In March 2009, the GCI hosted a meeting on the conservation challenges and priorities for action facing historic cities and urban settlements. This meeting brought together international professionals and decision makers and will help guide the GCI's ongoing research into the most critical and urgent needs facing the field of urban conservation.

Learn more about GCI's Historic Cities and Urban Settlements Initiative.

The GCI, in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage and the Amsterdam-based house museum Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder (Our Lord in the Attic), developed a didactic case study that focuses on the impact of visitation on the conservation of the physical fabric of the museum's building and collections, and examined how these affect visitor appreciation of the museum.

Find out more about the results of this case study.

The management and conservation of sites is a long-held interest of the GCI. The Institute is currently analyzing its experiences in this field by evaluating previous GCI projects involving conservation management planning to identify prevailing needs in heritage management, and to develop potential ways in which the GCI can address existing gaps.

Find out more about this new initiative.

This project, a part of the GCI's research on the conservation of modern and contemporary art materials, aims to improve significantly conservators' understanding of the paints used for twentieth- and twenty-first-century outdoor painted works of art and to establish procedures that could be employed to improve their preservation.

Learn more about this project and about GCI's research in modern and contemporary art.

This long-term project aims to gather information on the properties of a wide range of plastics in order to understand why certain plastics are more unstable than others, and to establish protocols that help to slow down their deterioration.

Find out more about this new project.

By John K. McDonald

This book, the first one published in the GCI's popular Conservation and Cultural Heritage series, offers insights into the life of Nefertari; the construction, decoration, and symbolism of royal tombs; and the GCI's role in conserving and stabilizing the tomb's wall paintings.

Originally published in 1996 and currently out of print, it is now available online as a PDF.

This report provides a concise summary of the key points that emerged from the forum discussions, while also providing an overview and documentation of the event.

Read the report online and find out more about GCI's initiative for Built Heritage in Southeast Asia.

Access online the bibliography prepared for the GCI project Injection Grouts for the Conservation of Architectural Surfaces.

Learn more about this project.

Recently acquired titles in the Conservation Collection in the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute are available to readers on site at the Getty Center. Some materials are available through your library's interlibrary loan service.

Access the list of titles from the GCI Information Center Page.