Workshops

• Live Session Dates: May 3 and May 5 at 12-2pm Eastern Time
• Instructor: Jennifer McGlinchey Sexton
• Details: $99 registration fee; maximum 30 participants

This workshop will provide instruction and facilitate discussion about building an imaging workflow for conservation. Imaging workflows are an important part of conservation documentation because they provide consistency, require critical evaluation of goals, help new employees understand practices of a lab, and save time. Designing a workflow can be cumbersome and overwhelming. This workshop aims to simplify the structure of a workflow by providing building blocks that allow participants to tailor the structure to their needs and equipment. With a focus on treatment photography, discussion and lecture will emphasize object safety, repeatability, accuracy, and flexibility.

Lecture and case-studies will give participants the basic structure and outline of an imaging workflow. Between the two sessions, participants will work independently or in groups to build a workflow for their unique equipment, space, and goals. Discussion of individual workflows in the second session will deepen participants' understanding of diverse imaging scenarios and equipment.

This workshop is appropriate for all specialties and levels of experience. Individuals tasked with imaging of collections will benefit most, including emerging and established conservation professionals, pre-program students, and conservation photographers in institutions or private practice. Previous experience with photography of collections is suggested. Participants should come to the workshop with a list of current equipment used, descriptions and photographs of imaging spaces, and be prepared to discuss the goals of imaging in their work.

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• Live Session Dates: May 3 and May 5 at 3-5pm Eastern Time
  Instructors: Rachael Perkins Arenstein, Patrick Kelley
• Details: $99 registration fee; maximum 50 participants

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) now considered an essential component of a well-rounded preventive care policy to prevent insects and vertebrate pests from causing irreversible damage to cultural heritage collections. This workshop will introduce participants to multiple aspects of sound IPM policy and procedures. After covering ideas for reducing the likelihood of infestation, the focus of the workshop will be on identifying the most damaging museum pests and understanding treatment options for infested items. The workshop is designed for anyone needing an intro to the topic or wanting to refresh basic IPM knowledge. Co-taught by an entymologist/pest management professional and a conservator, this workshop is appropriate for a range of museum, library professionals including conservators, facility staff, collection managers, registrars, librarians and archivists at museums, libraries and archivists.

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• Live Session Dates: May 4 and May 6 at 12-2pm Eastern Time
• Instructors: Carol Butler, Robert Huxley, Christiane Quaisser
• Details: $99 registration fee; maximum 30 participants

This workshop will help managers (new and established) with responsibility for collections to adopt an evidence-based approach to planning, executing and achieving their goals. The instructors will share their management experience, tools, and methodologies with participants through role-play and presentations to help them ask the right questions when planning a project or make improvements to day-to-day collections work. Participants step through the elements of a strategic plan from gathering and interpreting supporting data to creating an action plan, focusing along the way on key areas such as data gathering and interpretation and maximizing staff resources.

This workshop brings the voices and the strategic approaches of three experts who have managed some of the largest and most diverse natural history collections in the world to participants seeking insight into strategic decision making beyond the typical rule book. While the primary audience for this workshop is those from a collections management background, the majority of the content will be of value to conservators with management responsibilities and those entering the sector from other disciplines or research background. It is about asking the right questions, not necessarily knowing all the answers.

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• Live Session Dates: May 4 and May 6 at 3-5pm Eastern Time
• Instructors: Tatiana Cole, Allison Holcomb
• Details: $99 registration fee; maximum 30 participants

Archives often contain crucial documentation which supports the understanding and context of museum collections. Caring for these collections appropriately is important to long-term access and maintenance but is often complicated by the wide variety of needs from different types of materials. Identifying media and choosing the right solutions for housing can help prevent physical and chemical damage, as well as maintain organization and facilitate handling.

This workshop will allow participants to identify archival materials and plan for long-term preservation. The instructors will provide an overview of preservation threats to different types of archival collections with emphasis on identifying media and preventing deterioration and loss of information. Oversized materials, photo-reproductions such as blueprints and diazotypes, a variety of office copying techniques, and photographic media will be discussed.

This workshop will incorporate current standards and best practices to help collection managers, emerging conservation professionals, and other museum professionals master identification, preventive conservation, and housing for archival materials.

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• Live Session Date: May 7 at 12-2pm Eastern Time
• Instructors: Eugenie Milroy, Fran Ritchie
  Details: $69 registration fee; maximum 30 participants

Discretely and effectively labeling and marking museum collections with the catalog number (and/or other details) prevents one of the leading risk factors to collections: disassociation of objects. Museum collections must be legibly labeled for the purposes of keeping track of the physical location as well associated data and provenance specific to that object. If the label is not legible, if it is lost or damaged, or if it fails in any way, the consequences can be catastrophic and disheartening - at best, the number is visually distracting to the museum visitor and detracts from the value of the object, and at worst the object is rendered useless to scientific or historical study.

