Future of CoOL II

With the successful transfer of Conservation Online to its new home under the auspices of FAIC, the stakeholders in CoOL held a meeting at the Library of Congress to discuss its future.  The rest of us seized the opportunity to hold another conversation on Twitter of our own.

Up to this point, CoOL has served two major purposes: publishing and archiving the Cons Distlist and hosting of a handful of conservation related websites.  In its next iteration, I think that it is clear that these tasks need to remain at the core of the site, but what other offerings would benefit the field and what structure would best achieve our goals?

Clearly, the core postings in the Distlist need to keep their home: event postings, job listings, calls for paper, general announcements, and professional queries.  Some thoughts that arose on Twitter (or my own head) include an events calendar, public outreach in the form of FAQs, conference post-prints and presentations, curated links to relevant web content, and original content in the form of blog posts or articles.  What I would most like to see as a natural extension of the Distlist is an unmoderated forum in which subscribers (or everyone) can more readily discuss issues that arise in the mailing.  The current structure serves as a fine method for finding answers to basic inquiries or pointers to further readings, but it fails to build a deeper body of material, in part because many of the conversations take place over private emails, while other conversations are stilted because of the irregular publication schedule of the list.  The most active discussion that I can recall in my time as a subscriber came out of the certification vote, a discussion that I think could have benefited from an easier give and take.  A forum would provide that ease of communication, while allowing the field to build a more accessible body of literature.  But perhaps the release of the AIC Specialty Group Wikis will lessen the need for that second point.

A minor practical change to the Distlist would be to publish the moderated announcements on a continuing basis on the front page of CoOL, like a blog, and then mail the list out to subscribers on a weekly basis. Daniel Cull, if I am reading his tweets correctly, would like to see CoOL become an unmoderated wiki-style web-page with the info creation crowd-sourced to willing participants.  I suspect that this is a basic philosophical difference between the two of us, but I think that the curation/moderation aspect of the Distlist (ably handled by Walter Henry for the past 15? years) is the key to its success.  The authority of a moderator adds to the trust of a professional resource while maintaining the focus necessary to keep CoOL relevant to the field of conservation.

A more visionary though to transform CoOL is to use the site as a place to host original content, in the form of blog posts or articles (is there a difference?), and curated links to outside web content.  This could be formatted as a single page, like the newly started AIC News, or if there is enough new content, a network of pages that could provide individuals or institutions to control their own content.  From the Twitter conversation, it sounds as if CCI has materials that they would like to make available, but aren’t sure how to do it or what the appropriate IP rights should be.  This imaginary CoOL site could offer CCI a forum to publish their data while maintaining authorship rights under a Creative Commons license. Regardless, the new CoOL needs to find an effective means to balance the moderation of information with the addition of content from interested and informed parties.

With CoOL still in a state of transition, now is the time to create and implement a vision for CoOL in the 21st century.  The stakeholders have important decisions to make, but I think that it is clear the the field of conservation needs to take better advantage of the Web to improve communication and strengthen the field.

There is much to say about the AIC Annual Meeting in LA this past week, but I am prevented by time and personal travel to make many timely comments.  I do however wish to leave one, perhaps inflammatory, remark here in the hopes that I will have some interesting reading upon my return.  Particularly from Richard, whom I had the pleasure of seeing just about everywhere in LA and meeting all too briefly.

I spent a significant portion of the the meeting listening to the presentations of the Electronic Media Group and their descriptions of aging, obsolete, and difficult to replace hardware.  Let me point out here that while I may be a Philistine, I have not yet fully convinced myself of the following point: if the essence of a work of art is in its conceptual presence, why do we expend so much time and energy preserving the physical representation of media art?  Why not just replace CRTs with LEDs?

I recognize that for some (many?) pieces the artist purposefully chose the hardware to convey their work because it adds to the essence of the work, in others however the hardware is simply a vehicle to present a concept.  In these cases, is the precise physical manifestation anymore important to the work of art than the frame of a painting or the binding of a book?  Certainly, the physical presentation impacts how we view and interpret a work, but it is secondary to the actual art.  By insisting that we present media art works with vintage hardware, aren’t we relegating the work to our own, specific interpretation and understanding while positioning the work within a specific era, rather than allowing it to take on more universal meanings?  If I may extend one more metaphor, by demanding vintage presentations, we are transforming media works  into the Barnes Foundation or the Gardener Museum (or our grandmother’s home), important, beautiful, and frozen in time, rather than allowing them to be vital and continually challenging like the MoMA or the Guggenheim?

