Awarding Art Conservators
Thanks again, Daniel, for letting me drop by with another guest post.
I’ve been thinking a lot about a post over at Museum 2.0 by Nina Simon called “What is a Wikimuseum”. For reasons slightly different than what Nina discusses in terms of “metamorphorphic design” the post has resonated with me.
She mentioned two things that worry her:
1) Museum executives are often fascinated by the social/cultural outcomes of social media but may not understand the specific characteristics of the platforms (and are too busy to spend their time learning them).
2) Museum technology professionals, who are capable of detailing the characteristics of platforms, are not good at or able to communicate with museum directors about what social media translations to the real world might actually entail
I’d like to add my two somewhat related thoughts:
1) Art conservation professionals are beginning to use social media platforms with increasing success; their projects are real-world translations of their usefulness.
2) Art conservation professionals should take a lesson from museum technology professionals and start using professional associations to recognize and encourage excellent web-based conservation projects. These awards could be meaningful to museum executives because they highlight the usefulness of social media applications and web projects.
And how do art conservators “take a lesson” from museum technology professionals? For starters, I think we should blatantly copy their tradition of annual web awards.
Museums and the Web gives out it’s annual “Best of the Web” awards. These awards serve to recognize excellent web projects. This pushes innovation, encourages competition, and drives advancement in web content. Plus, I argue that in Nina’s terms, the actual award serves as a “metaphor” of success for museum executives and becomes a metric by which to measure achievement and recognize staff for their work.
And despite the fact that the vast majority of the nominations are provided from the very people that created the web project being nominated, the validity of the award isn’t compromised. Because in the end it’s up to the panel of experts to decide which web pages truly are “The Best.” This couldn’t be a more clear example of museum technology professionals being EXCELLENT SELF MARKETERS. Art conservators should become better self marketers.
Museum technology professionals are so good at self marketing that I’d like to ask for their help. Museums and the Web will you create a new category next year for conservation-based web projects? Seriously, there should be a M & W category for conservation in 2010 because the field of art conservation is more specialized and different than the majority of the other museum projects. Likewise, the American Association of Museums’ Muse Awards should have a category that recognizes excellent web-based conservation projects. If AAM has a category for “PR and Development” projects than they should have a category for conservation projects.
And of course I’d like to suggest that conservation associations to start recognizing their own community and begin handing out serious awards every year to showcase the work of its members.
The conservation community needs to push itself from within and promote innovation and increased expectations about the sharing of their work on the web within the museum context, and as it relates to cultural property in general. Not only will this push conservators to create more and better web projects, it will encourage them to share more information with each other and become more transparent. Plus it will encourage museum technology professionals to continue to work with art conservators to create bigger and better projects. The winner of all this will be, in the end, the folks interested in learning more about art, the public.
These two associations should hand out awards this year:
Last summer in these two posts I pointed to some conservation projects that I liked. Now 7 or 8 months later there is a lot more content out there; new projects seem to pop up every day.
And since right now there are no awards that I know of being handed out to web-base conservation projects (and it may not start happening for a while),what the hell, why don’t I create my own award certificate and hand out some awards today? To make things a lot easier for everyone, I’ll act as both the nominator and the awarding panel (nepotism be damned). Wait! First, I need a clever name for the award. How about a “Conservy”? Yeah, a “Conservy”.
Recipients of the 2009 Richard McCoy “Conservy” Award for Best Web-Based Conservation Projects:
Best Conservation Blog
Antarctic Conservation Blog (Natural History Museum, London)
Jeff Peachey (Book Conservator in NYC)
Brooklyn Museum “Dig Diary 2009”
Best Flickr Projects
Coal Car Historic Reconstruction (Renton History Museum)
Conservation of Autumn Landscape, Red Trees by T.C. Steele (IMA)
Best Conservation Videos
Conserving a George Catlin Painting (The Smithsonian American Art Museum)
Returned to Former Splendor: Paintings, Conservation, and Dyes (Royal Ontario Museum)
La Roldana’s Saint Gines Video (The Getty)
Most Useful Web Conservation Projects
Best Online Conference
Best Website Re-Design
International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA)
International Institute for Conservation (IIC)
Best use of Twitter to Share Information about Art Conservation Projects.
