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By stating that preventive conservation is a deliberate choice I do not intend to say that not opting for preventive conservation is a choice. Preventive conservation aspects will always be around whether we are aware of them or not. Whether we like it or not, preventive conservation is always an issue, but one often overlooked. I am talking about a choice, because resources such as time and money can be spent only once. The decision to free up funds for a beautiful design, for example, is indirectly a choice not to spend these resources for the forgotten issue of preventive conservation.
As we all know, before a choice can be made the advantages and disadvantages of all alternatives should be considered and set against each other. However, often we make our choices based on routine and 'gut' feeling. Whenever preventive conservation is a factor, the choices have to be deliberate. As an illustration of the non-conscious way we all treat preventive conservation we can consider the following example. In March 2010 a foundation focused on safeguarding and distributing knowledge of preventive conservation was established in The Netherlands. Before the founders decided that this foundation was useful the ground was “tested”. A wide variety of organizations, institutes and individuals were asked how they felt about an organization focused on preventive conservation. The reaction was twofold. There was a clear and solid support for the initiative but sometimes questions were raised by its necessity. After all, The Netherlands already has three educational organizations working on conservation. This should be enough. To see where preventive conservation is featured in these schools their programs were consulted. While some programs do not even mention preventive conservation at all others only reserve a very limited amount of time and ECTS for it. To make matters worse all other preventive conservation courses in The Netherlands given by governmental institutions are discontinued. The only course focused on preventive conservation is one for ‘behoudsmedewerkers’ (conservation assistants/technicians). This program is focused on working with objects and collections and obviously tackles many preventive conservation topics. However, it lasts only 1 year with 30 contact days and it is only accessible to people with existing employment in our industry. With these limitations it cannot be anything but a short introduction to preventive conservation. The conclusion has to be that preventive conservation is not a major topic in education. Of course everybody in these schools is doing their utmost to deliver the best education they can. However, they are tied to their own history and to financial and educational structures. The actual needs, developments and new insights in the field itself are seldom leading. One example is the importance still given to chemistry. Ever and always since the first conservation course was established chemistry was included and therefore we still have it on our programs. But we should know by now that most impacts on objects have a physical nature, but physics is rarely (if ever) a feature in these programs. I do realize that it is very difficult to change running courses and programs. Due to all organizational and financial restrictions and established routines the tendency to ‘stick with what we have’ is strong. What I want to do now is to think ‘outside the box’. So forget the existing structures etc., just focus on the needs first. We are all working in the beautiful field of cultural heritage and in particular we are trying to maintain it. The best way to achieve this is to prevent something potentially damaging from happening to it. Prevention beats every cure. A synonym for maintaining is conserving. Looking at these words and phrases I cannot do anything but state that ‘preventive conservation’ is at the core of our business. But then, what is preventive conservation? It is a nice slogan, but what does it mean? Preventive conservation is described by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) as the “indirect measures and actions aimed at avoiding and minimizing future deterioration, damage and loss of value”1 . So let us look at the agents causing damage, deterioration and loss. The ‘nine causes for deterioration’2 are a well established and accepted framework for risk assessment.
1. Physical forces (shock, vibration, gravity, handling, etc.);
2. Vandals and displacers (people who do not replace objects where they should be placed making it difficult to find (use) them in the future) 3. Fire (as with flames); 4. Water (in its absolute form as drops, leakage, flooding); 5. Biological damage (by insects, rodents, fungi); 6. Contaminants as environmental influences, such as dust and gases; 7. Radiation (referring to light and x-ray); 8. Incorrect temperature; 9. Incorrect relative humidity. Even though the last two aspects are most discussed and looked at we still do not really understand their impact very well. We can measure temperature and relative humidity in air and we can reason that this has an impact on an object. But we still know very little about the speed of response, intensity of deformation and fluid transport within an object. We tend to focus on the measurement of the air where we want to keep objects. An example of the discrepancy between what we know and can control, and what is happening to objects in our charge, is a new very high-technology designed showcase, especially made for very RH sensitive material. It is air tight and has a standalone humidifier as well as a standalone dehumidifier. As long as both machines indicated an RH of 53% everything was supposedly going well. After several weeks someone noticed that more water was added into the humidifier than was taken out of the dehumidifier. But because the data of RH in the air were OK no action was taken. Clearly, water that is issued into an airtight container and not taken out has to go somewhere, probably the object. The fact that more water goes into a closed system then comes out of it should ring an alarm bell. This is exemplary for the fact that we all tend to focus on things we can measure. By narrowing in on the resulting data we lose the bigger picture. The more aspects and unknowns we are confronted with the stronger the urge will be to flee into these false securities. Concerning the nine causes for deterioration I want to point out that agents 8 and 9, as well as 1, 3 and 4 are mainly physical by nature, and only 6 is (mainly) chemical. 5 more ‘categories’ could be added to these international accepted agents. They are useful as in the first 9 there is some overlap but above all because these causes need to be dealt with in an entirely different way: 10. Logistics (how to get the object into the building, out of the room, etc.); 11. The collection or the object itself; 12. The shelving, storage units, wardrobes, etc. the collection is stored in; 13. The building itself, the “shell” around the collection; 14. The organization working with the collection. The latter agent is sometimes added to the first nine under the title ‘custodial neglect’. In the courses and workshops the Dutch company Helicon Conservation Support has given over the years, it is usual to start with an assignment to get participants involved. They are asked to categorize the causes of damage they have encountered into one of these 14 categories. Figure 1 shows the overall results of these questionnaires.
