Tag Archives: conservation

Staff Highlight: Bonnie Halloran

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Andrew Mellon Post- Baccalaureate Fellow 2011-2012

My last semester of my senior year of college I enrolled in an in depth architectural seminar of the 1930s taught by Dr. Kostis Kourelis from the Art & Art History Department. By this time I had taken several classes with Dr. Kourelis and even worked on a summer Hackmann grant with him in Southern Greece. This particular class, however, proved to be quite an academic challenge because it demanded extensive primary research, archival work, visual analysis, and interdisciplinary scholarship.

As the semester progressed we divided up the 1930s art and architecture located on campus and we each honed in on one building or object, which would be the central focus of an original research project. I chose the 1937 mural in Franklin & Marshall’s Shadek-Fackenthal colonial revival library, Research Practical and Philosophical, Looks to the Past and Future Generations of Men. http://library2.fandm.edu/mural/mural.html

Beyond my final research project for this seminar, the mural spurred an interest in art conservation/historic preservation, I observed the mural was moved and damaged throughout the decades. For an art history student, this posed several critical questions, such as, why is this mural valuable for us as a community, what narrative does it produce about 1930s America, what makes it significant to us, is it important that we protect this object, and who is responsible for the upkeep and repair of the mural?

I brought my concerns and questions to the Phillips Museum staff, hoping to promote a dialogue that could produce a realistic preservation strategy that collaborated with both professional museum standards and art history. We discussed possible outcomes and tactics we could use to approach the situation of historic preservation around Franklin & Marshall and shortly there after, I was offered the 2011-2012 Andrew Mellon Post- Baccalaureate Fellowship to focus on conservation initiatives within the museum and art around the college.

Throughout the year I focused on generating condition reports of all incoming works, and cataloguing them into the Museum’s computer database. Under the direction of Dr. Phillip Zimmerman the Mellon Doctoral Fellow, I cleaned the collections valuable silver. I also monitored humidity controls as well as checked on artwork around the campus for damage or regular maintenance. In addition I was responsible for the condition photographs of incoming loan pieces and had a role in documenting and reporting on the Zorach’s work for the Zorach: Paint and Spirit exhibition http://phillipsmuseumofart.wix.com/zorachs/paint-and-spirit#!__paint-and-spirit that took place in the Fall of 2011. I was also responsible for cleaning and waxing all the bronze work by William Zorach in the exhibition.

Finally I worked on condition reporting and photography for Dr. Kostis Kourelis’ exhibition Colors of Greece: The Art and Archaeology of Georg von Peschke, continuing my work and research I began in the summer of 2010 during my Hackmann scholarship. http://articles.philly.com/2012-03-30/news/31261543_1_greece-thessaloniki-peschke My time spent at the Museum was diverse and jam packed with valuable experiences. From here I plan to focus on applying to graduate school to pursue preservation and conservation of the built environment in the Middle East.

 

 

Rehousing Works on Paper

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Our first post is by guest blogger, Brittany Baksa, Collections Assistant at The Phillips Museum of Art and Museum Studies Graduate Student at Johns Hopkins University.

 

In Spring of 2009, contemporary artist, Bill Hutson donated close to 800 objects including personal art, ephemera, and works by other artists from his collection. Many of the works on paper came to the museum in cardboard portfolios stacked one on top of the other. This presents an issue in the safety of the artwork in preserving the long-term care for the object. My task as the collections assistant was to create a proper storage environment for these objects by following the proper museum standards in collections management policies.

According to Rebecca Buck in Museum Registration Methods 5th Ed 2010, each object entering the museum must be documented. Proper documentation includes photographing, measuring, composing precise condition reports and labeling. The collection should be stabilized for long-term preservation and housed in a proper storage environment that is regularly monitored (Buck 2010, p. 24).

I had the opportunity to work closely with a paper conservator in determining the best steps to take to complete the project. In order to begin the process of re-housing the works, it was managed in several stages. I first separated the works on paper from three-dimensional objects. The second stage was to sort the works by size and third by like media. The works on paper were placed in archival folders, with acid-free permabond paper interleaved between each piece. The folders were then placed into archival boxes that were numbered and given a location on a shelf in our storage area.

It took me a little over four months to complete the project as I came across some challenges along the way. I found in some instances I needed to photograph, measure and assign identification to works that were not properly documented. I learned for example, that friable material such as pastels and charcoals needed to be placed in a shallow box alone rather than interleaved with acid free paper like the other works on paper.

The organization of some 400 works on paper helped to bring this collection to stabilization ensuring that long-term preservation of these materials will be maintained. This is most important as to provide access to the collection while supporting the mission of the museum.