Conservation Institute Research Articles

Improving Environmental Conditions in the Tomb of Tutankhamen

ABSTRACT The tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt, one of the major attractions of the World Heritage Site of Ancient Thebes and its Necropolis on the West Bank of modern day Luxor, is today a destination for mass tourism. Visitors to the tomb increase relative humidity, elevate carbon dioxide levels, and encourage natural ventilation which facilitates entry of dust into the tomb. These conditions negatively impact the wall paintings and remaining artifacts in the tomb and create an uncomfortable environment for visitors. The deposition of dust inside the tomb collects on uneven wall painting surfaces, obscures their legibility and necessitates cycles of cleaning, which in turn leads to further damage. Developing environmental management strategies in the tomb to counter the effects of visitors and mitigate dust entry is an important component of the collaborative project between the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities (MoA) to conserve the tomb. These included implementation of a filtered-air supply and exhaust ventilation system to stabilize the interior microclimate and reduce dust in order to improve visitor comfort and contribute to the long-term preservation of the tomb.

Preventive Conservation on Demand: Developing Tools and Learning Resources for the Next Generation of Collections Professionals

ABSTRACT The modern learning environment is evolving at a rapid pace. Technology can help developers of preventive conservation tools and learning resources for collections professionals to increase their impact and reach. However, it is crucial to keep the needs of users, and gaps in skills and knowledge at the forefront. This article examines preventive conservation tools and resources developed by the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) and ICCROM (International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) over the past 30 years. In light of the results from a recent survey and research in the learning and development field, a set of orientations for future tool development are highlighted; these tools must be: need driven, user centered, emulating everyday experiences, social and informal, concise, mobile friendly, curated and open access.

Managing Environments for Collections: The Impact of International Loans on Sustainable Climate Strategies

ABSTRACT Exhibitions in general and loans in particular still appear to be driving median and relatively tight climatic parameters for collection environments. This paper explores the impact of international loans on the adaptation of more sustainable climate control strategies. By offering a description of the complexities and (un)certainties associated with international loan policies that moves beyond the climate parameters, it explores why a more pragmatic approach to environmental control strategies is impeded. It describes how the Getty Conservation Institute’s Managing Collection Environments initiative is addressing this impasse and gives some suggestions for moving the debate forward.

Monitoring Acoustic Emission in an Epidemiological Pilot Study of a Collection of Wooden Objects

ABSTRACT This experimental program, implemented by the Managing Collection Environment Initiative at the Getty Conservation Institute, has provided data about the response of historic objects to changes in relative humidity (RH). Alongside other less sensitive documentation techniques (visual observation, physical measurements, photography, and 3D scanning), acoustic emission (AE) was monitored for six historic, museum-like wooden objects exposed to gradually increasing RH variations. Quantitative calibration of AE sensors and an anti-correlation measuring scheme to reduce environmental noise allowed the AE system to effectively trace micro-damage development caused by environmentally induced stress. Using an epidemiological approach, with respect to sample selection and experimental protocol, the obtained results can be used to explore the acceptable range of climate fluctuations for museum collections. The study’s well-controlled environmental protocol also allowed for the examination of the concept of ‘proofed fluctuation’ by the analysis of object response to reoccurring conditions.

The Cost-effectiveness of Preventive Conservation Actions

ABSTRACT Two historic house museums, a municipal art gallery, and a provincial archive have had comprehensive risk and option assessments done by the Canadian Conservation Institute. For each institution, an average of 60 options addressing 40 risks was analyzed in terms of risk reduction, cost, and cost-effectiveness. A meta-analysis found that cost-effectiveness follows a strong economy of scale within each institution. By estimating valuation of each collection, cost-effectiveness was converted into benefit–cost ratio of dollar spent per dollar value saved and was found not to follow an economy of scale between small and large institutions. Optimization software was applied to see if precise maximization of risk reduction gave significantly different recommendations than those in the original reports which relied on the Pareto rule of addressing the largest risks first.

