About the Conservation Assessment Program
Looking for a way to guide board, staff, and volunteers in caring for your museum’s collection? The Conservation Assessment Program can help!
CAP provides a general conservation assessment of your museum's collection, environmental conditions, and site. Conservation priorities are identified by professional conservators who spend two days on-site and three days writing a report. The report can help your museum develop strategies for improved collections care and provide a tool for long-range planning and fund-raising.
CAP offers a maximum of two assessors per institution. Most museums are provided a conservator to assess the museum's collections. If your institution has living collections (zoos, aquariums, nature centers, botanical gardens, and arboreta), you can be provided a zoologist, botanist, or horticulturalist as the collections assessor. If you have a historic structure (a building more than 50 years old), you may also get an architectural assessor.
The Conservation Assessment Program is supported through a cooperative agreement with the Institute of Museum and Library Services. CAP is available to eligible museums. Learn what CAP has done for other institutions in Spotlight on CAPped Museums, or read how the Tompkins County Museum implemented suggestions from their CAP assessment.
Museums previously awarded an IMLS-funded conservation assessment may be eligible to update their CAP assessment if seven years have passed since the original assessment. Applicants must report on their preservation efforts and the need for a new assessment. For more information, click here.
In 2006, the administration of CAP changed from a federal grant to a technical assistance program supported through a cooperative agreement with the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Despite the change in administration, the program itself is essentially the same.
CAP publishes a semi-annual newsletter, CAPabilities, which focuses on CAPped museums and general collections care issues. To receive a copy, contact Heritage Preservation, 1012 14th St. NW, Suite 1200, Washington, DC 20005, phone 202-233-0800, or e-mail cap@heritagepreservation.org.
Photos on this page are courtesy of Sian Jones, Meg Craft, and the Historical Society of Talbot County.