Ownership, value, and meaning

The Exlibris listserv reached a full boil last week over the deaccessioning and sale of materials from the University of San Francisco’s library collection.  Jeremey Dibbell at Philobiblos has a good write-up of the many issues raised by the institutional moves.  In general, my feeling is that deaccession is the third-rail of collections with there being no one right answer, but the hub-bub reminded me of similar issues raised by James Cuno in Who Owns Antiquity?  Museums and the battle over our ancient heritage.

I recognize that Cuno is the head of the Art Institute of Chicago, but I have to admit to being surprised with the argument that he put forward regarding the claims of national heritage.  Typically, ownership of cultural heritage is determined by its location or origination.  Cuno, however, argues quite insightfully that in our current nationalist era cultural heritage is being claimed and valued not on some sort of universal basis, but to meet the political and social needs of the present nation states.

His examples of China and Turkey struck me as very apt and convincing models for how modern states consciously work to co-opt particular historic cultures (in these cases Han and Turk), while ignoring, undervaluing, and actively working to destroy the cultures of ethnic minorities within the current borders.  The voices that are driving the international institutions to enact treaties and laws are not set-up to preserve the past for the benefit of everyone, rather only for the dominant culture of post-colonial states.

Cuno tries to make the case for the  “encyclopedic” museum as a means to best preserve the world’s cultural heritage, and in this era of globalization and trans-national migrations he presents a strong argument (even recognizing that he is inserting new facts into the same argument that has taken place in museums for the past 100 years).

I don’t think that these debates of ownership and value directly impact the work of conservators, but it does highlight the constant need to re-evaluate  our assumptions of culture and  ownership.  Are there universal values that can guide our decision-making , or are there culturally-specific considerations that must be taken into consideration?  And if there are specific considerations, are those historically or politically determined?

Join the discussion

I doubt that I have any readers here that are not aware of this already, but I feel that I would be remiss in not encouraging everyone to read the series of posts that Richard McCoy, Ellen Carrlee, and Dan Cull have up (or are soon to post) to stir up some thinking in preparation for the AIC Annual Meeting and its theme of “Conservation 2.0″.
Don’t be bashful about leaving your own thoughts.

The Intrigue of the Contemporary

The May 11th edition of the New Yorker contains one of the best depictions of conservation that I have come across in the (elite?) popular media, an eight page article on Christian Scheidemann, a conservator of contemporary art and head of Contemporary Conservation in New York City.  Unfortunately, it is behind the subscription wall, but I highly recommend using your local library to find a copy to read.

On some level, I admit that the article may be a tad fawning, but it seems to capture both a sense of the kinds of work that is undertaken and a feel for the environment in which it is done.  Certainly it reads as a more authentic representation than that NY Times article

Still, at the end of the article, I found myself bothered by the feeling that much of Scheidemann’s most interesting work was, contrary to the point that the article highlighted about how “The prevailing code of ethics insists that anything that is done to a work of art should be imperceptible and reversible,” rather invasive.  For one piece, he had to coat the entire latex structure with an acrylic resin.  For another, he plasticized the pieces of food that were part of the work.  I would guess that these were neither imperceptible nor reversible, but as the piece continued Scheidemann’s engagement with the <i>artists</i> themselves in working with their pieces and their production struck me.

Here is a conservator who works with difficult materials, for which an easy “permanent” answer is rarely apparent, but he also spends significant amounts of time and energy working with the artists, the creators, to help them find ways to make their visions and works last longer <i>before they ever need actual conservation treatment</i>.  This is a lesson that I think we need to take to heart.  Admittedly, in most cases, the producers of the objects that conservators work on are long dead, but society continues to create items that we know will be collected and accessioned in the future.  How can we work to ensure that those objects will be made with materials that will help them last longer

The best example that I can think of is the efforts by libraries in the 1980s to demand that books were printed on “permanent paper”, a move that eventually increased the availability of “acid-free” paper in all uses.  Can and should conservators team with artists, libraries, and governments to institute better practices or better materials?

May Day Twitter Conversation

In the spirit of Web 2.0, several conservators organized a May Day Twitter discussion of Richard McCoy’s recent article “Collaborating in the Public’s Domain.”  25 participants from 5 countries seems like an excellent start.  I was unable to participate, but having read over the feed, several things struck me.

The enforced brevity of the format (140 characters or less) really has an impact on the depth, and dare I say quality, of the conversation.  Long-form commentary is curtailed, replaced by an ever evolving string of responses, none of which ever seem to maintain the focus that they deserve.  As an exercise in thought-provocation, a number of interesting idea popped in and out of the discussion, but then too quickly were left behind for some other idea.  I recognize that I came of age in the ADD generation, but I found the lack of focus quite bothersome.

