AIC's 42nd Annual Meeting

This workshop covers low-tech solutions, stand-alone dataloggers and wireless monitoring systems. The program introduces a number of products that have found wide acceptance in the museum community and give participants an opportunity to have hands-on time with the units and their software. Tips on establishing and maintaining a monitoring program and the equipment will also be covered. Participants will be introduced to the various elements of an environmental monitoring program, understand how devices can be deployed effectively, learn how to maintain equipment and data, and how to assess what equipment is appropriate for their particular monitoring requirements, budget, and technological resources.

Effective stewardship does not simply happen - it must be thoughtfully planned. Every conservator should know how to develop and implement a preservation plan. An effective plan helps to optimize financial and staff resources and systematically approach preventive conservation issues and establish treatment priorities. Workshop participants will receive guidance to develop strategic, 3 to 5 year preservation plans for their collections or for institutions with which they consult. Through lecture, group activities, and discussion, workshop participants will learn about methods for assessing needs, the components of an effective plan, tools for prioritizing activities, how to establish realistic benchmarks, and how to advocate for preservation planning within their organization or with their clients. Participants will also be provided with templates for creating their own plans.

This one-day intensive course offers an overview of the principles of inpainting, as well as tips and techniques from the instructor’s long history of successful inpainting projects. No hands-on component is included, but the illustrated talk will provide a broad overview of this complicated topic, as well as details critical for various points of the compensation process. Keys to problem solving will be offered to help conservators find appropriate and successful treatment solutions for differing inpainting situations. A multi-disciplinary viewpoint will be emphasized. Conservators from diverse specializations and backgrounds - paintings, objects, paper, etc.; traditional and/or modern - are invited to interact, sharing their knowledge and experiences, favorable and otherwise, with colleagues.

This workshop will provide a comprehensive overview of computation photography and its application to conservation documentation and research. The session will offer an intensive introduction to and an update on the technologies, software, photographic equipment, and methods for reflectance transformation imaging (RTI), algorithmic rendering (AR), and photogrammetry. The workshop will include lectures, demonstrations of photographic image capture for all techniques, discussions of equipment and set ups, and ample opportunity for questions. The program is suitable for those new to computational photography who as well as those who are interested in the latest software updates, research, and future development plans.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This workshop will be conducted at Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI, 2325 3rd Street, Suite 323), which is a 12 minute Muni T light-rail line ride from the Embarcadero Muni station (in front of the conference hotel) to the 20th Street station. Directions will be provided upon registration.

Headline speaker Monona Rossol will focus on health and safety in the conservation studio. Monona is a specialist in the field who has trained art conservation workers throughout the museum world. Her topics will include “Why a green studio might not be a safe studio, understanding air quality standards, selecting safer chemicals scientifically, and proper ventilation systems on a budget.” These informal and informative presentations will include plenty of time for questions and answers.

Panel discussion on Greening your Business: AIC Sustainability Committee Chair Betsey Haude (Senior Paper Conservator, Library of Congress) will present an overview of the committee’s work and Sarah Nunberg (Objects Conservation Studio LLC, Brooklyn, NY) will speak on sustainable practices in the conservation studio. Wendy Yeung will discuss the San Francisco Green Business Program, and Anna Jaeger of Caravan Studio, San Francisco, will cover web/computer related green business administration.

Greening Tips Session: Workshop participants will be invited to share ways in which they “green” their conservation businesses. Two participants in the Greening Tips Session will be selected by our panelists to win free registration for the workshop.

Digital images have become a crucial component of conservation documentation, analysis and collections management. Museum curators and collections managers, emerging conservators and experienced professionals, and photographers providing cultural heritage services are all beginning to need tools and strategies to handle their growing collections of digital photographs.

With a single cultural heritage artifact requiring anywhere from one to hundreds of digital images, managing collections of these assets can get overwhelming quickly. And when the documentation itself needs to be documented, the only practical solution for expanding collections is to learn to make the images document themselves.

The AIC Guide to Digital Photography and Conservation Documentation recommends the use of Adobe® Photoshop Lightroom™ to manage these rapidly-growing libraries of images. Its automation and batch processing tools can ensure that collections of any size can be managed with ease. It is inexpensive and can be easily learned and used by photographers, conservators, curators and their interns.

In this workshop, participants will become familiar at a practical level with the tools and workflows in Lightroom, and the opportunities it provides to eliminate much of the struggle and tedium of managing image collections of any size. Participants will examine the key workflows, have questions answered, and receive a substantial handout for reference.

Join Lightroom power user Mike Jennings of Kept Art Restoration and Adobe's Group Product Manager Tom Hogarty, and learn:

• how to establish and use a metadata tagging strategy that survives rapid growth
• new tools that have become available since the AIC book was published
• perform color and perspective corrections commonly required in conservation documentation
• apply corrections to dozens of images in one step retrieve sets of related images instantly without knowing what the filenames are or even what folder they're in 
• automatically tag images with necessary data as they are captured
• avoid common, frustrating pitfalls and keep your workflow running smoothly
• make the image document itself!

Dealing with mold is nearly always part of disaster response. In addition to the direct impacts of floods and storm-driven rains, collections can become wet from fire suppression efforts or exposure to weather from earthquake or wind damage.  Especially when structural damage is significant, it may be many days before access to collections is possible, and resultant extended power outages may allow mold growth. This workshop will draw from the experiences of AIC-CERT responses in New York, Haiti, Galveston, and Midwest floods to examine effective techniques for treating mold outbreaks.

Whether you are using hazardous chemicals or working with mold-infested artifacts after a disaster, you need to be sure you are protected by the right equipment. The lecture meets the annual training requirement mandated by OSHA, while the fit testing meets the annual testing requirement. Attend the free lecture Wednesday evening by a Respiratory Protection Program Manager and Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH) on the care and maintenance of respirators and general information on their proper use. The lecture is open to all; those wishing to schedule fit testing appointment MUST attend the lecture. Fit testing appointments will be scheduled on Thursday in 15 to 20 minute intervals from 9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. Registrants for fit testing appointments MUST bring a completed and signed OSHA Medical Evaluation form with the signature of their health professional and the dates for which the evaluation is valid. The form and signature sheets are available on the AIC Health and Safety Guides and Publication Webpage at www.conservation-us.org/fittest. Registrants should bring their own respirators or select an appropriate style from AIC’s samples.