The Care of Prints and Drawings: Edition 2

Margaret Holben Ellis

Dec 2016 · Rowman & Littlefield

About this ebook

The 2nd edition of The Care of Prints and Drawings provides practical, straightforward advice to those responsible for the preservation of works on paper, ranging from curators, facility managers, conservators, registrars, collection care specialists, private collectors, artists, or students of museum studies, visual arts, art history, or conservation. A greater emphasis is placed on preventive conservation, a trend among collecting institutions, which reflects the growing recognition that scarce resources are best expended on preventing deterioration, rather than on less effective measures of reversing it. Expanded and richly illustrated chapters include:

• Supports for Prints and Drawings discusses the properties of parchment and paper and introduces the general preservation needs and conservation problems of all works on paper, regardless of their media.
• Conservation Problems Related to the Paper Support of Prints and Drawings presents a guide to recognizing the symptoms and diagnosing the causes of damage specific to paper.
• Conservation Problems Related to the Materials and Techniques of Prints describes the conservation problems that affect certain printmaking materials and arise from specific processes.
• Conservation Problems Related to the Materials and Techniques of Drawings focuses on the various materials used to create marks on paper.
• Item-Level Collection Protection: Envelopes, Sleeves, Folders, Enclosures, Mats, Boxes, Frames, and Furniture, discusses measures taken for prints and drawings so that they can better withstand the rigors of handling, examination, exhibition, travel, and adverse environmental conditions.
• Preventive Conservation for Prints and Drawings describes how the integration of a comprehensive Collections Care Program into a Collections Management Policy can reduce the need for item-level conservation treatments.
• Basic Paper Conservation Procedures provides instructions on how to stabilize damaged works.
• How to Make Starch Paste and Methyl Cellulose Adhesive and Suppliers of Paper Conservation Materials and Equipment are appended as well as a Glossary.

About the author

Margaret Holben Ellis is the Eugene Thaw Professor of Paper Conservation, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where she teaches the conservation treatment of prints and drawings, as well as technical connoisseurship for art historians. She also serves as Director, Thaw Conservation Center, The Morgan Library & Museum. She is currently Vice-President and Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works of Art (AIC), Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC), Accredited Conservator/Restorer of the International Institute of Conservation (ICON). Professional and academic awards have included the Caroline and Sheldon Keck Award (2003) for a sustained record of excellence in education, the Rutherford John Gettens Merit Award (1997) in recognition of outstanding service to the profession both conferred by the AIC, the Rome Prize, the first to be awarded to a conservator, from the American Academy in Rome (1994) and most recently (2015) a scholar’s residency at the Getty Conservation Institute. She has published and lectured on artists ranging from Raphael and Titian to Pollock, Samaras, and Lichtenstein, and her research on artists materials is similarly far-ranging. Her most recent publication is Historical Perspectives in the Conservation of Works of Art on Paper, (2015) published by the Getty Conservation Institute. She is a graduate of Barnard College (1975 B.A. art history, magna cum laude, phi beta kappa) and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (1979 M.A. art history; Advanced Certificate in Conservation)./span