good idea that could be expanded and made useful for museums everywhere. However, the part about - 'next steps include filing for a patent and exploring "a startup or some sort of venture."' - does not sit well with the open spirit of sharing in the museum and heritage fields.
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from V&A Museum -
Conservation in Action videos

Short videos with information on the conservation process of various interesting artefacts in the museum collection.

Conserving Tippoo's Tiger
by Nigel Bamforth, Senior Conservator, Furniture and Wood Conservation

go to video

Conservation of a Tunic from Egypt
by Elizabeth-Anne Haldane, Textile Conservator

go to video

Gaekwad of Baroda Uniform
by Sarah Glenn, Textile Conservator

go to video

A 'Thousand Nailed' Chhatra (Parasol)
by Jennifer Barsby, RCA/V&A Conservation course graduate

go to video
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from Art 21 Blog -
Imaging Conservation at the Guggenheim: A Discussion with Carol Stringari
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A glimpse into the work and ideas of the conservation profession. In particular, the pressing issue of "preservation" (as opposed to tangible restoration) of contemporary art.
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from National Museum Directors' Conference (UK) -
NMDC adopts guidelines to reduce museums’ carbon footprint
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With the greater awareness of how the implementation of museum preservation measures can often lead to very inefficient use of energy - and contributing to global environmental problems - museums in the UK have taken the first necessary step in acknowledging the issue and committing to implementing sensible guidelines to balance the needs of preservation and limited natural resources.

The 4 pertinent principles of the guidelines are:

- Environmental standards should become more intelligent and better tailored to clearly identified needs. Blanket conditions should no longer apply. Instead conditions should be determined by the requirements of individual objects or groups of objects and the climate in the part of the world in which the museum is located;

- Care of collections should be achieved in a way that does not assume air-conditioning or any other current solutions. Passive methods, simple technology that is easy to maintain, and lower energy solutions should be considered;

- Natural and sustainable environmental controls should be explored and exploited fully;

- When designing and constructing new buildings or renovating old ones, architects and engineers should be guided significantly to reduce the building’s carbon footprint as a primary objective.

See also:
Full document of NMDC guiding principles for reducing museums’ carbon footprint
Paper presented by Sir Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate, May 2008.
Paper by Mark Jones, Director, V&A

Link via IIC News.
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from The Art Newspaper -
America is changing—but are its art museums?
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If diversity is only skin-deep - literally - then the danger is that ideas (and ideologies) become polite, in order to be correct.
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from The Art Newspaper -
The Getty puts panel painting into perspective
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Something which conservation, as a profession, should spend more time thinking about and taking effective actions - before it is too late.
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from Guardian -
Legal row over National Portrait Gallery images placed on Wikipedia
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A most unfortunate approach where copyright is totally irrelevant in the age of ubiquitous information. The National Portrait Gallery is coming out of this looking like a big bad bully. Instead, the use of a suitable Creative Commons license - allowing for non-commercial use with acknowledgement of authorship - would have been more palpable.
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from Guardian -

Museums' future lies on the internet, say Serota and MacGregor
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Museums on the internet? Get real
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Museums, up to mid 20th century, were the epitome of access, as artefacts were made available for scrutiny while on (open storage) display. However, with the ubiquitous reach of the internet culture, content became paramount and archives, rightly, took over the role of championing open access.

The singular issue of online access for museum collections would be the lost of reference and context to a human scale that accompanies viewing of artefacts in actual museum galleries. And that scale refers to qualities of size, depth, texture, transparency, colour, amongst others.

For stalwarts of the museum industry to declare - somewhat overconfidently - that the future of the museum lies (solely?) on the internet is akin to forecasting the death of the book - definitely rational but probably pre-mature. The internet is surely a means rather than an end.
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from Arts in Houston -
MFAH does conservation work on Anselm Kiefer painting in public
go to blog post



Link via Modern Art Notes.
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from Emerging Tech -
Robo-furniture eats household pests
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Every museum should have one ... or more, if budget allows.
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from The New York Times -
A New Concept in Handling Art
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Just as Switzerland - the last bastion for the trafficking of "antiques" without provenance - is tightening their act to ensure that illegally excavated and exported antiquities are more closely monitored, Singapore goes in and fill that gap by offering an even more lax set of regulations - effectively encouraging the next generation of shady deals with accompanying questionable ethics.

"In 2005, Switzerland enacted strict federal legislation, based on a 1970 Unesco international convention against art and antiquities trafficking. The legislation, prompted by scandals and foreign criminal cases involving stolen works trafficked through Switzerland, regulated Swiss free ports handling cultural goods and set criminal penalties for violators. But Singapore opted out of the Unesco Convention in 1985 and chose not to sign a 1995 international agreement on the repatriation of stolen or illegally exported cultural goods."

Ironically (and disturbingly), Singapore's foremost government-funded agencies for art, culture and heritage (the National Heritage Board and National Arts Council) are in cahoots in implementing the scheme by each taking "a 5 percent stake" in the venture. What a shame ...
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from The New York Times -
Scorsese Will Distribute Restored Films via Internet
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from hangingtogether.org -
An open Smithsonian, all around
go to post

Two different projects - one arising from the public realm while the other is an off-shoot of prior commercial work - that strongly challenge the relevance of today's (or was that yesterday's) copyright laws which aim to restrict access in the name of commercial rights.

Commercial gains and unfettered access need not (and should not) be mutually exclusive:

"The more audiences see these films, the more they want to see other films like them," Mr. Scorsese said. "Then what happens is the audience changes, which means the movies that are being made change."

And again:

"[O]pen access actually drove sales upward through awareness of the collection which, in turn, generated knowledge about other museum resources."

Is there a lesson in all these for the museum, heritage and preservation "industries"?
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