Preserving Photographs

With the holidays, particularly Thanksgiving, right around the corner, I cannot help but think of family and tradition at this time of year. Until the New Year, I hope to make posts around this theme. This is just the first of the series.

I came across this post from the Smithsonian Visual Archives blog called "The Bigger Picture" which is updated regularly with images, links and snipets of history. In the post, Nora Lockshin, Paper Conservator at the Smithsonian Institute, describes her mother's project to preserve photographs, those pictorial documents of memories.

Photographs are sensitive objects, especially the older they are, which include daguerreotypes, tintypes, albumen prints, and silver gelatin prints. Typically, the image (created by a variety of materials depending on the kind of print) is suspended in a transparent binder layer (which in turn is made from a choice of materials depending on the process). The image and the binder are both, but individually, sensitive to its environment and each may react differently to it.

Thus, the process to create photographs has changed and developed over time. When photography first became popular in the U.S. in the mid-nineteenth century, daguerreotypes required a light-sensitive silver-plated sheet of copper to be exposed to light and developed over mercury vapor. Nowadays, most photography is digital which requires a whole other set of concerns.

What's important is to know your materials. There is quite a bit of resources out there to aid in preserving photographs. My favorite is Photographs: Archival Care and Management by Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler and Diane Vogt-O'Connor, which appears to be out of print. Check your local public library or museum to see if they have a copy you can review.

Collection Management Policies

Wednesday afternoon, the Museum's Board of Trustees voted to approve the Collection Management Policy I developed for this institution.

This kind of document is very important to any museum and its collection.

According to The New Museum Registration Methods:

Policies for managing collections provide the framework for decisions that determine the long-term development, care, and management of an institution's collections.

John Simmons writes in his article "Managing Things - Crafting a Collections Policy" from the January/February 2004 edition of MuseumNews:

The collections management policy is the institutional policy that governs everything a museum does to care for and grow its collections and make them available to the public.

And Marie Malaro, in A Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections, states:

A collection management policy is a detailed written statement that explains why a museum is in operation and how it goes about its business. The policy articulates the museum's professional standards regarding objects left in its care and serves as a guide for the staff and as a source of information for the public.

In other words, the Collection Management Policy (or CMP for short) guides the museum, and in turn its staff, in acquiring, caring for, and (possibly) deaccessioning its collections. It is a hefty document, covering a wide range of topics, from the scope of collections and ethics to acquiring and disposing objects, from providing access to objects (whether by loans or exhibits) to care and maintenance of those objects. By its very nature, the policy is a living document, which needs to be regularly and routinely revised and approved by a governing authority.

From the CMP, an institution can develop a Collection Plan (i.e. long-term plan on what to collect) and procedures on how to do specific tasks. For the last two years, I have been steadily forming the policies and procedures for the Archives & Collections Department here at The Petroleum Museum. However, those documents are only as good as the foundational framework that the CMP provides.

Accessions

Back in July, I posted about how The Petroleum Museum relies on donors' generosity in building our collections.

So what happens after a donor has offered an object to the Museum and it has been accepted? As with many things in the museum-world, there is a process from offer to acceptance to accession. According to The New Museum Registration Methods, accessioning is the act of recording or processing an addition to the permanent collection.

Offers come in all forms: over the phone, in person, via email or regular mail, etc. As I mentioned in my Donor Generosity post, each offer is considered and weighed in light of the Museum's collection needs as well as the Museum's mission, among other criteria.

Once an offer is accepted, first thing I do is write a Gift Acknowledgement letter and Deed of Gift and send it off to the donor. Depending on the object, I may also include an Object History Form to obtain more information for our records. The key is to collect as much information as possible about the donor and the gift. It's this information that gives the object its value!


Above: Deed of Gift for the Statue of Liberty. Document with watercolor, July 4, 1884. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (44) Needless to say, The Petroleum Museum's Deed of Gifts are not watercolored.

Once the Deed of Gift is back in hand, I can fully process and catalogue the object. I use several forms to do so: Accession Checklist, Catalog Sheet, and Condition Report. I also take photos of the object for the file and the database.


Above: Condition Report for cars. A museum's Condition Report is similar.

I can then house the object appropriately. For instance, if the object is a framed painting, I will hang it in the Vault, our framed art storage area. If the gift consists of photographs, I will house them in plastic sleeves and in our photographic cabinets. Sometimes, objects will go directly on display. However, most objects will stay in storage until they are needed for programs or exhibits.