It is not that much of a surprise that our colleagues in cultural heritage expect physical forces to be the biggest cause of decay. It is an eye opener that the organization is second, closely followed by climate, logistic and the building.
It is good to know where causes of decay may come from but the important is to prevent them from damaging the works in our charge. To be able to prevent these causes from actually ending up in damage we need to know the sources and the effects of these influences and the sensitivity of the objects. The required knowledge and skills can be categorized as follows: a. Object/collection awareness, including manufacturing, history, material, significance; b. Physics, including about shocks, vibration, water migration, characteristics of materials; c. Management, including organization, finance; d. Logistics, including means of transport, materials used, accessibility and routes to take; e. Buildings, including structure, insulation, weight distribution, structural integrity, engineering; f. Risk assessment, including statistics; g. Environment, including macro and microclimates, relative and absolute humidity, h. Safety and security, including laws, rules and regulations for objects as well as people, direct and indirect (hazardous materials); i. Information technology, including managing huge amounts of data, interaction, variety of resources of data, accessibility of these data now and in the future; j. Communication, including written and verbal presentations and ‘people skills’. And every item picked out of this list will be influenced by many others and have an impact on even more. Everything is connected. This list proves that preventive conservation is a full fledged occupation. It is not something ‘looked into while we are at it…’ or ‘taken care of in the wee hours in between serious business’. Preventive conservation is something to focus on, something we deliberately chosen to do, something that needs a proper focused education. Preventive conservation could easily fill a full minor and master’s program. Going back to real life, education is expensive. No country in Europe will ever need that many new preventive conservation specialists every year to make a focused dedicated program financially feasible. What can be done for something that is need but which is too expensive for the small niche it is aimed at? Actually the solution is quite basic. Reduce the expenses and broaden the market. Expenses can be reduced by using bits and pieces already existing. For example, to do proper risk assessment we need to be able to work with statistics. There are plenty of courses on that. The technique of Risk Assessment is the same for airports, football matches and exhibitions. When we start looking for it we will find programs galore on this topic. Even though most of these programs will not be given by universities they might very well have university quality. Using existing programs is a lot less expensive then tailor-making our own. We will have to start thinking modular. What we will have to provide is the translation to the specifics of our field, namely from the point of view of the object, collection and cultural heritage. Next to reducing our expenses we need to expand our market. We will have to look across our national boarders and work at least on European level on this. All this will need coordination, planning and control. And since I am convinced this will move forward to university and postgraduate degrees, I am hoping that our universities will take this need in consideration. But as we will also need conservation technicians and assistants specialized in preventive conservation, these universities will have to coordinate with as many other educational programs as possible. To be able to come up with something useful for future professionals and our cultural heritage everybody involved will have to start working and thinking outside their well known and comfortable structures. Think outside the box, involve the professionals in the field, lure students leaving high school, use commercial skills, knowledge and experience, allow creativity even in education.
Notes:
1 prEN 15898, CEN, Milan Jan. 2010 2 R. Waller, “Conservation risk assessment: A strategy for managing resources for preventive conservation”, in Preprints of the Ottawa Congress, International Institute for Conservation, September 1994, International Institute for Conservation, London, 1994, pp. 12-16; also available online in “Preservation Framework Online”, Canadian Conservation Institute, URL
About the author
Jaap van der Burg
Conservator-restorer
Website: www.helicon-cs.com
Jaap van der Burg is a conservator-restorer specialised in preventive conservation since 1984. He was one of two founders of Helicon Conservation Support B.V. in Alpen aan den Rijn (The Netherlands), company with a focus on problem solving in preventive conservation for collections and individual objects, collections management, couriering, risk assessments and recovery after disasters.
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