Application of Colour Metallography in the Examination of Ancient Metals

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The Social and Historic Construction of Professional Values in Conservation Author(s): Miriam Clavir Source: Studies in Conservation, Vol. 43, No. 1 (1998), pp. 1-8Published by: on behalf of the Maney Publishing International Institute for Conservation of

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THE SOCIAL AND HISTORIC CONSTRUCTION OF PROFESSIONAL VALUES IN CONSERVATION

Miriam Clavir

Summary-This paper discusses the social history of the emergence of conservation as a profession distinct from traditional restoration. It proposes that the development of conservation as a distinct field came about through the evolution of an existing area of practice, in a changing conceptual climate which increasingly acknowledged the necessity for, and the legitimacy of, the scientific model. This paper considers the changes in societal values that led conservators to hold their present ethical principles, values and beliefs, focusing on two in particular: the importance of preserving the integrity of the object, and the belief that the best way to do this is through the application of science.

Introduction

The ethics and practices of the field of conservation are well documented in its literature. Underlying these norms, however, is the question of why conservators hold the particular values and beliefs they do. These values and beliefs are at times quite distinct from those of other museum colleagues, and, in ethnographic conservation, can be different from what the originating people believe is appropriate care regarding an object from their heritage. Many principles in professional conservation are also distinct from those of its antecedent, restoration.

The research presented here attempts to elucidate several values held within the conservation profession, and factors which influenced the emergence of conservation from restoration. Discussions which directly explore changing values in conservation have only recently begun to be a major focus of professional symposia and their publications [1-3]. This paper examines why conservation developed as it did and when it did. The discussion focuses primarily on the world of museums, using mainly Canadian and British examples, and on two core beliefs in conservation which are not found exten- sively in restoration. The first belief is that there is a fundamental importance accorded to preserving the integrity of objects and especially their physical integrity. Preserving and stabilizing the original physical object is a primary consideration for conservators, and is taken into account in other consid- erations such as those pertaining to, for example, aesthetic attributes, or, in the case of certain ethnographic objects in museum collections, spiritual attributes. The second belief is that a systematic scientific approach is the best way to preserve objects; conservation is achieved by arresting deterioration

Received July 1996 Received in revised form April 1997

through understanding its mechanisms and applying scientifically-investigated treatment and preventive measures.

For the purposes of this paper the definition of conservation is taken from the Canadian code of ethics for conservators [4]. It is:

'Conservation: All actions aimed at the safeguarding of cultural property for the future. The purpose of conservation is to study, record, retain and restore the culturally significant qualities of the object with the least possi- ble intervention. Conservation includes the following: examination, documentation, preventive conservation, preservation, restoration and reconstruction.'

Restoration in this paper refers to that done before the field of conservation came into being: that is, restoration done outside of the parameters of professional conservation.

Values: integrity

If the goal of conservation can be said to be the safeguarding or preservation of material cultural heritage, the objective is to do this within an ethical framework which ensures that the intrinsic nature of the object is not altered. As Keene has written, 'At the foundation of the conservation ethic lies the precept "thou shalt not change the nature of the object"' [5]. The United Kingdom and New Zealand codes have used the words 'true nature of the object' [6, 7] and the Canadian Association for Conservation of Cultural Property (formerly the International Institute for Conservation-Canadian Group) and the American Institute for Conserva- tion (until 1995) use the word 'integrity' [4, 8]. Integrity is, interestingly, never defined, but most

Studies in Conservation 43 (1998) 1-8 1


M. Clavir

codes of ethics specify physical integrity, aesthetic integrity, and historic integrity. In 1989 the Canadian code went further and added 'conceptual integrity', which, while again not explicitly defined, is meant to include the meta[beyond the]-physical properties of objects, such as cultural significance or specific religious significance [9]. In art conservation, the evaluation of 'artist's intent' is an ethical issue of primary importance [3]. In archives, the term 'intrinsic value' has been in use for many years to describe materials which are not retained as copies but whose value lies in their retention in their original form.