This workshop will prepare participants for the decision-making process involved when choosing among the variety of techniques available to label complex collections. Instructors will begin with an overview of the standard materials used for labeling and marking, and how to choose which method would be most appropriate, based on the object substrate (such as organic, inorganic, over-sized, micro, and wet specimens). Participants will be mailed kits with course materials that will allow them to then test the adhesive and mechanical techniques on different objects, with instructors on hand virtually to offer advice and tips for success in the moment. The workshop will conclude with a group discussion on observations and questions.

This workshop is geared towards natural history museum professionals and emerging conservation professionals who have not had labeling and marking experience – a valuable but often overlooked aspect of conservation training. Cost of materials is included in registration fee. Registration will close on March 19 to allow for supplies to be ordered and sent to participants.

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• Live Session Dates: June 7 and June 11 at 12-2pm Eastern Time
• Instructors: Louise Lawson, Helia Marcal
• Details: $99 registration fee; maximum 30 participants
  

This workshop will draw on the practice of conservation developed at Tate to explore the material possibilities afforded by the care of performance art. Instructors will focus on their documentation processes to reflect on how the situatedness of the museum frames the documentation that is produced and the purposes of said documents. Participants will participate in exercises of re-situating practices, where forms of data collection and analysis will be framed through case-studies and discussion, using key tools developed, as well as how to adapt these tools and develop bespoke strategies for their own institutions.

Documenting performance art seems to be a conundrum that is particularly hard to resolve. Tate started to collect this form of artistic practice in 2005 and has since acquired over 25 performance artworks that range from simple instruction-based works to performances that depend on bodily and material engagements that are hard to understand and even harder to capture. With the aim of safeguarding a whole collection to generations to come, the museum’s structure is keen to create categories and other processes of standardization. However, performance art often challenges those standards and categories. What are the affordances of the museum to the documentation of performance art? And how can we re-situate museum practices to accommodate non-conforming bodies of practice?  This workshop will provide participants with an understanding of the challenges that performance art poses to conservation professionals and recognize how performance art plays with notions of care, authenticity, sameness, and transformation.

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• Dates: June 14 and June 18 at 3-5pm Eastern Time
• Instructors: Douglas Nishimura, Scott Williams
• Details: $99 registration fee; maximum 50 participants

This workshop is designed to provide an in-depth discussion on the unique chemical properties and vulnerabilities of silver image material. This information will be of great interest and use to anyone involved in the appreciation and preservation of silver-based photographic materials. The workshop will include two complimentary sessions on the chemistry of silver image formation and silver image deterioration. Participants with a general understanding of chemistry will be anticipated, but not required.

Since its inception, photographic images were created using a variety of different materials, substrates and processes. Most of these photographic evolutionary steps were founded on image capture using silver chemistry. This first session will be presented by Scott Williams, professor at the School of Chemistry and Materials Science at Rochester Institute of Technology.  It follows the photographer’s workflow from image capture to preservation through the lens of a chemist. Connections will be made between the chemistry of each process step as the photographer would practice and observe them; thereby, closing an important loop that bridges photographer with chemist, and chemist with photographer. Emphasis will be on the main image making process steps: substrate sensitization to light using silver halide, the light capture process at the silver halide grain level, exposure effects, image development, and ending with the processes that maintain a silver photographic image over time. This two-hour session is intended as a companion to the online series of self-study modules presented by the FAIC Collaborative Workshops in Photograph Conservation on Photographic Chemistry for Preservation, offering a broad overview of this fascinating topic and providing invaluable face-to-face time with instructor, Scott Williams. It is suggested that participants complete the series of online lectures prior to the workshop. 

The second session will be presented by Douglas Nishimura, Research Scientist at Rochester Institute of Technology, who will discuss mechanisms involved in silver image deterioration and likely causes in collections. Typically, silver image deterioration is divided into two general causes: poor processing and oxidation from environmental sources. The idea that all silver image deterioration is caused by poor processing has its roots in the severe fading of photographs in the 19th century that led to the formation of the Fading Committee of 1855. By the 1970s and 80s it was commonly believed that if a silver photograph was deteriorating then it must have been improperly processed. However, James Reilly, former Director of the Image Permanence Institute, noted that examples of poor processing in collections weren’t very common. Certainly, potential external causes of silver deterioration are numerous. The problem of silver image deterioration is very complex. As noted by former Kodak silver stability expert, Art Hertz, image silver must be surrounded by silver ions in equilibrium so that oxidation of image silver can be caused by reduction of the surrounding silver ions.

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