Collections Access and Custom Storage Solutions at the Smithsonian’s Museum Support Center

The National Museum of Natural History is committed to long-term stewardship of collections and to supporting their use by scientists and the general public. This stewardship role is unique among other US natural history museums. As the nation’s natural history museum, the National Museum of Natural History has a mandated commitment to conserve and protect its collections in a manner that will assure their continued accessibility by future generations and maintain the National Museum of Natural History mission. A significant number of objects from the National Museum of Natural History are permanently stored at the Museum Support Center in Suitland, MD. This space not only includes collections from the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), but also the Museum Conservation Institute (MCI), the National Museum of American History (NMAH), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (HMSG), the Freer Sackler Gallery (FSG) and the National Museum of African Art (AfA) as well as several other museums. In terms of collections access and use, the museum support center has a team, Collections Support Services (CSS), dedicated to collections’ long-term care and preservation. Collections Support Services provides access and support for the 730,000 square feet of collections housed at MSC. CSS staff perform a variety of technical and labor tasks related to the cleaning, preparation, packing, transport, unpacking, and permanent storage of objects and specimens. This includes building custom aluminum pallets for oversized objects and whale skull cradles. Moreover, while the use of palletized storage is not a new concept in museum storage, the construction of Pod 4 at the Museum Support Center in Suitland, MD posed some unique challenges for the permanent storage of oversized collections. Pod 4 provides continuous rows of 2', 4' and 8' deep cantilevered open racking from floor to ceiling (22 feet high), and allows palletized objects to be moved and placed in the racking via forklift. Traditional wooden pallets are unacceptable by archival standards, as they are acidic by nature, bulky, heavy, not fire-retardant, and prone to pest infestation. Collections Support Services circumvented these issues by establishing an innovative system of customized aluminum pallets for collections’ long-term care and preservation. These pallets are durable and lightweight, and must pass several quality control tests that include dropping and jarring. They are also designed with multiple functions in mind for ease of use, storage, transport, and maintenance.

Evaluating resilience for the management of social–ecological production landscapes and seascapes in Lefke Region of North Cyprus through adaptive comanagement

The purpose of this study is to evaluate resilience for the management of social–ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS) in Lefke Region of North Cyprus through adaptive comanagement (ACM). To this end, the following key attributes of ACM within the context of resilient landscape management were evaluated: diversity of social learning approaches, stakeholders and social networks, the role of traditional knowledge in management, effectiveness of the existing institutions for landscape conservation and management and potential policy responses for building and strengthening the landscape resilience. The method of the study comprised: development of an ACM evaluation framework for the SEPLS, exploration of the potential indicators for assessing the resilience, data collection with the semi-structured interviews and data evaluation. The collected data were evaluated based on a 1–5 Likert scale. The result of the evaluation revealed that the current governance of the SEPLS is far from being successful. The average relative value of the key attributes of the resilience for the management of the SEPLS seems to change from moderate to a very low degree. However, it is argued that the mechanism of ACM can be built particularly based on collaboration and power sharing, among the key stakeholders operating at different levels. Finally, a set of policy-oriented responses were recommended to contribute to the resilient landscape management in the region. It is expected that the results of this study can help policy makers, resource and landscape planners to establish and strengthen the resilient landscape management in Lefke Region and elsewhere.

Depósito Legal en línea: desafíos para su desarrollo en España Legal

The study aims to show the challenges facing by conservative institutions and the strategies that must be proposed to carry out the preservation of the cultural heritage that is produced in an intangible way in the Spanish territory. The need to preserve the documents currently produced in an intangible way has caused a change in the process of management of the Legal Deposit so that custody institutions have to face new challenges in order to carry out the necessary development in Spain regarding legislation from the Royal Decree 635/2015 of 10 July that comes to develop Law 23/2011 of Legal Deposit.

