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Posted on behalf of Debora Mayer. The tour of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop was a highlight of the conference. Tamarind was founded in Los Angeles in 1960 as a means to invigorate the art of lithography by training master printers and forging collaborations with artists. Tamarind moved to Albuquerque in 1970, became affiliated with the …

The Emerging Conservation Professionals Network (ECPN) Informational Meeting provided both a great introduction to ECPN and updates on the group’s activities.  Attendees broke out into small discussion groups for second half of the meeting, with ECPN officers facilitating discussions on current initiatives and encouraging feedback and ideas.   At the start of the meeting, the …

Pacific Standard Time is not just a time zone.  It is also the title of a Getty-funded initiative, jointly launched by the Getty Foundation and Getty Research Institute, that enabled more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California to tell the story of the art scene in Los Angeles, California.  The initiative focuses on archives, research, exhibitions, publications, …

When Ana Alba was working at the Hirschorn Museum she undertook a research project on four paintings from Richard Diebenkorn’s “Ocean Park” series.  Her study compared the materials used in each of the paintings and assessed how that tied in to their current condition.  She presented her findings at the 2010 annual meeting in Milwaukee, …

Penschilderijn*, also known as “penpaintings“, involve drawing an image in black ink on top of a substrate prepared with a white lead oil ground.  The technique originated in seventeenth century Holland and was popularized by one of its most skilled practitioners, Willem van de Velde the Elder.  The artist’s painting, Dutch Ships Near the Coast, became …

Israeli-American artist Izhar Patkin’s work combines traditional painting and sculpture with nontraditional techniques.  In 1986 he completed his work, The Black Paintings, a series of twenty-two pleated neoprene panels painted with images based on Jean Genet’s play, “The Blacks: A clown show.”  The 14′ long panels hang side by side to create a 28′ x 22′ …

If you read the previous Great Debate Part I post feel free to skip this introduction and jump down to the meat of the post, the team’s statements below,… Kudos go to Richard McCoy, Conservator of Objects & Variable Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art for instigating and moderating the first Great Debate at …

Kudos go to Richard McCoy, Conservator of Objects & Variable Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art for instigating and moderating the first Great Debate at the AIC 2012 Annual Meeting.  This session consisted of two Oxford-Style Debate sessions of 30 minutes each on a chosen topic.  Each debate session consisted of initial presentations from …

American painter Clyfford Still (1904-1980) was a leading Abstract Expressionist artist.  In November of 2011 the new Clyfford Still Museum opened in Denver, Colorado.  For more than seven years prior to the opening conservators in the ARTEX Conservation Laboratory worked to prepare Still’s paintings for travel and exhibition.  One of those paintings was the oil …

One of this year’s Angel Projects took place at San Miguel Chapel (sometimes also called the San Miguel Mission) in Santa Fe. Avigail Charnov, architectural conservator at Jablonksi Building Conservation and ASG member who organized the project, wanted AIC member’s to get involved and help in the restoration of this important historic structure. The restoration …

Led by Robert Waller, PhD 2012-May-08 Robert Waller currently wears several hats as the President and Senior Risk Analyst of Protect Heritage Corporation based in Ottawa, and his impressive career also includes working as a conservation administrator for the Canadian Museum of Nature as well as an author of numerous conservation publications.  He taught this one-day …

Emily Kaplan (Presenter), Objects Conservator, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian; email: kaplane@si.edu Ellen Howe, Conservator, Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation, Metropolitan Museum of Art; email: ellen.howe@metmuseum.org Ellen Pearlstein, Associate Professor, Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials, UCLA; email: epearl@ucla.edu Judith Levinson, Director of Conservation, Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History; …

PANELISTS Stephanie Hornbeck (Chief Conservator, Smithsonian Haiti Cultural Recovery Project), moderator  and panelist; email: shornbeck@caryatid-conservation.com; web: www.caryatid-conservation.com Viviana Dominguez (Co-Director St. Trinity murals conservation project; Painting Conservator, Haiti Cultural Recovery Center) panelist; email: art.conservation.services@gmail.com; web: www.artconservationla.com Eric Pourchot (Director of Institutional Advancement, AIC), panelist; email: epourchot@conservation-us.org;  web: www.conservation-us.org Junior Norelus (Chief Conservation Technician, Holy Trinity Murals …

I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in a workshop at the beginning of the 2012 AIC Conference with Robert Waller entitled, “Assessing Risks to Your Collections”. I decided to attend this particular course because many museums struggle with creating preservation priorities for their collections and this task is daunting to both small and large …

“Recent Investigations into a Mechanical-Chemical Method for Removing Corrosion from Furniture Brass” Delivered by Delphine Elie-Lefebvre and Mark Anderson, paper by Delphine Elie-Lefebvre, Richard Wolbers, Elena Torok, Mark Anderson & Stephanie Auffret OK, I have to admit that part way into this talk I rather regretted putting my name in to blog about it. It …