Charting a New Agenda for a New Century
Heritage Preservation weighs goals and strategies for the future at its 1999 Annual Meeting
Charged with considering the next big challenges facing conservation and preservation, panelists and participants in Heritage Preservation’s twenty-sixth annual meeting focused on digitization and funding issues. A needs assessment, it was agreed, is an essential next step for the field, in large part for its potential value in communicating with a broader public.
Held at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars on October 22, 1999, the program featured the
following panelists (shown left to right in photo): Moderator Dennis Fiori, Ann Russell,
Executive Director, Northeast Document Conservation Center; Hans Rütimann, International
Program Officer, Council on Library and Information Resources; Ken Finkel, Deputy
Director, Atwater Kent Museum (former Program Analyst, The William Penn Foundation); and
Mary Estelle Kennelly, Acting Program Director, Office of Museum Services, Institute of
Museum and Library Services.
Chairperson Inge-Lise Eckmann opened the program by recognizing the major advances in the past decade in technology and professional development.
She noted, however, that capitalizing on the promise of Save America’s Treasures and moving ahead to the next level of accomplishment is a major challenge for both the field and Heritage Preservation.
Vice Chairman Dennis Fiori, Director of the Maryland Historical Society, served as moderator. He said, “We need to make a quantum leap in our efforts to preserve our nation’s heritage. Our goal today is to stimulate a dialogue on how we muster necessary resources and capture the public’s attention.”
Conservation and EducationMary Estelle Kennelly talked about the progress over the past decade in museums’ communicating conservation needs to the public. She also remarked that museums are doing a better job of approaching conservation systematically. “You can’t go in and repair your ‘most valuable thing’ and then put it back into the kind of storage that you had before.”
The need to promote racial and cultural diversity in the field was another topic Ms. Kennelly addressed, saying, “Museums are being forced, whether they want to or not, to address this issue of community involvement, responsiveness to the community in all its diversity.”
Ken Finkel said, “An interesting and disturbing thought keeps crossing my mind. We may be our own worst enemies. By remaining reactive and in the safety of a professional zone, we’re losing ground.” He cited the example of touring a museum storage facility whose curator was ashamed of the conditions there and was reluctant to call attention to it. “We shy away from public shame and confrontation, and our situation, our accountability, only deteriorates further,” he said.
He linked an American identity crisis to American material culture and cited collections as a necessary part of cultural identity. “We…need a voice, sustained and strong, for collecting and preservation. It’s not about saving pieces, a book, a statue, a painting, or a flag. It’s a whole view, a concept, a big idea. Our urge to collect is correct. Preservation follows.”
Hans Rütimann talked about the United States’ progress in preservation, citing the use of permanent acid-free paper in book production, and noted its impact abroad. He touched on programs in various countries and said, “It’s very obvious that the scholarship is international. Resources are international. And if one collection is lost to deterioration, no matter where, it’s a loss to all of us.” He cited as an example of international conservation efforts UNESCO’s Memory of the World program, which includes a register of valuable collections.
Ann Russell related a visit to the Mashantucket Pequot Museum in Connecticut, a state of the art facility, where she asked what they intended to do about their conservation needs. They replied that they wouldn’t have any. “And it’s inconceivable to me when I entered the field 20 years ago that any museum could have this approach, that they would do such a good job with preventive conservation that treatment would simply not be a need. And I think it’s a tribute to scientific developments, research, and education on the subject of preventive conservation.” She predicted that the need for conservation treatment services would stabilize, while the need for surveys, collections care training, and raising consciousness would increase.
DigitizationMs. Kennelly noted museums’ concern that digitization is getting attention and funding at the expense of preservation. “IMLS and NEH [National Endowment for the Humanities], at least at this point, do not view digitization as preservation. We view it as an access issue. But…it’s also going to be incumbent upon the field to figure out how different issues can be meshed together, and what is the role of the digital environment in preservation.”
Mr. Rütimann remarked that in some countries the digital age has yet to arrive. “The National Librarian of Nicaragua told me it’s difficult to think about the digital challenges in the library when the roof leaks.” On the other hand, “it’s disturbing, especially in developing countries, that in the general excitement about digital possibilities, many institutions have suspended their traditional and basic preventive preservation activities, including preservation microfilming.”