“We Hold It in Trust”: Global Wildlife Conservation, Africanization, and the End of Empire

AbstractIn the early 1960s, the College of African Wildlife Management opened in northern Tanzania. The institution was designed to lessen the impact of decolonization by training the first generation of African wildlife wardens in the tradition of their European predecessors. The product of racialized narratives about African violence and the growth of international conservation organizations, the college could be understood as a straightforward neocolonial institution designed to perpetuate British and western influence over land and animals in East Africa. In contrast, this paper pays close attention to the circumstances and context of the college's founding, the debates over funding and control, and its institutional culture. These aspects all suggest that African governments sought to use the college as a vehicle for pursuing the Africanization of the civil service and for formalizing a contractual relationship with international organizations about mutual obligations not only to Tanzania's wildlife sector but also the country's political economy. This focus on a conservation institution created in the early days of independence demonstrates that the work of decolonization continued after independence, and that expatriate personnel and culture remained embedded in new nations, informing our narratives of decolonization, conservation, and nationalism.

Investigation of cellulose nitrate and cellulose acetate plastics in museum collections using ion chromatography and size exclusion chromatography

Abstract One of the goals of the Preservation of Plastics Project at the Getty Conservation Institute is to investigate preventative and conservation strategies for objects made of cellulose ester plastics. To achieve this goal, several analytical protocols were developed and applied to cellulose ester sculptures, design art objects and reference materials. Ion chromatography, size exclusion chromatography, and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry were employed to measure nitric and acetic acids, molecular weight and plasticizer content. The degree of substitution and degree of polymerization for cellulose ester plastics were determined and compared to condition surveys. Cellulose nitrate sculptures by Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner, combs from the Harald Szeemann archival collection of the Getty Research Institute, and cellulose acetate sculptures by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Marcel Duchamp were included in this study.

Developing a GIS of Hazards for Canadian Cultural Institutions

The Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) has developed a Geographic Information System (GIS) of hazards for Canadian cultural heritage institutions. The greatly increased access to open data is changing how advisory bodies like the CCI and the public can access and share information. For the purpose of investigating how a GIS approach can assist the CCI with its mandate to improve the preservation of collections, a map layer of cultural heritage institutions across Canada has been assembled and continues to be upgraded for accuracy, inclusion and detail (Fig. 1). This was combined with a collation of hazard layers; a partial list includes: seismic risk, notably expectations of earthquake severity tied to improvements in the national building code, tsunami exposure, wildfire data, hurricane, tornado, lightning density, pest distribution, and energy use indicators such as heating degree days and climate norm data. The platform allows examination of expectations around climate change driven risks such as sea-level rise, storm-incursions, permafrost melt. The GIS approach will also allow reassessments around expected changes to flood risk maps issued by jurisdictions, as well as Statistics Canada layers on population related factors such as changes in numbers of local populations, income and demographic shifts which can be stressors or opportunities. Sources have been drawn from federal, provincial, municipal, and academic evaluations of hazards, which now are more commonly published as GIS products. Mapping Canadian heritage institution's within a GIS improves our ability to: visualise and interpret to clients the relative magnitude of their local hazards, make ties to more refined local analyses, and show adjacencies to mapped historical events. From a national perspective the GIS can generate profiles of aggregated institutional exposure to the hazards, and more readily identify sub-populations of institutions for which particular risks would rank higher or lower among their concerns. This improves CCI's preventive conservation advisory service's perspective on mappable risks for any institution we deal with as clients. Ultimately, through federal initiatives in open data, it is our intention that client groups can look at the GIS for the purpose of educating themselves on hazards they would want to prepare for.

Recent Efforts in Conserving 20th-Century Heritage: The Getty Conservation Institute\u2019s Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative

Over the last 25 years the conservation of 20th-century heritage has developed into a distinct area of practice, catalysed by the efforts of dedicated international and local interest groups and the forward thinking of a number of government and inter-government organisations who identified, protected and developed approaches to its care. Much has been achieved, but more work is needed to address many of the distinct challenges to conserving the heritage of the 20th century. In 2011, the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) launched its Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative (CMAI), which seeks to respond to the outstanding current challenges and contribute to advancing practice in this emerging area of conservation. It began with a survey of the field to identify where existing efforts could be best supported and enhanced, or where knowledge gaps could be potentially filled. In response the GCI built a comprehensive program to meet these identified needs and five years later, a number of activities and projects are underway. These include a series of publications, a training program, historical and technical research and two field projects at Louis Kahn’s Salk Biological Institute (1965) and the house of Ray and Charles Eames (1949), both in California. This paper outlines current GCI efforts, reports on initial outcomes and describes forthcoming activities.