There have been many reports that excesses were committed in some early restoration work [10-13], and this is an obvious factor influencing the importance of 'integrity' in conservation. The following is one example of restoration changing the integrity of a work, from a 1906 account of an official enquiry which had been held 50 years earlier, into the work of a restorer called Lance and the painting of Philip IV hunting wild boar (La Tela Real) by Velazquez (now in the National Gallery, London), that was then the property of Lord Cowley:

'... it was sent to a dealer or restorer to be relined. Unfortunately, in ironing the back of the picture too great a degree of heat was applied, with the result that the paint was blis- tered and the canvas in places laid bare ... According to Lance, when the picture was (subsequently) placed in his hands the whole of the centre was destroyed, although there were slight indications here and there of figures ... There was one piece of canvas bare as large as a sheet of foolscap. "And on that bare canvas you painted the figures we see now?" he was asked. "Exactly", said Lance. "What guide had you in repainting those groups?" "Not any".'

The report continues with the observation that Lord Cowley, even after the painting was returned, 'was never aware of the misfortune that had befallen his Velazquez' [14]. It is fair to say that the excesses and falsifications in some restoration work were undoubtedly a major factor which contributed to the preservation of physical integrity being included in conservation's first code of ethics, the Murray Pease Report [15].

There were other factors in the art world in the years preceding the emergence of conservation which placed value on the physical integrity of a work. The following provide brief illustrations. There was, for example, a concept expressed by certain artists which was similar to the concept of integrity. Fernand Leger, for instance, wrote in 1924, 'Every object, picture, piece of architecture, or ornamental organization has a value in itself; it

is strictly absolute and independent of anything it may happen to represent' [16].

Another factor is the tradition of connoisseurship in the world of fine and decorative arts, which also remained strong in the decades immediately preceding 1930. (The decade 1922-32 will be discussed later as representing a pivotal era in the development of professional conservation.) Connoisseur- ship emphasized the physical as well as the stylistic elements of a work, for example the visual qualities of the glaze on a Chinese ceramic, and was re- garded by its proponents as a science.

The importance of archaeological research and Classical antiquities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may have also contributed to valu- ing the integrity of objects [17, citing 18].

Finally, public museums and their collections were seen as the principal repositories of evidence showing the nature of natural and cultural phenom- ena. This evidence was embodied by the objects or other collections, and was to be kept in perpetuity as the primary evidence which might no longer exist in the future [19, p. 3]. Preserving the original evidence means preserving what we call its integrity.

Values: the importance of science in the preservation of collections

The value that conservation places on preserving physical integrity and on science represents a broadening of, rather than a change from, restoration values-that is, from making the aesthetic the primary end-goal for intervention, to including the importance of maintaining the physical, historic and conceptual integrity of the objects.

Conservators tend to believe that their ethics and practice represent the best way to preserve objects, since the evidence is scientifically proven. Staniforth, however, draws attention to the fact that conservation beliefs and values are social as well as scientific constructs. She states that deterioration is 'those changes that we regard [as] undesir- able' [20].

This paper will now consider why science came to dominate the methodology of the treatment of objects, and why these factors culminated in a significant shift towards scientific conservation in the years around 1930.

It has been well documented that individual emi- nent scientists had been called in for several centuries in Europe to find solutions to the problems of the deterioration of collections [17, 21, 22]. In 1930, however, a conference in Rome organized by the International Museums Office of the League of Nations became the first international symposium on works of art which primarily discussed scientific pre-



Professional values in conservation

ventive conservation, particularly environmental con- trol. This conference is reported to have convinced the participants of the utility of laboratory research as an auxiliary to studies in the history of art and museology [23]. The decade around 1930 therefore saw science become internationally acknowledged as a preferred methodology for solving problems in the preservation of historic cultural materials.

It should be noted that the Rome Conference was not, however, the first international conference on preservation. In the field of the preservation of archives and paper, there was a conference as early as 1898, and there are various examples of collabo- rative committees composed of scientists and scholars in this area at the turn of the century [17]. There were undoubtedly many instances of individual scientists being consulted by those associated with museums, historic sites, libraries and art galleries on various preservation problems at this time. One consultation, for example, is reported in the British Museums Journal of 1910 regarding stone deterioration [24]. Perhaps because the 1930 Rome Conference was organized through the League of Nations rather than through a museum or other institution, perhaps because the conference encom- passed a broad range of materials, including both artistic and historic heritage, perhaps because developments in society, as are being outlined in this paper, had promoted significant changes between 1898 and 1930, or perhaps because the founders of conservation either attended or worked for those who attended that conference, the 1930 conference is referred to more often in the conservation literature than the earlier meetings.