NEDCC has ventured into the electronic realm with a Web site, a distance learning program over the Web, and its School for Scanning conferences. “I think the jury is still out about whether digital files can become an archival format for information,” Ms. Russell said.
Needs Assessment SurveyEarly in the program, Mr. Fiori posed the question, “How can the extensive needs and systematic problems that continue to exist be assessed and documented in a credible fashion? And how should the results of such a study be communicated effectively to decision-makers and a broad public?”
Heritage Preservation has proposed conducting a public awareness needs assessment survey. Heritage Preservation President Lawrence Reger said such a project “would begin to highlight concepts like ‘deferred maintenance.’ People outside of our profession understand deferred maintenance. We have to learn to communicate to people in ways they understand.”
Two-thirds of the needs assessment funds should go to getting information out, Mr. Reger suggested, and one-third to getting the information. He outlined the approach for the survey in phases, beginning on a qualitative basis, asking institutions what they want. The next phase is a statistically valid survey, followed by developing strategies and models for various groups to use.
Mr. Reger noted that a needs assessment would involve working with other groups. “Others have done a lot of work in this area. And we all talk about not wanting to duplicate. But more importantly, we want to make sure that we bring lots of groups in, as we have done with the National Emergency Response Task Force, so that we have a broad base of support.”
“An assessment of preservation needs and setting the agenda is very timely,” Mr. Rütimann said. “I would also like to add my endorsement of the idea of closer collaboration among the institutions with a common cause in this country. We do work together, but I think more should be done to present a unified agenda that we can then go and take before funders and decision-makers.”
Ken Finkel concurred, saying, “The first step in our quantum leap should be to collectively develop a bold and hearty vision and then to adopt shared strategies to move us forward in it.”
FundingMr. Fiori began the discussion phase of the meeting by addressing whether conservation is being shortchanged in institutional budgets even though operating budgets have gone up. There is a lack of data to answer this question, but anecdotal evidence seems to support the statement, he said. He pointed to community programs as one reason. “Our public programming now takes up a full third of our operating budget, where 10 years ago, it probably took up a quarter of our operating budget, and it’s increasing daily.”
Ms. Kennelly remarked that applications for conservation grants are down. “We haven’t done any kind of study, but I think we’ve seen institutional budgets increase. We haven’t necessarily seen conservation budgets increase. In many cases, they’re not taking advantage of opportunities to get funding for different kinds of projects.”
Roy Perkinson of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, related how conservators prepared for fundraising activities by putting together an internal assessment of future needs in advance of a fundraising campaign.
“One of the things the fundraisers realized, in fact, is that they had, as we well knew, been underestimating our conservation needs radically,” he said. “This was a great opportunity to give this information to the trustee committee for the fundraising efforts in the future. It’s something they never had before, and it stimulated an enormous amount of interest.” He pointed out the importance of a clear vision and plan in obtaining funds.
Mr. Fiori remarked that when his organization applied for a Save America’s Treasures grant, they applied not for what they felt were their most pressing needs, but for “poster children.” This led to a discussion of conservation priorities versus projects that catch the public’s attention. Mr. Reger said, “The thing that gets people, whether we like it or not, is something dramatic before and after, something that you can understand, like The Star-Spangled Banner. We need to use these to build a more broad-based program that meets critical needs.”
Ms. Russell said there has been progress in public funding for preservation at the federal and state level and at large institutions, but smaller institutions have not seen much change. She also noted that “there are whole large regions of the country where there aren’t conservators or consultants or facilities to meet needs.”
Advocating endowments at institutions both large and small is necessary, Ms. Russell said. “The funds are there, especially in the private foundations. People want to value their past. This is a culture that looks backward to doo-wop music, the Three Stooges, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ cast-off clothes as collectibles of the future. So, my message to Heritage Preservation is, ‘Let’s do it.’”
Mr. Finkel talked about the need for good information to obtain funding. He said the old models of funding are becoming obsolete, and institutions should look to private money rather than foundations and government grants. However, obtaining private money requires a different approach. “Unless they’re comfortable with the information they have and feel it’s reliable, it’s not good financial information for them, and they’ll hold their money.”