Review of David Myers, Stacie Nicole Smith, and Gail Ostergren, eds., Consensus Building, Negotiation, and Conflict Resolution for Heritage Place Management. 210 pp. Getty Conservation Institute, 2016

Review of David Myers, Stacie Nicole Smith, and Gail Ostergren, eds., Consensus Building, Negotiation, and Conflict Resolution for Heritage Place Management. 210 pp. Getty Conservation Institute, 2016

Updating the habitat conservation institution by prioritizing important connectivity and resilience providers outside

Maintaining biodiversity is vital for ecological processes. Yet, present static protected areas seem to be inefficient in biodiversity conservation. In this study, we use a set of indicators to evaluate topological features, landscape connectivity and resilience of the current habitat conservation institution, and apply the node addition method to prioritize habitats that play roles in improving connectivity and resilience outside the protected areas. Wanzhou District, Chongqing (SW China) is selected as the study area as it is a biodiversity hotspot in Three Gorges Reservoir Area. The results show that, in current conservation institution, average clustering coefficient and average weighted degree rise with the increasing dispersal distance of species; besides, landscape connectivity is rather low, while long dispersers have larger connectivity degree and resilience compared with short ones. Furthermore, how those patches could function as connectivity providers in different aspects (e.g. stepping-stone effect) is also presented by partitioning the connectivity indicator into three parts. However, it is interesting to find that, patches with good performance in improving connectivity may not have the equal efficiency in enhancing resilience, and the possible reasons are elaborately discussed. Prioritized patches are suggested to be placed under protection, and to update the habitat conservation institution. Our indicators and method can extend the knowledge of the importance of linking protected areas with surrounding habitats, and it can serve as a supporting tool for conservation planning or land use planning.

Saving Species, One Individual at a Time

The role of zoo veterinarians has changed significantly in the last several decades, reflecting and revealing broader transformations in zoo culture, especially among North American accredited zoos. This article draws on several interviews with prominent zoo vets, as well as on regulations that pertain to their work, to highlight their current position at the nexus of animal health and welfare, on the one hand, and of species conservation, on the other hand. The transformation of zoos into conservation institutions in particular has resulted in the vets’ novel focus on the sustainability of populations and their intensified involvement in in situ wildlife management. The article will explore the everyday negotiations that zoo vets must undertake to balance between caring for the individual animal’s medical needs and for the long-term survival of her population and species. Despite the central role of the zoo vet in this institutional arena, very little has been written about this figure from a scholarly perspective. The article concludes with a call for further explorations in this direction.

PERAN SERTA MASYARAKAT DALAM PENGEMBANGAN WAE REBO SEBAGAI SEBUAH DESTINASI PARIWISATA BERBASIS MASYARAKAT DI NUSA TENGGARA TIMUR

Wae Rebo is a unique traditional village, known as a famous cone shape house architecture. In Manggarai language, the house is known as Mbaru Niang, it has been discovered in 1920. Mbaru Niang has seven buildings with the different names; they are Niang Gendang, Niang Gena Mandok, Niang Gena Jekong, Niang Gena Ndorom, Niang Gena Jintam, and Niang Gena Maro. They were built in sphere around an altar with the circle shape, called Compang. The people of Wae Rebo considered Compang as a sacred thing. Wae Rebo also has another kinds of culture like Penti ceremony and Caci dance. Not only rich of the cultures, but they also rich of rich potentials of nature such as range of mountain forest, and various kinds of birds like Gagak Flores (Corvusflorensis) and Celepuk Flores (Otusalfredi). They are known as the endemic species of Flores Island. Community Based Tourism (CBT) is a tourism concept used in Wae Rebo tourism development. CBT concept in Wae Rebo tourism was applied from the beginning like planning, implementation, and controlling done by society. To protect the culture, people of Wae Rebo insisted a society organization named Cultural Conservation Institute of Wae Rebo and supported by social organization. The motto of the Cultural Conservation Institute is “Mohe Wae Rebo” means “Preserve Wae Rebo”.

