AIC's 46th Annual Meeting

Since this year’s AIC’s Annual Meeting theme has been expanded for the Book and Paper Group session to include re-evaluation of materials used in historical conservation treatments, the speaker would like to reflect back on more than 30 years of training and working in the conservation field and publically review some cases that provided great anxiety at the time or give pause upon reflection today. He will in fact review his own – by now – historic conservation treatments. The cases range from unintended immediate physical and chemical modifications, to unexpected long-term changes that have an impact on the use of collection items. The speaker will review a number of conservation treatments and evaluate how they have stood the test of time. He will also recount his experience as a conservation student, damaging a 16th century Albrecht Dürer print during a conservation approach that he has since then no longer used. He will discuss his experience with light bleaching a 19th century drawing by Joseph Keppler, an action that created unanticipated chemical changes in the paper. And he will delve into mechanical paper splitting and the unexpected long-term effects of this technique on 19th century US newspapers. The speaker ends with an observation made using Russell-effect photography and wonders whether the wide-spread use of the mat window as storage container should receive closer scrutiny in case in certain circumstances this type of housing unintentionally creates an environment that will give rise to a higher oxidation rate within the confines of the window.