Objects Conservation

CCI is developing a computer model of collection value, in order to clarify risk based decision making. A fundamental design issue is the accrual of value over time, and the weighting of the future by the “social discount curve.” In the process of exploring this problem, the history of ideas in utilitarian moral philosophy over the last 200 years was found to provide useful clarity and terminology. An Analytica™ model of collection value over time is presented, with a preliminary study of the role of discount rate and multiple values on preservation decisions.

This work describes the workings of modern zoos and considers the core ethical challenges which face those who choose to hold and display animals in zoos, aquariums or sanctuaries. Using a number of normative ethical frameworks this thesis explores impacts of modern zoos. The impact of zoos include the costs to animals in terms of animal welfare, the loss of liberty and even impact on the value of animal life. On the positive side of the argument are the welfare and health outcomes for many of the animals held in zoos, increased attention and protection for their species in the wild and the enjoyment and education for the people who visit zoos. This paper concludes that zoos and aquariums are ethically defensible when they align conservation outcomes with the interests of individual animals and the interests of zoo operations. The impending extinction crisis requires large scale interventions which address human values and facilitate consideration of wildlife in decision making. Considering the long term relationship zoos have with animals, their extensive reach within communities and their reliance on animals to deliver positive experiences for people, it is appropriate that zoos pay back some of humanity's debt to wildlife by making a meaningful contribution to wildlife conservation.

Plaster is an ideal casting material, but it is dust-sensitive and difficult to clean – a problem that was already the subject of lively public and professional discussion in the 19th century. The Archaeological Institute of the University of Göttingen took up this debate anew in 2016 and made it the topic of an international conference. 23 conference papers are published in this volume. By means of case studies, experts from the field of archaeology and conservation science explain different cleaning and treatment methods, and contextualise them in their respective collection history. The examples – casts of historical sculptures and artists’ original plaster models – stem from numerous university cast collections, as well as from large European museums.

The history of museum climate guidelines is developed through three overlapping strands:awareness of problems, doing something about them, and the slow development of the science. Topics covered are nineteenth-century discoveries of climate issues; the history of passive RH control and its science, the emergence of mechanical systems, and the logic of best available technology; the emergence of stringent specifications; an era of relaxation; the emergence of current specifications; a critical history of the science; and the five errors of argumentation about specifications. The conclusions offer a brief recipe for action for institutions making decisions on this topic.

Auch Objekte haben eine Biographie. Zwischen Herstellung und Verfall durchlaufen materielle Artefakte verschiedene Stadien. Hierbei wandeln sich Besitzer und Funktionen der Objekte, es verändert sich ihre Bedeutung und nicht zuletzt auch ihr Wert. Nimmt man Objekte nur genau genug in den Blick, erschließen weit verzweigte und vielschichtige Geschichten. Sie können anhand von Objektbiographien erzählt werden. Erstmals vorgelegt wird mit dem Arbeitsbuch eine Einführung in die Textsorte der Objektbiographie. Untersucht und kritisch diskutiert werden ihr Vorkommen und ihre Bedeutung in Wissenschaft, Ausstellungswesen, Journalismus und Literatur. Anhand eines ausführlich dokumentierten Beispiels wird ein praktischer Leitfaden zum Schreiben von Objektbiographien an die Hand gegeben. Reflektiert werden auch hierbei die didaktischen Möglichkeiten für die Universitätslehre und für den Einsatz der Objektbiographie im Kreativen Schreiben.