There were however some interesting thoughts that I think deserve to be parsed out.  I’ve selected a few relevant quotes, but in most cases, there is more discussion (if not more ideas) to be found.

1. Communication

vmuros: @LauraBrill #aic20 agree people intimated Feel many conservators scared 2 put info in public forum Don’t really understand why

mhearnsbishop: Seems privacy concerns stem from traditional notions of value. With accepted transparency dn the rd this shd not be issue any longer

walterhenry: I *still* get mail from conservators bitching that the DistList archives are public. Fear of misuse of info by untrained folks,

walterhenry: (fear) valid but misplaced. I still after all this time thnk the more we expose the conservator’s way of thinking, the better for all

I think that communication is a major concern for conservators because the work that we do inherently affects the value of  the items that we treat.  This is a major stumbling block for individuals working on privately held materials, but also for publicly held objects.  The curator/owner is viewed as the ultimate authority in regards to an object, and so conservators fear publicly discussing items that ultimately are in someone else’s care for fear of revealing too much information.

Is this right?  In the case of private ownership, it probably is, but in the case of public/institutional holdings, do we have an obligation to put as much information out there as possible?  If all that is holding conservators back are bureaucratic turf-wars, shouldn’t we work to overcome that?

2. Glorifying treatment.

AmberKerr: recently shocked by conserv who said some of us feel it’s a “fine line of glorifying conserv trmt over object” in use of social media #AIC20

This quote really struck me.  Isn’t the treatment part of the object?  Doesn’t our work become intimately entwined in the history, meaning, and interpretation of an object?  Why even care about that “fine line”?  If we glorify the treatment, isn’t that a sign of that value that we place upon the object?

Beyond the object, do conservators hold our work in such low esteem that some feel that we need to avoid any sort of public recognition?  Frankly, I think that if the field of conservation wants to fully utilize Web 2.0 to connect with the public, we need to begin “glorifying the treatment.”  Treatment, with all of its intimacy and impact, is the tool that we have to show the public that our work has value and impacts the public good.  If anything, we need to start putting up more Webpages showing BTs, Dts, and ATs that highlight specific treatments.

3. The ethics of communicating with the public.

DanielCull: @thevespiary Who is going to go around destroying stuff? Only conservators would be working on “conservation objects”. So what diff?

DanielCull: @thevespiary But they’re not “Conservation Objects”. They’re objects of value. There’s a difference. You’re not responsible for them.

QueenSuzy: @GOKConservator #AIC20: Whatever happened to Caveat Emptor? Aren’t we trained, after all, in critical thinking? Public, maybe not so much.

marialgilbert: #aic20 Sharing conservation best practices & methods helps inform general public to care for their own artifacts.

DanielCull: @MontanaR Why should people be stopped from conserving own art? Gardeners don’t stop you gardening ur garden, painters ur house? etc. #AIC20

On this point, I think that I have to vehemently disagree with Dan Cull’s comments regarding publishing resources that allow/encourage the public to conserve their own items.  After looking over his CV, I see that Dan is lacking in professional experience in a library or archival setting.  In museums or the world of fine art, I suspect that no untrained individuals would attempt a conservation treatment on an object that they own.  If you have a Rembrandt, you have the money and the wherewithal to pay someone to fix it up for you.  However, in libraries and archives (and even the rare book world), the value of the materials is not always so clear.

I have seen rare 17th century volumes placed into horrific library bindings.  I have seen important vital records “treated” with tape that has degraded to the point of making the text beneath it unreadable.  I have seen scrapbookers (which fyi will be the library and archives nightmare of the next 30 years) take their photographs and glue them up with “archival” adhesive and then slap them down on craft paper.  The point is that, at least in the library world, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.  As Queensuzy pointed out, a large part of our training is in critical thinking.  If we only provide the public with the tools, but not the in depth knowledge in how to apply them, items that might eventually enter into our cultural heritage will suffer badly.

4. Professional Associations.

richardmccoy: #AIC20 So, then what role do Professional Associations play? Do we need them anymore?

Wow.  I’m not even sure what to say about this one.  There are many issues with professional associations, but I don’t think that we are anywhere near the point (nor will we ever be near the point) where the tools of Web 2.0 can replace AIC, IIC, ICON, etc.  I’m going to sit on this further, but I suspect that Richard was posing a question for the sake of debate.

Web 2.0 Welcomes AIC

News that has been in the works for quite some time, and yet whose arrival is very much appreciated, the American Institute for Conservation has debuted their new website.  At first glance, AIC seems to have enacted a serious upgrade to what had long been a poorly aging site.  With lots of new content and easily navigated links, including to Flickr and Facebook pages, members and the public should be able to find just what they are looking for during their visits.  Indeed, the only complaint is that they were unable to secure a better URL, www.conservation-us.org seems a little second-tier and in keeping with the low professional profile to which we seem to have been relegated.

