2009 Annual Meeting
Comments of
Angelica Zander Rudenstine
Program Officer for Museums and Art Conservation at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Heritage Preservation Annual Meeting
Washington, D.C.
November 17, 2009
To download these remarks as a PDF document, click here.
It is a great honor for me to be with you today, to hear about the new directions in federal programs for preserving cultural heritage, and to receive this award. As many of you know, the Andrew Mellon Foundation has been a strong supporter of art conservation in the United States for more than four decades. Over the last fifteen years when I have been privileged to lead these efforts, I have been fully aware of what the nation owes to Heritage Preservation, to Save America’s Treasures, to IMLS, the National Endowments, and many other private and government agencies with which we share concern for the future not only of our national cultural heritage, but of the endangered cultural heritage of the human race.
The focus of our initiatives at Mellon (whether in support of art conservation or of the museum profession) has been on reinforcing scholarly potential, on identifying broad critical needs, and on finding ways to meet them. Among the most important of these needs, I would name today only two in which we have invested particularly heavily and which have broad implications for preservation internationally.
The first is the field of photograph conservation, which barely existed as a mature, independent discipline fifteen years ago, but which is now increasingly recognized as a vital component of international responsibility for world heritage and therefore of preservation planning. As recently as a decade ago, we had little or no technical information, for example, about the condition of the 14.5-million photographs housed in the Library of Congress, the 7.5 million photographs at Harvard University, or the well over 1 million in the New York Public Library, not to speak of the untold millions in the Smithsonian Institution and in libraries, museums, and archives throughout this country and abroad. The documentation and conservation of these historically important resources, at a time when chemical photography is essentially at the end of its life, and its complex characteristics are far too poorly understood, has become urgent, and the training of conservators who understand the materials, the chemistry, and the physical nature of photographs under their care is a pressing need. We are at an advanced stage of planning with the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg to assist in the establishment of photograph conservation capacity and training in that institution. There is no such training available at the present time in Russia where, of course, vast and important collections of photographs are to be found. In the last 10 years, we have invested about $26 million in such training and in the establishment of positions for photograph conservators. I hope that the Mellon Foundation will be able to continue on this path.
The second area of particular focus for Mellon has been an effort to strengthen the role of science within art conservation and cultural heritage preservation. At the end of the 1990s, over a 2-year period, we invited groups of scientists and conservators to brainstorm with us about the nature and scope of this need, about the priorities to be addressed; about job opportunities and the challenge of attracting excellent scientists to work in the cultural heritage sphere; and (importantly) about possible sources of financial support. These discussions highlighted some of the complexities involved, and although the value of science to nearly every aspect of preservation responsibilities had been amply demonstrated, we found that a commitment to strengthening the role of scientific research in this context had simply not yet materialized. It became clear that consciousness-raising among directors of museums and other institutions as well as leaders in government agencies would be an important factor, if we were, collectively, to make any significant headway in strengthening scientific engagement with the preservation agenda. Positions for excellent scientists would have to be established; post-doctoral fellowships, junior positions, and equipment would have to be underwritten; research partnerships between scientists in museums and those in universities and industry would have to be encouraged. And efforts would have to be made to seek government support especially that of the National Science Foundation, because no single private foundation or even a group of such philanthropic organizations could hope to underwrite a fraction of what needs to be done in the way of research in this field.
In June of this year, an important milestone was reached when the Chemistry Division of the NSF invited the Mellon Foundation to jointly sponsor a workshop entitled, “Chemistry and Materials Research at the Interface between Science and Art,” signaling this agency’s intention to solicit (for the first time) research proposals in cultural heritage science. The purpose of the workshop was to identify the major challenges in the field and to increase awareness of important research opportunities in the study of material degradation (both experimental and theoretical); in understanding the impact of environmental parameters on the surface chemistry of works of art; and in the development of new analytical methods and quantitative imaging techniques for non-invasive, non-destructive investigations.
I believe that this NSF initiative could become the single most important development in the field of cultural heritage research this decade, and it comes at a time when resources for all forms of preservation activity throughout the world are declining. We should all be grateful to those at the National Science Foundation who are leading this effort, from which the world’s cultural heritage will ultimately benefit. We at the Mellon Foundation look forward to strengthening our partnerships with all those in government and the private sector who are similarly committed to cultural heritage preservation.
In closing, let me say again how honored I am to have been selected for this award and how grateful to all of you for your support.
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