As the theme for this issue of the Museological Review suggests, museums exist as part of a 'web of relationships'. Therefore, it is imperative that museum professionals embrace this interrelatedness and continue to cultivate inter-museum and multidisciplinary partnerships and programmes, especially on an international level. Although collaborative efforts surround particular collections within the museum, they may be of great benefit to the wider fields of conservation and museology. This is because they provide a means to share experiences and knowledge while offering each museum an opportunity to further refine their own research and conservation goals as well as promote their own collections and programmes. Using the collaboration between the Rijksmuseum and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich regarding ship model conservation, this paper will illustrate the importance of initiating and developing collaborative programmes to amplify institutional messages regarding the importance of preservation, conservation, technical analysis, and professional development opportunities, which are among the fundamental aspects of good museum practice. As the theme for this issue of the Museological Review suggests, museums exist within a 'web of relationships' where individual museums are part of and affected by a wider global community and international dialogue. Museums have evolved to encompass a diverse range of responsibilities: as such, they enlist various specialists to assist in their many functions. Especially in the fields of object-based research and analysis, conservation, educational outreach, and professional development, a collaborative approach is not only preferred, but often required. Such cooperative programmes and initiatives are beneficial for numerous reasons. They not only provide a means to share and develop experiences and knowledge, but also offer individual museums the opportunity to promote their own collections and programmes. Collaboration may result in institutional messages regarding the importance of preservation, conservation, research, and professional development being amplified and disseminated to the broader field. Even the prelude to the formation of these partnerships are important, as they allow institutions to define, develop, and further refine their own goals regarding research, conservation, and educational outreach. Using the collaborative initiatives and programmes surrounding ship model conservation developed by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich as the lens for this discussion, this paper will illustrate the importance of inter-museum and multidisciplinary collaboration, especially on an international level. To accomplish this, a brief overview of the complex issues surrounding the conservation of ship models will be provided. The ship model collections of both the Rijksmuseum and the National Maritime Museum will be introduced, as will the significance of technical analysis, preservation, and conservation within the museum setting. The importance of collaborations and the formation of new collaborative programmes between the Rijksmuseum and the National Maritime Museum surrounding the field of ship model conservation will be discussed. Finally, a reflection of the importance of these multidisciplinary and inter-museum partnerships will conclude that above all, it remains imperative that museum professionals continue to work together to share knowledge and advance practice within the fields of museology and conservation.

Gesso's interparticle bond is modeled as a function of gesso recipe. Mechanical properties of gesso become predictable from that of glue alone. Cracking of gesso perpendicular to the grain on wood results from drying stresses plus wood shrinkage across the grain plus insufficient stress relaxation in the glue at low humidity.

A critical discussion of value typologies for heritage conservation and management is offered, from the perspective of objects-and urban conservation, in light of a review of published literature on heritage values. It is suggested that value typologies are often designed and implemented without understanding the implicit consequences of the inclusion and omission of 'values'. It is also suggested that typologies often fail to prompt the necessary questions to develop satisfactorily detailed understandings of heritage significance, resulting in decisions being based on implicit, rather than explicit, value assessments in practice. Mindful of the problems associated with 'universalising' context specific typologies, a broad framework for assessing and communicating significance is proposed. In order to encourage holistic approaches, the framework is designed to combat the false dichotomies of cultural/natural and tangible/intangible heritage; it is hoped this will make the framework widely applicable. Without downplaying the necessity of diverse participation in assessing significance, the framework is designed to identify aspects of weakness and preference in cases where adequate consultation is not possible.

"On the Ethics of Cultural Heritage Conservation" published by Archetype in 2020. In this freely downloadable pdf I am sharing the front matter of the book, including the Foreword by Professor James Janowski and my own Preface describing the contents and scope of the book. As you can read in the pdf, "On the Ethics..." is a collection of previously published papers, original texts based on lectures delivered by the author and several pieces written solely for this publication. Each one of them analyses one of the core notions that shape the traditional conservation discourse (minimal intervention, artist's intent, authenticity, etc.). These reflections aim at providing a deeper understanding of this fascinating activity, an understanding that may perhaps foster a more open, efficient and future-proof approach to cultural heritage conservation.

Read at: http://cool.conservation-us.org/jaic/articles/jaic36-02-002.html 
Ultrasonic misting is a method of applying consolidation solutions to powdery surfaces that was developed at the Canadian Conservation Institute in 1989. The method was tested with four different consolidants, with water and ethanol carriers, and on binderless powdery paints of seven different pigments. Measurements were made of change in appearance after 1, 4, and 10 applications. Changes in cohesion and adhesion of the paint were measured on three of the pigments. Pigment, solvent, and consolidant all played a significant role in the results. Unacceptable color change can occur after wetting and drying by water alone in clay-type pigments. Gelatin in water gave the widest range of success: acceptable results in all but carbon black.