Update: Kino Article

It seems that I spoke too soon regarding responses to Carol Kino’s article on conservators and climate.  In Sunday’s Art Section, the NY Times published a response from the AIC’s Executive Director, Eryl Wentworth.  Seeing how its only 150 words long, I hope that I won’t have to excerpt it:

I applaud Ms. Kino’s article for highlighting the complexities of preserving cultural heritage.

Worth greater emphasis is that conservators and conservation scientists are at the forefront of driving the research, development and application of new preservation strategies.

In particular the advancement of innovative storage and display environments for specific materials, like those discussed in the article, is an area of vigorous investigation within many of world’s collecting institutions.

Conservators are likewise engaged in diverse areas like disaster planning and response, the stabilization of damaged art and artifacts, and materials-based research in the support of art historical, archeological and ethnographic scholarship. Providing links to our past and future, material culture is integral to our being. Eryl P. Wentworth

The Image of Conservation

Art conservation has never been inundated with mentions in the popular press, so when I saw Carol Kino’s article “Conservators Work to Keep Art, and Climate, Controlled” in April 5th’s NY Times, I was excited to find that it included a significant discussion of museum climate standards and HVAC systems. That’s just not the type of information that makes it out of textbooks and pamphlets, much less into the Sunday Times

The more I read though, the more frustrated I became with the article’s tone and obvious short-comings. Most importantly, the entire article is about preservation, without the slightest mention of interventions or treatments. That confusion can be forgiven, but from the very first line, Ms. Kino works to create this caricature of a conservator as an anachronistic laborer: “As anyone who works in a museum knows, art conservators can be slow to embrace change.” Really? I would be more inclined to reverse that description and say that in a museum, it is the curators and directors that can be slow to embrace change. Of course to end the article, Ms. Kino decides to highlight the impotence of the conservator in the face of nature, ‘For now, she said, “I think we’re just keeping our fingers crossed.”’

I eventually found myself so incensed over this article that I penned a letter to the editors. It hasn’t found its way into print yet, and so I suspect that it was stuck in a pile with all of the other cranks, but I will let you decide.

I was pleased to see Carol Kino’s article, “Keeping Art, and Climate, Controlled” (AR 23, April 5^th), as the preservation of cultural heritage is too often taken for granted.

However, I fear that Ms. Kino’s story provides an inaccurate picture of the progressive research that conservators engage in daily. Beyond her “mantra” of climate control, conservators treat damaged items, provide storage recommendations, write disaster plans, and a host of other activities to preserve our material heritage. An active professional group, the American Institute for Conservation, promotes the research and dissemination of new ideas through conferences and a peer-reviewed journal, JAIC.

Conservation demands consideration of a multitude of factors to determine the best means to preserve valued objects for future generations. Today’s conservators develop and apply cutting-edge methodologies to ensure that our grand-children can view the same paintings and photographs that we cherish in our museums and libraries today

Background Information

Personally, I have found this aspect of conservation [working with people] to be the most rewarding. To have conducted conservation treatments, with communities, and to hear positive feedback from these communities about the work undertaken, and the positive difference it has made. It is that which makes conservation worth while. – Dan Cull

Dan Cull’s “people-centric” vision of why he is a conservator set me to thinking a bit about my own reasons. The funny thing is, the question of “why book conservation” is probably the question that I receive the most when people discover what I do (just ahead of “what’s the oldest thing you’ve ever worked on?”). My stock answer doesn’t quite seem to live up to Dan’s in its nobility: I love the work. However, I think that if I unpack it a bit with further explanation, I don’t end up too far from the concept of public service

I started on the conservation track when I discovered that I truly enjoyed working with my hands, and more over, I found satisfaction in the physical progress of in even the basic treatments with which I was provided as a technician. Having found great satisfaction in the labor, I have also come to appreciate the bigger “whys” of conservation treatment: understanding the needs of a community or institution is key to identifying the goals of a conservation project, which is in turn key to planning a successful treatment. In the library community, I have learned that those needs generally revolve around the goal of providing users with long-term or permanent access to information-objects (understanding the appropriate form of that information-object is another whole entry or two).

My own “why” lies in a hope to add to the public good, or at least provide a neutral public service. Dan may call that “people-centric,” but since I have spent my career in large institutions, cordoned off from the public and the “end-user” of my work, I find that the phrase “public-service” better describes why I do what I do.