Before the field of conservation came into being, there was certainly a history of scientists working on cultural heritage. Scientists also, as industrialization progressed, worked in related materials science fields including artists' materials. The period after the First World War, however, represents a pivotal era in the formation of the professional discipline of conservation: in 1930, there was the Rome conference, while in 1931 a research laboratory was officially incorporated as a department of the British Museum. In 1927, the chemist R.J. Gettens was invited to join the staff of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, to be joined, in 1928, by George Stout; in 1932 Gettens and Stout began publishing Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts. It was the people involved in these events, and in related museum and art institutes in the twenties and thirties, many of whom were scientists or tech- nologists, who were later publicly to call their field conservation when they formed, in 1950, the first professional conservation organization, the International Institute for the Conservation of Museum Objects, which became, in 1959, the

International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC) [25].

The following is a brief outline of some of the major influences involved in the shift from restoration towards scientific conservation, and why the 1930s came to represent a pivotal era.

The origin of scientific values as the foundation for conservation

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed the development of public museums from the earlier 'cabinets of curiosities' and private art collections. Museum collections were built up and logically organized to contain, document and preserve the evidence of the nature of the universe. One consequence of public museums was that there were now public trustees who had a legal obligation to preserve the museum's holdings: the condition of the objects came under their fiduciary concerns. In addition, in public museums the restorers' work also came under scrutiny from the trustees and the public.

At the same time, the over-arching philosophy of these centuries was based increasingly in a scientific rather than a God-the-Creator outlook. It was based in the belief that the nature of the universe constitutes an objective reality which can be under- stood by the application of scientific knowledge and methods. In addition, an optimistic belief in science as the key to progress for humankind, and an ensu- ing attribution of 'higher moral ground' to knowledge gained through science, were often associated with the Enlightenment [19].

It is not surprising, therefore, that a newly emerging field such as conservation based its methodology in science during an era in which science was felt to be of unquestionable universal use and value. This attitude is exemplified by the following quotations taken from the Presidential Addresses of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in the decade 1921-31 [26].

1921: 'All thinking men are agreed that science is at the basis of national progress' (Sir T.E. Thorpe, p. 8) 1923: 'The extensive territory which has been conquered by science' (Sir Ernest Rutherford, p. 3). 1925: 'The general aim [of science] was summed up in an almost consecrated formula: "to subdue the forces of Nature to the service of man"' (Professor Horace Lamb, p. 1). 1926: 'It has been borne in on me more and more that if civilization is to go on, it can only progress along a road of which the foundations



M. Clavir

have been laid by scientific thought and research. More than that, I have come to real- ize that the future solution of practically all of the domestic and social difficulties with which we have to grapple nowadays will only be found by scientific methods' (His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales, p. 2) 1928: 'Nothing in the progress of science, and more particularly of modern science, is so impressive as the growing appreciation of the immensity of what awaits discovery' (Professor Sir William Bragg, p. 18) 1931: 'It may fairly be said that science is perhaps the clearest revelation of God in our Age' (General, the Right Honourable J.C. Smuts, p. 13).

Returning to the earlier discussion on the integrity of the object, it is not surprising that, for ethnographic collections, scientific knowledge about objects was held to be more crucial than indigenous belief systems regarding these same objects. Considering the era's expansionist outlook on the value of science, and its assimilatory and colonial policies and outlook towards indigenous peoples, scientific knowledge was held to reflect reality, and other belief systems therefore did not.

As well as the context of a growing belief in European society in the efficacy of science, the condition of museum objects themselves influenced the turning towards science to solve object preservation problems. Two primary causes for the degraded condition of the many objects in collections had become increasingly apparent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first was the increasingly polluted atmosphere as the industrialization and urbanization of Europe progressed. The second was the large numbers of archaeological objects which were entering collections, from Egypt, Greece, Italy, and many other areas: restorers' methods proved inadequate to halt the deterioration of many of the materials, especially the archaeological metals. The deterioration and nature of archaeological materials invited problem-solving by chemists; in 1888 the first museum preservation laboratory was estab- lished in Berlin to bring a systematic approach by a trained chemist, Dr Frederich Rathgen, to the care of the antiquities collection [17, 22].