Exploration of INTERSUBJECTIVITY is continued. Different kinds of if are differentiated and signs for its presence and effects are shown. The difference between it, subjectivity and objectivity are explored.
Intersubjectivity is crucial and universal for general everyday discourse in all cultures, sub-cultures, institutions, communities and socio-cultural practices such as religion, sport, etc or the so-called Manifest Image. It is essential for specialized areas, for example religion, sport and disciplines such as the humanities, arts, sciences, philosophy and all institutions.
It is a necessity for both cultural, social, interpersonal as well as intra-personal existence, emotions, attitudes, values and norms. But, it is not limited to human existence, life-worlds, realities and worlds, but also for animals and all organisms. Object Oriented Ontology would emphasize that is it not merely something anthropocentric and restricted to human existence and consciousness (and anthropocentric interpretations of and projections on other objects, non-human creatures and all organisms, as well as all objects.. In the case of the latter one would probably replace the notion of intersubjectivity with terms such as energy and other ways of action and interaction for example intra- and inter-atoms.)
In the Appendix is included work related to the above by others such as Sellars, Brandom (and his two images, Manifest and Scientific), Davidson, Dennett, Habermas, Nagel, etc.

20 Years of preservation, conservation and restoration of antiques and sculptures in the private sector. This is not meant as a DIY catalogue for restorers. It outlines visually examples of artefacts prior and post rescue. It gives an idea what can be accomplished when treatments are selected to restore pieces with the idea of minimal intervention.

Stain reduction is often required during conservation treatment of ceramics. Although the historical relevance of the stain must first be considered, stains are often disfiguring enough that they limit full aesthetic appreciation of an object. This is particularly true within fine arts collections. For the past several years, the authors have delved deeper into this topic, evaluating current materials and methodologies and applying these concepts during the treatment of dozens of ceramics in the Winterthur collection. In the process, they go beyond what is mentioned in the conservation literature by considering new options and developing a sequence of steps for stain reduction that has provided excellent results. In this paper, the authors discuss cleaning theories and present new  techniques and materials, proposing a rethinking of the approach to stain reduction on ceramics.

Partendo dall’analisi delle reliquie attribuite a San Sebastiano presenti nel paese di Lauro, questo saggio propone  un percorso di valorizzazione e patrimonializzazione dei beni comunitari legati alla figura del Santo, e intorno ai quali  i fedeli e cittadini di Lauro possano sviluppare un senso di appartenenza e di identità culturale.
- Articolo pubblicato su "Agorà del vallo di Lauro", n°17 2014 (ISBN : 2120010530873), pubblicazione annuale a cura dell’Associazione Culturale Ricreativa PROLAURO, Lauro (AV)

Killed or deliberately fragmented objects are well known within the archaeological literature, yet there is little description or discussion of what these practices may have meant to the peoples who carried them out. ​This lack of scholarly discussion has impacted conservation practices by undervaluing the identification and retention of these meaningful acts. Indeed, the paucity within the conservation literature suggests this aspect of material manipulation is rarely considered during conservation treatments. The purpose of this study is to help fill the literature
gap by introducing this culturally significant deliberate damage to the larger conservation community in order to encourage the identification, documentation, and preservation of killed or fragmented objects. I have analyzed the literature from archaeology, anthropology, the conservation of painted artworks, heritage preservation, and working with the sacred in order to develop a brief list of identifying traits and treatment strategies for killed or fragmented objects. By involving conservation in the identification, documentation, and preservation of killed or fragmented objects, I hope to further the growing interest in fragmentation research. In time, this may lead to more effective methods for the identification, preservation and overall understanding of these meaningful cultural practices.

Things, artifacts, objects... These are our intimate companions as we live in and make sense of the world. We tend to categorize them as fetishes, souvenirs, heirlooms, tools, knick knacks, voodoo dolls, marionettes, toys, furniture, relics, object d’art, rocks, fossils, buildings, landscapes, amounting to what we cumulatively call “material culture”. Art historians, archaeologists, cultural anthropologists and ethnohistorians among others have attempted to make sense of the past (and the present) through the material residues, artifacts, remnants of human practices. Things, fetishized or not, become protagonists in our reconstructions of the past, as we increasingly believe that societies construct their world through the making of things, their use, circulation, discard. However, are things happy about such instrumentalization, categorization and secondary positioning as inanimate and silent members of the world? The recent interest in the academia on materiality has brought about a new age of things, the so-called “material turn,” revisiting old theories of materialism and asking fresh questions about alternative, object-oriented ontologies. In this course we will explore new work on thing theory, materials and materiality, the social life and the cultural biography of objects, their ability to configure social realities, human subjectivities, and cultural identities.

