The Carriage Collection Fund at the Museums at Stony Brook targets carriage collectors and focuses on the museum's position in the vanguard of conservation of horse-drawn vehicles. The museums fully conserved an 1865 Concord Coach with partial funding from the Institute of Museum Services (IMS). A contribution to help match those IMS funds came from the Concord Coach Society, which the curator had invited to the conservator's studio to observe the work in progress. The curator continues to promote conservation by speaking widely and publishing articles in collectors' periodicals such as Driving Digest Magazine and The Carriage Journal. When possible, conservators work in the galleries, allowing the conservation project to become a public program.
The theme of the fall 1993 issue of Virginia Explorer, published by the Virginia Museum of Natural History, Martinsville, is "Caring for Your Collections." Articles include "Natural Treasures," "Caring for Mineral and Rock Collections" and "Your Personal Herbarium." The magazine sought to present issues of preservation and conservation to the lay collector because "well documented and preserved collections [gathered by] amateurs can turn out to be as useful to scientists of the future as those acquired by professionals."
The Department of Conservation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Virginia produced a series of 16 brochures on collections care. Topics include "Caring for Firearms," "Caring for Furniture" and "The Environment and Collections." Originally developed for the Colonial Williamsburg Antiques Forum, the brochures were immensely popular and now serve as adjuncts to public lectures and workshops as well as helping with phone inquiries.
Friends of the New York Public Library who contribute $1,250 or more participate in the Conservators Program. Giving levels are designated as Conservator, $1,250; Tilden Conservator, $2,500; Lenox Conservator, $5,000; and Astor Conservator, $10,000. The brochure reads: "Your gift will help the Library...preserve its priceless collections--books, maps, films, and all kinds of other material....Right now, millions of books are in danger of disintegrating due to age and deterioration of the acidic paper they were printed on. The Library is working feverishly to save and restore these important works, but it is a race against time...and time is running out!"
The Bobst Library at New York University appealed to local labor leaders and unions to support the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. The appeal netted a $45,000 donation from the New York City Central Labor Council, an umbrella organization for 600 unions.
The National Archives in Washington, D.C., received $150,000 from the Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia to preserve some of Jefferson's papers.
The Octagon benefits from having the American Institute of Architects (AIA) as a parent institution. The museum advertised its restoration as a learning opportunity to AIA membership. One member became so enthusiastic about the restoration and related capital campaign, he videotaped a personal appeal to his peers.
Representatives of five Bronx libraries met in 1988 to discuss ways they could cooperate in preparing for a possible disaster. As a result of that meeting, librarians from the Huntington Free Library, New York Botanical Garden, New York Zoological Society, Bronx County Historical Society and Stephen B. Luce Library of the State University of New York Maritime College formed the Bronx Library Emergency Consortium. The group successfully obtained funds from a private foundation to purchase supplies and equipment to create emergency kits for each institution. The kits include wet/dry vacuums, rubber gloves, permanent markers and rolls of polyester sheeting, among other items.
In 1993 the Pittsburgh Regional Library Center (PRLC) received a $3,000 grant from the conservation division of Information Conservation, Inc., to help its members conserve rare, archival or special collection materials. PRLC stretched the money by offering six $500 matching grants. Three awards supported institutions protecting cultural heritage: St. Vincent College in Latrobe, to box and conserve 27 rare books decorated with fore-edge paintings; the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, to conserve an atlas showing the new boundaries of Pittsburgh after it merged with Allegheny County in 1907; and Chatham College in Pittsburgh, to preserve and conserve materials in its Catharine R. Miller Collection related to historic Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania.
Using services donated by local corporations is another possibility. An advertising agency in Richmond, Va., designed materials for the Virginia Historical Society's Fifth Century Campaign on a pro bono basis.
Copyright © 1995 National Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Property,
3299 K Street, NW, Suite 602
Washington, D.C. 20007
(202) 625-1495; fax (202) 625-1485.
Last modified on Friday, April 27, 1995.
It is no small thing to outwit time.