It should not be presumed, however, that because Rathgen was the first chemist employed perma- nently by a museum in the preservation of its collections, chemical methods had not been used previously on antiquities by museum personnel. The following examples are from an account by Brinch Madsen of the preservation of early Danish archaeological specimens in the National Museum in

Copenhagen, which began in 1807 as 'The Commission for the Preservation of Artefacts'. This body engaged Christian Jurgensen Thomsen in 1816 to catalogue, repair and restore the objects acquired. Brinch Madsen gives accounts from Thomsen's letters which discuss the difficulty of preserving archaeological specimens, and recom- mend techniques in the field so that the objects do not disintegrate [27].

Although these methods proved successful, they are evidence of a significant difference from Rathgen's approach 70 years later. Rathgen is said to have sought 'an explanation for their [the objects] deterioration through an understanding of the mechanism by which archaeological materials, such as clay, stone, and metal, corrode or decay' [22]. His handbook, Die Konservierung von Altertumsfunden (The Conservation of Antiquities) published in 1898, shows this approach in Part I, which was devoted to the causes of deterioration of archaeological objects before and after excavation [22]. Thomsen's methods, on the other hand, were techniques derived empirically from working with the objects, much like a restorer's techniques, although these were aimed at preservation. For example, Thomsen and his staff used barrier coats as treatments rather than beginning the treatment with an analysis of and attack on the inherent causes of the on-going deterioration of the material. In 1859, Thomsen's assistant, Herbst, after empiri- cal experimentation, achieved a remarkable success using alum for the treatment of waterlogged wood, a method which, with modifications, became a stan- dard treatment in the Danish National Museum for the next hundred years [27]. It was Frederich Rathgen, however, whose systematic approach of understanding the causes of deterioration became the norm in professional conservation.

An additional arena for the adoption of scientific methodology in the preservation of cultural heritage came with the increased numbers of antiquities available to private and public collections, which prompted an interest in detecting fakes and in the establishment of provenance. A systematic, scientific methodology to resolve these questions was seen as appropriate. New technologies, such as radiography, were given immediate practical applications in art as well as in medicine and the natural sciences [28].

The particular needs of curators in public museums were also a driving force behind the necessity to find solutions to preservation problems. For example, Charles Trick Currelly, the first curator/director of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, is quoted as saying:

'I had spent a good deal of money in Egypt on iron objects of the Roman period, and many




of them were badly rusted. I had always had a hope that in some way or other I would learn to get rid of the rust ... Very few of the museums had been buying rusted iron, and one of the men at the British Museum advised me never to touch it, that it would break my heart, as after a few years one would have nothing but a pile of rust in the case. This wasn't pleasant, as I had spent altogether too much money on Roman iron' [12]

There were further important connections being created between science and the art world. Mention has already been made of the use of new technology such as radiography, and pertinent developments by the chemical industry, such as the synthesis of new, less expensive, and more permanent pigments. In addition, certain industrialists-and in England many came from chemistry-based manufacturing interests-were connected to the world of art through their own collecting, and made very gener- ous gifts to public institutions and to arts development. For example, William Hesketh Lever, Viscount Leverhulme, whose business interests were in soap manufacturing, donated several buildings for art galleries (the London Museum, an art gallery at Port Sunlight), and the Leverhulme Trust is a fund- ing body for the arts in Great Britain. Samuel Courtauld's fortune was made in the textile industry, where chemical manufacturing processes, in his case the production of rayon, and the chemical dyeing of textiles, were very significant. Courtauld was twice Chairman of the National Gallery Board of Trustees, was a Trustee of the Tate Gallery, and endowed the Courtauld Institute of Art. In addition, he and his wife acted as benefactors to the Tate Gallery, enabling them to purchase a number of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. The celebrated chemist Ludwig Mond bequeathed his extensive collection of paintings to Great Britain. Julius Mond directed the major British chemical house ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries), and was an art collector and connoisseur.

