Specialized in Object and Library & Archive Conservation
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Summer Internships
The African American Museum in Philadelphia
Excerpt from their "About Us" page:
Founded in 1976 in celebration of the nation's Bicentennial, the African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP) is the first institution funded and built by a major municipality to preserve, interpret and exhibit the heritage of African Americans. Throughout its evolution, the museum has objectively interpreted and presented the achievements and aspirations of African Americans from pre-colonial times to the current day.
The museum is committed to telling the story of African Americans in all its permutations.
Image from Phillyvoice.com
Summer 2021 Internship
This internship took place for 8 weeks from July 7th - September 3rd 2021 under the supervision of Dejáy Duckett, Director of Curatorial Services. During this internship I worked with three collections from AAMP: The Golden Star Lodge Papers, the Black Cinema Collections, and William H. Johnson Prints. Because AAMP does not have a conservator or a conservation lab, treatment for these collections took place at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) under the supervision of paper conservator Chloe Houseman.
The Golden Star Lodge papers is a collection of documents from the mutual aid organization Golden Star Lodge. They began as a racially integrated organization, but over time became predominately African American in membership. The papers selected were to be part of the In Her Own Right (InHOR) project. I was responsible for imputing metadata for over 100 papers including receipts, sick notices, and application forms written by women into the spreadsheet provided by InHOR. I then digitized the collection using CCAHA’s digitization studio. Finally, I uploaded the digital files to Archive space which was AAMP’s digital repository for the collection. The Black Cinema Collection is composed of mostly movie posters but contain other paper memorabilia. The William H. Johnson Prints were a collection of four prints that needed to be removed from their mats. See the treatment details for the three collections below. AAMP spotlights some of the work I have done with their collections in the exhibition: Taking Care: Recent Acquisitions & Conservation (April 21st - September 10th 2022).
Treatment Details
Images Courtesy of the African American Museum in Philadelphia
PC: Chloe Houseman
PC: Chloe Houseman
Golden Star Lodge Papers
I treated the papers whose current condition would not yield itself to a good scan. Treatment included dry surface cleaning, humidification and flattening, mending. I also performed a bathing treatment on one paper with a particularly dark stain that obscured the writing. The stain reduced quite nicely, improving the legibility greatly.
Black Cinema Collection
Treatment included dry surface cleaning, tape removal, humidification and flattening, mending, loss compensation, and inpainting. One object was an old cardboard advertisement broken down the middle. Treatment involved splitting the layers of board and inserting Japanese paper strips in addition to mends on the back.
William H. Johnson Prints
The mat removal was relatively straight forward and involved skinning the mat board so it could be slowly peeled away from the prints. Some of the mat board was from recycled prints whose designs offset stained onto the Johnson prints. The prints were then surface cleaned, which reduced but did not eliminate the offset staining.
Summer 2020 Internship
This internship took place for 9 weeks from June 15th - August 14th 2020 under the supervision of Dejáy Duckett, Director of Curatorial Services. I spent the first month working from home due to the stay at home order in Delaware. I attended staff meetings and assisted in updating AAMP's Collections Management Policy. I was given AAMP’s current policy along with an outline for the sections they wanted to include in their new policy. Using the collection information on AAMP’s website, preventive conservation knowledge I gained in the past year, and Winterthur’s Collection’s Management Policy as a guide, I transferred AAMP’s current policy into the outline and made suggestions on additional information to include in the new policy.
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The remainder of my internship was spent rehousing objects, books, and textiles from the Anna Russel Jones Collection. Anna Russel Jones was the first African American graduate from the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and is most known for her textile designs, carpet designs, and graphic print artworks. She was also a member of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and received many medals during her service. When rehousing the objects, I tried to keep sustainability in mind and re-use as many pre-existing materials (empty archival boxes, Tyvek scraps, Ethafoam scraps, etc.) as possible before using new materials.
Rehousing Details
Books
The books came in various conditions from very stable to fragile. I put the books in polypropylene plastic sleeves and placed them in boxes according to size. Books belonging to a series were housed together. I pressure fit the books inside the archival boxes to the books would be less likely to shift around.
Watch the video at the bottom of this page for details on how and why I constructed this housing.
Watch the video at the bottom of this page for details on how and why I constructed this housing.
Objects
The object housings were the most varied as this portion of the collection varied the most in size and shape. Generally, I would created a sink mat for the object out of Ethafoam and line it with a smooth material, like Tyvek or Volara, to prevent abrasion. I then securely packed the sink mat in an archival grade box.
Textiles
Rehousing the textiles involved padding the folds of the textile using polyester foam wrapped in stockinette to prevent creasing over time. Then I wrapped the textile in unbleached cotton fabric to act as a handling and surface barrier for the textile before placing them in archival boxes.