Preventive Conservation

Series of courses on the management of the environmental conditions under which collections are housed and used

Project Details

About

Goal

Promoting preventive conservation has been a major objective of the Conservation Institute's training and education efforts. Preventive Conservation courses aimed to give conservators, collection managers, and conservation educators an opportunity to update their skills and knowledge in technical aspects of this topic, while also considering the managerial and political skills necessary to integrate better collection practices within cultural institutions.

Outcomes

  • In 1990 the Conservation Institute’s first course in a series entitled Preventive Conservation: Museum Collections and Their Environment, which then ran annually until 1995, recreated the types of management situations conservators would encounter in real life.
  • The course was offered in London several years later in partnership with the Conservation Unit of the Museums and Galleries Commission, focusing on adapted and new case studies and exercises designed to reflect the particular situations likely to be confronted by the European participants.
  • In 1995 the course was adapted further and offered in Oaxaca, Mexico, as Conservación preventiva: Colecciones del museo y su medio ambiente. The new strategy that emerged focused on building capacity of existing training institutions through partnerships, while sharing technical information, expertise, and didactic resources produced over the years.

Background

In 1990 the Conservation Institute offered its first course in a series entitled Preventive Conservation: Museum Collections and Their Environment, which ran annually until 1995.

The course design reflected the need for conservators in museums to assume a stronger, more managerial role. In addition to technical information on the museum environment, the course included strategies for interdisciplinary communication, collaboration, negotiation, and influence, giving conservation professionals the knowledge, skills, and confidence to interact with institutional decision-makers. The course was a departure from more technically oriented courses, instead recreating the types of management situations conservators would encounter in real life.

Partners

The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, UK; Winterthur-University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation