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This spring we asked several members of the profession long associated
with efforts to promote preventive conservation to sit down together
to discuss the subject. They included Luiz Souza, director of the
Centro de Conservação e Restauração
de Bens Culturais Móveis (CECOR) at the Universidade Federal
de Minas Gerais in Brazil; Colin Pearson, codirector of the Cultural
Heritage Research Center at the University of Canberra in Australia;
and Catherine Antomarchi, director of the Collections Program at
the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration
of Cultural Property (ICCROM) in Rome.
They spoke with Kathleen Dardes, a GCI project specialist, and Jeffrey
Levin, editor of Conservation, The GCI Newsletter.
Kathleen Dardes: Have you seen acceptance of preventive
conservation increase much over the past 10 years in the regions
of the world where you work?
Luiz Souza: Ten years ago the question was "What is
preventive conservation?" Today most conservators, museum personnel,
and even some museum directors have some understanding of it. Today
there is an interest in the field because we have been directing
people's attention to some very specific topics and to broader
concerns as well. Now we have a responsibility to respond to questions
that have been raised during these past 10 years, so that people
won't be frustrated.
Jeffrey Levin: What are some of those questions?
Luiz Souza: Technical questions, like planning building renovations,
finishing off walls. You can't just say to people, "You
have to think about what kind of paint you are going to use,"
because then they say, "I need to know what kind of paint."
Also, 10 years ago preventive conservation was looking at the object.
Then we widened our borders to see objects in their physical context,
the room, the climate, the building. This was the first political
jump. Now I see—and this is very recent—that the next jump is
its context in society. What's the role of that building in
that community?
Kathleen Dardes: Do you mean how is it valued?
Luiz Souza: Yes, how is it valued. How important it is for
the mayor, for example, if he has to choose between dealing with
sewage
plants or museums? The context now is the social environment. If
the museum is in a city, what is its relationship to urban planning
and to the problems of urban life? This is the next important idea
to get across.
Kathleen Dardes: This suggests we should be thinking of
new collaborations.
Luiz Souza: Definitely. Today we have not just conservators
dealing with conservation, but engineers, architects, scientist—all
these people together, open to each others' contributions.
Jeffrey Levin: This underscores preventive conservation's
multidisciplinary nature.
Luiz Souza: Yes, but really practicing it. Not just discourse,
not just talk, but really facing it. It's not easy.
Colin Pearson: In Australia, there are often funds to implement
recommendations relating to preventive conservation. In the last
few years, we've had some new museums and galleries built where,
at the design stage, conservation has been involved with regard
to climate and to light levels. However, it doesn't always
flow through to the final product. But it's definitely there
at the design level. I was talking with one institution recently
in connection with a new cultural center that has been designed
completely using passive climate control. We've been involved
from the beginning, looking at plans, and we're going to be
monitoring the development of the museum over the next few years
to see if it has achieved its objectives. This could become an exemplar
project for other museums.
A major development in the Pacific region is the Pacific Islands
Museums Association, which was established with significant input
from ICCROM and which is now taking over the development of conservation,
museum studies, and museum management and training in the Pacific
area. They have been concentrating on collections care and basic
preventive conservation.
Catherine Antomarchi: One of the regions where I have been
particularly involved is sub-Saharan Africa. There, 10 years ago,
the concept of preventive conservation really did not exist. Collections
were literally disappearing, and professionals were left to themselves
with no training opportunities, no resources. The situation was
such as to require a major effort, and ICCROM responded with the
PREMA 1990 - 2000 program. Today preventive conservation is largely
diffused within most museums of the area. Another very positive
result is that Benin and Kenya took the initiative to create two
structures that will continue regional training and awareness programs
in this field. This has created hope for future development.
Another region where larger acceptance of preventive conservation
can be seen is Europe. In the last 10 years, we saw the development
of national programs such as the Delta Plan in the Netherlands,
and the increase in training opportunities with, for example, the
creation of a special postgraduate diploma on preventive conservation
in France. More generally, we saw the creation of new structures
and new professional profiles linked to preventive conservation.
Perhaps the next most important challenge is to get involved with
the public.
Jeffrey Levin: How would you
define "getting involved with the public?"
Catherine Antomarchi: It is important that the public be
aware of the fragility of heritage—not only of its value but also
that it can deteriorate and disappear. Professionals cannot do miracles
if the public, which should also feel responsible for taking care
of the heritage, does not help them. Public awareness was recently
made a new mandate for ICCROM by its member states. Today, in line
with other institutions, we are exploring various ways to build
close and fruitful relationships between heritage professionals
and the public. We also work to involve the media.
Kathleen Dardes: ICCROM had a project on teamwork for
preventive conservation that included museum directors as part of
the process. That must have been interesting.
Catherine Antomarchi: The idea of the project was that instead
of having individuals, we had museums as participants. Museum directors
were invited to identify the ways in which preventive conservation
was ignored in their institutions. What were the weaknesses in the
system? Was it a problem of climate? Was it a lack of public awareness?
Was it a problem of training or of assigning responsibility within
the staff?
Those directors, back in their museums, had to establish a team—guards,
educators, conservators, administrators—to work out a plan of action
together. What was very interesting is that each museum developed
its own objectives and strategy. The project resulted in a great
variety of products: one museum created a preventive conservation
advisory service, others developed education programs for schools
or videos for museum visitors, or they published basic manuals.
In this continuing project, the challenge is, first, to get the
team to last—which is difficult sometimes—and, second, to increase
the number and variety of museums involved. It is great that the
museums in Belgium, Northern Ireland, Portugal, and France that
participated in the first project are now advisors to the second
set of museums from other countries in the Teamwork 2 project.
Jeffrey Levin: In the regions where you work, do you generally
see museums accepting institutional responsibility for preventive
conservation? Do you see conservators gaining more authority in
various aspects of the museum environment?
Colin Pearson: Now it's actually much more common to
have a position within the museum as a preventive conservator, or
somebody responsible for preventive conservation—which, of course,
includes climate monitoring, storage, transport, exhibition, light
levels, and so on. In the last year, two or three positions have
been created that weren't there before. Of course, preventive
conservation is everybody's responsibility—but to make sure
that it is promoted, you actually employ a person to take on that
responsibility. Because if it's everybody's responsibility,
sometimes nothing happens.
Luiz Souza: One thing that we have to focus on is temporary
exhibitions. With globalization, cultural objects are moving much
more than in the past. Preventive conservation will be key in preserving
these objects. Think about a painting or a polychrome sculpture,
for example, that has never left its original church or museum,
and now there are demands for it to go to Paris or to another city.
In some places—Canada or the United States or Europe—this is more
traditional. But this is becoming more common in our countries.
And preventive conservation awareness is not enough. You really
need to have hands-on, practical work done, because the objects
are moving a lot. This is one aspect that 10 years ago was completely
different.
Catherine Antomarchi: I'd like to make a point about
the increasing movement of objects. If we consider preventive conservation
not as a fix but as real anticipation, then our action goes beyond
preparing staff to pack objects appropriately and to organize their
transport and their unpacking.
Our preventive conservation action should also focus on changing
the attitude of the public—and of decision makers—who are becoming
used to considering cultural heritage as a consumer product.
A role of preventive conservation, perhaps, is to help the public
revalue the heritage that is locally available. Not just the big,
publicized international exhibitions, but perhaps the collections
that have always been here.
Kathleen Dardes: What would you like to see for preventive
conservation 10 years from now?
Luis Souza: I'd like to see different professionals
working together. Because sometimes we preventive conservation professionals
have to play the role of building bridges. Last week, I was working
in one situation where I was the bridge between the engineer and
the architect—a chemist working to make both happy. So I would
be pleased when I am no longer necessary, when people like conservators,
engineers, and architects are really able to talk to one another
without an interpreter.
Kathleen Dardes: What would make that happen?
Luis Souza: Education. Education is something that goes far
beyond training. To say someone is well educated in conservation—this
means that he is able to understand the multidisciplinary aspects
of the problems that we face. This is education. To be trained—I
can train a dog to do something. But I can't educate a dog.
I am already working in this multidisciplinary way. The team I have
includes one civil engineer and electrical engineer, one mechanical
engineer, two architects, one conservator, one scientist, a museum
curator—working together and working for the market. We want other
people to do this. So I would be very happy when people could talk
without the need of interpreters.
Kathleen Dardes: Luiz, you and Colin are directors of
major conservation education programs. Do any of your students see
preventive conservation as a primary career path?
Colin Pearson: What's new is that these positions are
being advertised. Some students who would normally train as conservators—and
then have a specialization within conservation, for example, in
paintings, works on paper, or objects—have decided at some stage
that they prefer to go down the path of being a preventive conservator.
And that is fine. The opportunities aren't as big, and it is
a relatively new approach. And they are not being trained differently
at the moment, because it's such a new development; however,
preventive conservation is given significant coverage in their training
program.
Kathleen Dardes: In Brazil there seems to be a lot of
interest in some schools of museology in preventive conservation.
How do you see this contributing to better care and management for
collections in Brazil?
Luiz Souza: There is a problem with some museology courses
in Brazil. I don't know if this is the rule in other countries,
but I am particularly concerned that the students may leave the
course thinking that they don't need conservators. The museologists
claim they have the necessary training—plus they have the conceptual
approach to the object, which they claim the conservators don't
have. This is not true—and it creates an unnecessary conflict.
The same happens sometimes with architects. Architects are the ones
who are going to manage interventions in a building, because by
law they have the right to do so. Conservators are just seen as
complementary workers or something like that—like the plumber or
the roofer. So for both architecture courses and museology courses,
we have to overcome these professional disputes.
Catherine Antomarchi: You asked, where do we want to see
preventive conservation in 10 years' time? I would be happy
if the public were more aware and actively involved. In Rome this
year, hundreds of thousands of people are going to the same places
to look at the same monuments. So provisions have been made to put
barriers around monuments and isolate them, just like objects in
showcases. Is it a fashion? I don't know. Too often, heritage
is protected by cutting it off from people. But does this make people
more responsible? Respectful? There is nothing new here, but hopefully
in 10 years' time, cutting off will not be the safest solution.
I also hope that conservators are given the recognition they deserve
and that work on historic buildings and heritage is regulated. Also,
we need to work with institutions like churches and temples. How
prepared are they to protect the heritage they steward? We need
to pay attention not only to the heritage that is in public domain
but also to that of smaller communities—Vive la diversité!
Colin Pearson: I hope for more involvement by the community,
in particular by indigenous people, in looking after their own heritage.
In the Pacific, people have always looked after their own heritage.
They don't think about museums as a way of preserving heritage.
They've looked after their own personal collections and the
things that they treasure as a community. They've always done
it, and I would hope that they would be encouraged to keep on doing
it, rather than suddenly putting things into museums—which means
that things have to be looked after in a different way, and often
not nearly as well as they have always been.
Something I would like to see well established 10 years down the
track is passive climate control—to really look at creating stable
environments in museums of all shapes and sizes without using air-conditioning.
Stable environments can be achieved with the right building materials,
the right architecture, and the right design.
Luiz Souza: And the right architect!
Colin Pearson: I agree. But it also has to do with the design
schedule from the client and what the client is insisting on. I've
seen museum designs in which the first line is "all efforts
must be made to use a passive climate control approach." But
the architect takes the easy way out and air-conditions the museum.
So now somebody has to provide the money for air-conditioning and
then, in fact, to pay the high cost of maintaining and running it.
For the architects, it's no longer their problem.
There are so many materials available these days to help stabilize
relative humidity and temperature in a building, and a whole range
of approaches can be taken to provide a reasonably stable climate.
These should be encouraged. Now you might say that we need one room,
one storage area, one gallery that is air-conditioned, because traveling
exhibitions often demand it. Okay, you accommodate that. You've
got one major air-conditioned gallery for traveling exhibitions.
Everything else uses passive climate control.
Jeffrey Levin: It does seem as though a lot has changed
in the practice of preventive conservation in the last 10 years—which
is a relatively short period of time.
Catherine Antomarchi: There really have been big changes.
Heritage has become more and more numerous and encompasses a larger
variety of elements, some of which have only a very tiny part that
is tangible. This increased number and diversity create new challenges
in documentation, storage, care, and intervention choices.
The deterioration factors and risks have multiplied, requiring a
change of approach—more surveying and more management skills. Also,
the conservation field has changed, involving a larger number of
professional profiles and players. Here, the need is to communicate
better, to mediate solutions.
Kathleen Dardes: It seems that although we've recognized
that the definition of heritage is expanding to include tangible
and intangible heritage, we haven't yet assessed what this
means for conservation professionals—and whether we in the profession
are all going in the same direction.
Colin Pearson: At a recent meeting I attended in Nara, Japan,
the whole question of tangible and intangible cultural heritage
came up, and we all agreed that we should not separate them. You
can't start talking about preservation of one without the other.
It is really understanding and accepting the cultural context of
objects and sites and places—and taking them all into account when
you start doing the conservation work.
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