There were also significant links between science and art-making. In nineteenth-century art the rela- tions between colour science and art theory have been studied [29]. One major connection between art and science at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth has been described as follows:

'Physicists investigated the nature of colour while painters such as Seurat attempted to cod- ify its emotional content. Around the turn of the century the new, self-conscious use of science in aid of art was one of the many elements that promoted the belief that art itself should be new and different' [30]

Indeed, abstract art, the major art of the early twentieth century, was radically different from its predecessors. Some art movements such as Constructivism showed the influence of science and technology in the style of representation, and with certain artists, in the content of the representations themselves. For example, Fernand Leger's 1919 painting The City, has been described as 'Buoyant with optimism and pleasurable excitement, it con- jures up a mechanized utopia' [31].

In the first quarter of this century, then, there existed in many interrelated spheres an increasingly nurturing environment for the emergence of scientific conservation. In this context, one key event had a catalytic effect on the development of conservation, and that was the First World War.

The Great War accelerated the general development of new technological and material resources. At the same time, it caused extensive damage to cultural property including the collections of the British Museum and the British National Gallery. Many of these collections had been placed in tem- porary wartime storage and had deteriorated due to poor environmental conditions [32, 33]. For example, according to Kavanagh:

'... the best of the removable antiquities and coins were lodged in ... a new section of underground railway. This was a line co- inciding with Holborn and Oxford Street ... Forty to seventy feet below the surface, it was certainly safe from air attack, but there was a great risk from damp ... It was pre- pared to receive the collections ... by the installation of floors, a lift, ventilation ap- paratus, electric radiators, hygrometers and thermometers' [32]

These measures successfully protected the British Museum's collections from bomb damage, but at a certain cost to the condition of the objects themselves. Kavanagh states that the Director of the British Museum at the time, Sir Frederick Kenyon, admitted that there had been some minor damage to the collections, but she quotes Andrew Oddy, the present Keeper of Conservation at the British Museum, as saying that the damage was much more extensive. He states that bronze disease and on-going rusting had broken out on archaeological metals, salt efflorescence had occurred on pottery and stone, and foxing on paper [32]. All of these conditions could be attributed to inherent vice in the objects (from the remains of the archaeological environment in the three-dimensional objects) being affected by prolonged high humidity. Kavanagh also reports that the collections of the National Gallery suffered from damp conditions during tem- porary wartime storage.



M. Clavir

In Britain, the damage to the collections of the British Museum led that institution to call in scientists, rather than restorers, to assist in the preservation of its collections. The Museum did this, not just because of the growth of links between art and science, but because they had, on a practical level, the means to do it. The war had prompted the gov- ernment to establish and fund a centralized Department of Scientific and Industrial Research available to national institutions.

The significance of the formation of the British Museum's Department of Scientific Research can- not be underestimated. It began the development of Britain's importance in conservation, becoming as it has the location for the International Institute for Conservation, publisher of this international peer- review journal, and establisher of the use of English as the principal language for professional publica- tion in conservation.

In conclusion, this paper argues that the ethics and values of professional conservation developed out of the tradition of restoration as western society's conceptual environment changed. In describ- ing this environment, this paper has focused on how its elements provided an appropriate climate for the emergence of two fundamental beliefs in conservation, the belief in preserving the integrity of the object and the belief that the best way to do this is through the application of science.

References

1 ODDY, A., (ed.), Restoration: Is It Acceptable?, British Museum Occasional Paper 99, British Museum, London (1994).

2 KRUMBEIN, W.E., BRIMBLECOMBE, P., COSGROVE, D.E., and STANIFORTH, S., (eds.), Durability and Change. The Science, Responsibility and Cost of Sustaining Cultural Heritage, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester (1994).

3 DYKSTRA, S.W., 'The artist's intentions and the intentional fallacy in fine arts conservation', Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 35 (1996) 187-218.

4 Code of Ethics and Guidance for Practice for Those Involved in the Conservation of Cultural Property in Canada, International Institute for Conservation-Canadian Group, Ottawa (1989) 18, 5.

5 KEENE, S., 'Objects as systems: a new challenge for conservation' in Restoration: Is It Acceptable?, ed. A. ODDY, British Museum Occasional Paper 99, British Museum, London (1994) 19.