Best Wikipedia Articles Related to Conservation
Best Facebook Application used to Promote Conservation
Art Conservation Tools (I couldn’t help myself, but at least I’ve got the data to back it up)
Congratulations to all of this year’s winners!
Here’s your Award Certificate:
The 2009 Conservy Award Certificate
I think you should display this digital certificate with pride. Put it on your web page or in your application; add it to your resume, and if you’re a museum please don’t forget to put it in your museum’s annual report!
Since Dan actually made the award certificate for me, I’d like to present him with a “Conservy” for Best Conservation Award Design. Congratulations, Dan!
Anyway, back to the point at hand. If more professional associations recognized art conservation web projects, museum executives will have a deeper understanding of their potential outcomes, which I think answers Nina’s original point in her blog about “Wikimuseums.” The broader museum community could benefit from having a list of good examples of projects from the previous year to examine and maybe even model for their own projects.
Finally, yes, I admit that my monolithic award system is terribly flawed and doomed to ridicule and scorn – not surprisingly these awards are drawn almost exclusively from my personal taste. I recognize this isn’t a good way to hand out awards. But if Museums and the Web, AAM, AIC and IIC give out real awards themselves, I won’t have to do it again next year.
Can I add Dan Cull to the list?
You’re too kind Jeff! Glad to see you’ve put your award on your blog… thats great!
Thanks again Richard for guest blogging, another interesting post. If you hadn’t awarded yourself an award already (such modesty) you’d probably deserve one for being the best ‘conservation blogger without a blog’.
All the best Dan.
This is great! Really thoughtful post, Richard. Thanks for bringing these wonderful conservation projects to our attention. It strikes me that many of your examples regard conservation / restoration / preservation of historical artifacts rather than works of art per se. Is this an issue of transparency perhaps? Projects such as the Mellon-funded open source conservation documentation app for art museums: http://www.conservationspace.org/ may have a significant impact in this arena. I’m also looking forward to the outcome of the 2009 annual AIC conference theme “Conservation 2.0—New Directions” http://aic.stanford.edu/meetings/
I nominate two more Flickr accounts: I’m *really* enjoying Shelburne Museum Nancie Ravenel’s documentation on work presently undertaken with their Louis Comfort Tiffany-designed pieces: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shelburnemuseum/sets/72157612811812843/
Then, this is an older proj, but I love Brooklyn Museum’s conservation project story about their gorgeous facade sculptures in Flickr (and their blog)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brooklyn_museum/sets/72157602665741204/
Thanks Jeff and Maria for your comments. All worthy additions to the list.
Dan Cull Weblog is all of a sudden The Center for all things Conservation and the Web. I hear he has some other good things up his sleeve.
As to Maria’s comment in particular I think that there could be a lot gained by conservators being more transparent about what they do in cultural institutions and as conservators in private practice. Clearly I believe museum-related associations should recognize and continue to encourage the folks that are doing it. I don’t throw the word transparency out there lightly as a buzz word — it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently … stay tuned.
Conservators being transparent helps to fulfill many an institution’s mission.
As for the upcoming AIC meeting, clearly the title is referencing “Web 2.0,” but by the listed talks it seems the program is more focused on the broader concept of “New Directions” in conservation.
Finally, uh, Dan: Do I get my Internets leveled up any after this post?
And, BTW, M & W is asked folks through twitter and its own blog what they think of the idea of adding a category for conservation:
http://conference.archimuse.com/forum/best_web_categories
Thanks, Richard and Maria, for recognizing my recent efforts in this arena.
As far as M&W recognizing conservation as a separate category, its fantastic that they are thinking about it, but it does look like conservation already finds its way into the subject matter of some of the sites nominated this year.