Investigation of soil water infiltration at a scale of individual earthworm channels

This study focused on the hydraulic efficiency of vertical earthworm channels (henceforth referred to as macropores or channels). The parameters selected for investigation were the rate of change in hydraulic soil conductivity in the channel walls due to compaction, the rate of this compaction, and the wall stability against running and stagnant water. We preferentially tested the variants for infiltration of water flowing from the soil horizons against gravity (e.g. from the level of installation of tile and controlled drainage). The details of influx and infiltration processes were examined both in the field and more thoroughly in the laboratory using an accurate continuous infiltrometer constructed at the Research Institute for Soil and Water Conservation (RISWC), Czech Republic. Both direct measurements and indirect evidence consisted of tests of individual natural macropores directly in the field, as well as tests of intact collected samples and artificial samples with variants of natural, artificially extruded, and cut out tubular macropores. We studied the processes occurring in macropores with diameters of ca. 5 mm and larger. In these particular conditions, we identified the apparent saturated hydraulic conductivity (K<sub>s</sub>') of the soil horizons (including macropore-mediated vertical surface infiltration and preferential flow to soil followed by radial infiltration) most frequent as K<sub>i</sub> (apparent saturated hydraulic conductivity affected by preferential flow or influx of water) from 50 to 200 cm/h. In some cases, saturated hydraulic conductivity of earthworm channel walls (K<sub>sw</sub>) was reduced in the order of tens of percent compared with matrix K<sub>s</sub>. The increase of bulk density of soil (ρ<sub>d</sub>) in the macropore vicinity reached the maximum of 25%. The intensity of macropore wall erosion (i<sub>er</sub>) ranged from 0 to 70 mg/min/dm<sup>2</sup>.

Reflections on the psychological basis for suboptimal environmental practices in conservation

Jonathan Ashley-Smith's ‘Let's be Honest’ presentation and paper from the 1994 International Institute for Conservation (IIC) conference on preventive conservation is the starting point for this article which considers the evolution of environmental standards to ask whether it is technological or psychological factors that have initiated their greatest change. It examines the implications of categorising types of damage for decision-making and asks whether understanding damage as a process rather than an outcome contributes to a cautionary approach to environmental standards in conservation. The article considers the possible psychological justifications used by those advocating standards for collections and asks whether these may lead to behaviour which is ineffective or ethically compromised. Challenging questions are then asked of the profession about what it cannot do, does not understand, and where it fails. The article concludes that although conservation has made progress in understanding materials and their properties to inform the implementation of environmental standards, it has made significantly less progress in understanding how and why decision-makers introduce and apply standards.

The Historic Senate Vote of 16 September 1991: Looking Back and Looking Forward Twenty-Five Years After

On 16 September 1999 the Philippine Senate voted against a proposed treaty to extend the presence of United States military bases in the Philippines for another ten years. As an insider in the Senate from 1987 to 1995, I reflect on the significance of this historic vote, which signified victory for the nationalist movement. How was it possible for a traditionally conservative and pro-US institution like the Philippine Senate to brave American displeasure by rejecting treaty extension? I address this question from the perspective of the broad antinuclear and anti-bases movement in the Philippines, from which a step-by-step strategy was implemented. Keywords: Senate • treaty • ratification • military bases • sovereignty

An Art Conservation Perspective: Saving the African Elephant and Ivory Cultural Heritage

AbstractA surge in African elephant poaching to supply global demand for ivory led the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to revise policies and regulations protecting African elephants. In 2014, commercial import of antique ivory was banned in compliance with the 1989 African Elephant Conservation Act, and non‐commercial import was restricted. In 2016, the USFWS revised other regulations regarding interstate commerce, export, and foreign commerce. For museums, confusion and uncertainty over interpretation of the regulations led to re‐examination of acquisitions and loan policies. In 2015, the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) appointed a working group to evaluate the impact on conservators working with ivory and to make recommendations for changes to reflect preservation concerns before the proposed regulations were to go into effect in 2016. This article discusses the conservator's role working with ivory artifacts, reviews preservation issues for museums raised by the regulations, and shares the AIC working group's recommendations for preserving ivory artifacts and the African elephant.