6 Guidance for Conservation Practice, United

Kingdom Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, Dec. 1981 (report presented to membership).

7 'The NZPCG Code of Ethics' in New Zealand Directory of Conservators of Cultural Property, The New Zealand Professional Conservators Group Inc., Auckland (1991) 8-12.

8 'Code of Ethics and Guidelines for Practice' in Directory, American Institute for Conserva- tion, Washington (1995) 21-28.

9 HODKINSON, I., personal communication (1991).

10 BOMFORD, D., 'Changing taste in the restoration of paintings' in Restoration: Is It Acceptable?, ed. A. ODDY, British Museum Occasional Paper 99, British Museum (1994) 33-40.

11 HARTIN, D.D., 'An historical introduction to conservation' in Shared Responsibility. Proceedings of a Seminar for Curators and Conservators, ed. B.A. RAMSAY-JOLICOEUR and I.N.M. WAINWRIGHT, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (1990) 30-38.

12 RUGGLES, M., 'The history of conservation in Canada: developments to the early 1970's', Journal of the International Institute for Conservation-Canadian Group 5 (1982) 3-12.

13 SAMUELS, E., Bernard Berenson. The Making of a Legend, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. (1987).

14 'Picture restoration', The Museums Journal, Sept. (1906) 114-116.

15 PEASE, M., 'The Murray Pease Report: Standards of Practice and Professional Relationships for Conservators', adopted by IIC-AG, June 8, 1963, and approved for legal sufficiency Aug. 7, 1963.

16 LEGER, F., The Aesthetic of the Machine (1924), as quoted in H.B. CHIPP, Theories of Modern Art. A Source Book by Artists and Critics, University of California Press, Berkeley (1968) 217.

17 CALDARARO, N.L., 'An outline history of conservation in archaeology and anthropology as presented through its publications', Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 26 (1987) 85-104.

18 HULMER, E., 'The role of conservation on connoisseurship', thesis, University of Pittsburgh (1955).

19 PEARCE, S., Museums, Objects and Collections. A Cultural Study, Leicester University Press, Leicester and London (1992).

20 STANIFORTH, S., 'Group Report: What are appropriate strategies to evaluate change and to sustain cultural heritage?' in Durability




and Change: The Science, Responsibility and Cost of Sustaining Cultural Heritage, ed. W.E. KRUMBEIN, P. BRIMBLECOMBE, D.E. COSGROVE and S. STANIFORTH, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester (1994) 218.

21 CORFIELD, M., 'Towards a conservation profession' in UKIC 30th Anniversary Conference, United Kingdom Institute for Conservation, London (1988) 4-7.

22 GILBERG, M., 'Frederich Rathgen: the father of modern archaeological conservation', Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 26 (1987) 106.

23 'L'activit6 de l'Office International des Musees: Conclusions adopt6es par la conf6rence inter- nationale pour l'etude des methodes scien- tifiques appliqu6es a l'examen et a la conservation des oeuvres d'art, Rome, 13-17 octobre, 1930', Mouseion 13-14 (1930) 126-130.

24 ANDERSON, T.D., 'The decay of stone antiquities', The Museums Journal 10 (1910) 100-106.

25 'Historical note' in List of Members 1993-94, International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, London (1993) 3-4.

26 Reports of the Annual Meetings of British Association for the Advancement of Science, John Murray, London.

27 BRINCH MADSEN, H., 'Artefact conservation in Denmark at the beginning of the last century' in Recent Advances in the Conservation and Analysis of Artifacts, ed. J. BLACK, Summer Schools Press, London (1987) 343-345.

28 BURROUGHS, A., Art Criticism from a Laboratory, George Allen and Unwin, London (1938) viii.

29 KEYSER, B.W., 'Victorian chromatics', PhD thesis, University of Toronto (1993).

30 COPPLESTONE, T., Modern Art, Deans International Publishing, London (1985) 11.

31 JANSON, H.W., History of Art: A Survey of the Major Visual Arts from the Dawn of History to the Present Day, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., and Prentice-Hall (New Jersey), New York (1962).