Decision matrices and decision trees are effective ways of sharing and communicating decisions. This paper suggests they be adopted for teaching, documenting, and understanding conservation treatments and illustrates this with a case study on the consolidation of a flaking painting by Mario Sironi. It demonstrates that doing nothing is simply another option that can be evaluated along with more active options, and that it may or may not be the best decision, depending on the decision criteria. This work also shows that different conservators can choose very different options for treatment while being completely objective in their judgements.

Short article that discusses 3 research projects conducted by conservators at the Oriental Institute Museum which uses SEM/EDS in addition to other analytical techniques. The three projects are: identification of pigments on a wall painting fragment from the site of Khorsabad (Iraq); the discovery of an unusual corrosion product, connellite, a copper chloride sulfate hydroxide hydrate, on bronze artifacts from sites in the Near East, and the analysis of glazed bricks from the site of Khorsabad.

This article discusses a preliminary study into the use of cyclododecane as a temporary barrier for the desalination of inscribed archaeological ceramics. Prior to desalination, pigmented or water-sensitive areas on ceramic objects are often consolidated with a resin. This process may alter the appearance of the object even after the resin has been removed. Cyclododecane, a volatile binder, has been used in the field of paper conservation for temporarily fixing water-sensitive media during aqueous treatments. This technique was adapted to conduct tests to determine whether water-sensitive media on archaeological materials could be temporarily protected with cyclododecane during desalination. Several marked modern terracotta samples were coated with cyclododecane using various application methods, and the samples were immersed or poulticed in tests simulating desalination. With the results obtained from these tests, an inscription on an Egyptian ostracon was coated with cyclododecane and desalinated. The results of the experiments and case study show that cyclododecane, when applied as a melt, offers considerable protection for water-sensitive ink during the desalination of archaeological ceramics and is a viable alternative to other materials commonly used for this purpose.

The aim of this article is to develop a different approach to the study of the material world, one that takes seriously the seemingly banal fact that things are constantly falling out of place. Taking this fact seriously, the article argues, requires us to think about the material world not in terms of ‘objects’, but ecologically, that is, in terms of the processes and conditions under which certain ‘things’ come to be differentiated and identified as particular kinds of ‘objects’ endowed with particular forms of meaning, value and power. The article demonstrates the purchase of this ecological approach through the example of the Mona Lisa. It does so by exploring the rather extraordinary processes of containment and maintenance that are required to keep the Mona Lisa legible as an art object over time.

Feux pâles is an exhibition (CAPC, 07 December 1990–03 March 1991) held by the agency readymades belong to everyone®. It is considered a work of art by the artist Philippe Thomas (1951–1995). Given the ambiguous medium of this cultural property, we needed to expand our usual conservation approach to characterise the exhibition, establish its state of reference, and conceive its activation. This required looking for tools in other domains such as philosophy or sociology. This study of the properties of the exhibition restored understanding of the exhibition and its concept. The conservator was determined to be a mediator between the different actors and paradigms of Thomas’s work.

Thanks to a generous donation in 2002, Winterthur’s collection of Staffordshire figures is now the largest of its kind in an American museum, with about 270 earthenware sculptures that represent the full range of manufacture and decoration techniques known to English potters at the time. Dating from 1740 to 1900, they span the rise and fall of figure production in Staffordshire. Research, survey, and analysis were conducted to identify manufacture technologies and chemical compositions of the polychrome decoration. Underglaze and overglaze techniques are discussed. Several analytical techniques (X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy equipped with energy-dispersive X-ray microanalysis) were employed, making important discoveries, including the identification of an orange enamel colourant unique to Staffordshire earthenwares, new compositional information on high-temperature underglaze oxides, and the technology of a mysterious blue overglaze colour.

Für rund zwei Jahrhunderte war die Kategorie der Rasse ein wichtiges Instrument, mit dem sich die Welt vermeintlich wissenschaftlich ordnen und erklären ließ. In den Sammlungsbeständen der Universität Jena finden sich zahlreiche Objekte, die auf diese Idee der Rasse verweisen – unter anderem in der Anatomischen Sammlung, dem Phyletischen Museum, dem Ernst-Haeckel-Haus und in den Beständen der Jenaer Anthropologie. Untersucht werden fünfzehn dieser Objekte: vom Zwischenkieferknochen eines Walrosses bis zur Lehrmittelsammlung „Rassenhygiene“.