I’ll be interested to hear what Richard has to say about transparency.
There may be ways that Web 2.0 is working its way into the AIC meeting that aren’t immediately apparent. Sounds like the CIPP and Emerging Conservators workshops are going to at least touch on it. And then there’s the issues session…it can be brought up on the floor…
I’ve been interested in the proliferation of conservators on Facebook and seeing who makes work-related status updates and the responses they generate. Maybe its about baby steps. It really is such a short step between status updates on FB and tweets.
CIPP is trying to gently enter the 21st. C. Even if you are not (currently) in private practice, please consider attending our workshop at AIC this year- topics will include databases, web design and green considerations in running a business. Time is scheduled for discussion as well.
Jeff Peachey, CIPP Chair Emeritus
Hi all,
Thanks for your comments on this and other posts. This post seems to have generated a lot of interest. I think it may have to return next year… although if it did I think we should make it a little more democratic and use a poll to ask readers to select fav’s…. with submissions sometime earlier. I say that because I just realize I haven’t used the poll tool on wordpress yet!
Richard, here’s your internet http://dancull.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/1234782082193.png
Richard you say: “Conservators being transparent helps to fulfill many an institution’s mission.” Do you mean like standing in galleries telling people not to touch things, and scaring them as they’ll have no clue where the voice came from!? lol. Oh, transparent conservators… I like.
Nancie, I think that is an interesting point about facebook status updates being a short step (a gateway drug if you will) into tweeting. Thats an idea I think that could be brought up more specifically, perhaps a blog post about actual tweeting… what it is, why its done, etc. Might be interesting.
Jeff… I’d like to hear more about the plans for the CIPP meeting.
And remember if any of you’d like to contribute a post to the discussions around web 2.0 and don’t have your own blog, you’re welcome to post here as Richard, and Julie, have been.
Hello Dan Cull,
As coordinator for INCCA and assistant project manager of Inside Installations I was very pleased to see that both sites got
a mention. Thanks for that. The INCCA revamp was, by the way, made very easy with the free open source software Joomla. I would recommend it to anyone making a website.
kind regards,
Karen te Brake-Baldock (The Netherlands)
Here is a preview of the CIPP 2.0 Workshop:
Spaces are filling up for the workshop on Tuesday, May 19th from 8am to 12pm. The fee for the workshop is $59 for CIPP members and $79 for non-members. Topics will include many business trends for conservators in private practice. Presentations will provide ideas and tips to help you learn how to improve your business efficiency and bottom line in the areas of marketing with AIC, web design, use of databases and “greening” your practice.
AIC Executive Director, Eryl Wentworth and Membership & Marketing Director, Ruth Seyler will be speaking with us about marketing with AIC and will be available to answer your questions on the topic. We?ve invited web-designer Will Sherwood to give a presentation on web-design for your business ? ? I need a web site, now what?? With a degree in computer engineering, Mr. Sherwood has been a web designer for 20 years in addition to his experience as an artist/photographer and musician. Conservator Chris Stavroudis will talk about the advantages of using databases to improve the efficiency of your business record keeping ? a definite must for improving the bottom line.
Finally, we will be having a round table discussion about how to make your business more ?green.? Members of the round table will include Patricia Silence, Green Task Force Chair and Preventive Conservator at Colonial Williamsburg, CIPP members Mitchell and Katie Powell of MPF Conservation, and architect Kaitlin Drisko of Drisko Studio. We will be discussing our own experiences with going green and the ways individual conservators can increase the sustainability of their practice as well as giving their clients guidance in this area. We?re hoping for a lively discussion, with the workshop participants providing some of their own tips and solutions.
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the info on the CIPP meeting. Sounds like it’ll be packed with information!! I hope it goes well.
Web design… thats a major issue. Good web design IMHO can make all the difference. It is after all the first point of call for many, if not most, people today.
Cheers, Dan.
Thanks