32 KAVANAGH, G., Museums and the First World War, Leicester University Press, London (1994) 31, 34.

33 CAYGILL, M., The Story of the British Museum, British Museum Publications Ltd, London (1981).

Author

MIRIAM CLAVIR received an Honours BA in anthropology and archaeology from the University of Toronto, and a Master of Art Conservation in 1976 from Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. She has worked in conservation at the Royal Ontario Museum and for Parks Canada in Ottawa and Quebec City, and since 1980 has been the Conservator at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. She teaches courses in preventive conservation and lectures in museum principles and methods for the UBC Department of Anthropology. She is currently completing a doctorate at the University of Leicester, Department of Museum Studies, entitled 'Preserving what is valued: an analysis of museum conservation and First Nations perspectives'. Address: UBC Museum of Anthropology, 6393 N. W. Marine Drive, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z2.

Resume-Cette communication traite du role socio-historique de l'apparition de la conservation en tant que discipline professionnelle distincte de la restauration traditionnelle. II y est expose que le developpement de la conservation dans un domaine bien defini s est effectue par le biais de 'revolution d'un secteur d'activite preex- istant, grace a un changement de conception du contexte de celui-ci, qui en s'elargissant a conduit necessaire- ment et legitimement d se rapprocher du modele scientifique. Cet article etudie l'evolution des mentalites sur cette question qui ont conduit les restaurateurs a etablir leurs principes ethiques actuels, ainsi que leur echelle de valeurs et leurs convictions, principalement en ce qui concerne deux d'entre elles: l'importance de la preservation de l'integrite de l'objet, et la certitude que le meilleur moyen pour cela est l'application d'une methode scientifique.

Zusammenfassung-Im vorliegenden Artikel werden die Grunde far die gesellschaftliche Entwicklung eines eigenstdndigen Berufsbildes zur Konservierung im Gegensatz zur traditionellen Restaurierung von Kunst- und Kulturgut diskutiert. Auf der Basis eines breiten praktischen Erfahrungsschatzes und unter sich dndernden konzeptuellen Einfliissen akzeptiert diese Entwicklung demnach die Notwendigkeit und Berechtigung eines wis- senschaftlichen Ansatzes. Der Verfasser sieht in verdnderten gesellschaftlichen WertmaJistdben die Ursachen,



M. Clavir

die zu den heute giiltigen ethischen Prinzipien, Werten und Ansichten des Restaurators gefuhrt haben. Besonders betont wird dabei die Erhaltung der Unversehrtheit eines Objektes sowie die Uberzeugung, dafi dies am besten durch die Anwendung wissenschaftlicher Arbeitsweisen erreicht werden konne.

Resumen-El presente articulo trata la historia social de la emergencia de la conservacion como una profesion diferenciada de la tradicional y artesanal restauracion. Propone que el desarrollo de la conservacidn como campo autonomo se genero a traves de la evoluci6n de un area de practica ya existente, en un clima conceptual cambiente, el cual, progresivamente, agradecio la necesidad (y la legitimidad) de un modelo cientifico. Este articulo considera los cambios en los valores que llevaron a los conservadores a mantener sus principios, creeencias y posiciones actuales; enfocado todo ello en dos aspectos importantes: la importancia de preservar la integridad del objeto, y la creencia de que la mejor manera de hacer esto es a traves de la aplicacion de la ciencia.



Article Contentsp.1p.2p.3p.4p.5p.6p.7p.8

Issue Table of ContentsStudies in Conservation, Vol. 43, No. 1, 1998Volume InformationFront MatterThe Social and Historic Construction of Professional Values in Conservation [pp.1-8]Fourier Transform-Raman Spectroscopy of Ivory: A Non-Destructive Diagnostic Technique [pp.9-16]Studies of Lead Corrosion in Acetic Acid Environments [pp.17-32]Characterization of Proteinaceous Binders in Wall Painting Samples by Microwave-Assisted Acid Hydrolysis and GC-MS Determination of Amino Acids [pp.33-41]Impregnation under Low Pressure [pp.42-48]The Iron in Black Weathering Crusts on Saxonian Sandstones Investigated by Mssbauer Spectroscopy [pp.49-58]Book Reviewsuntitled [pp.59-60]untitled [pp.60-61]untitled [pp.61-62]untitled [pp.62-63]

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Application of Colour Metallography in the Examination of Ancient Metals