Fall 2013
ART • TRADITION • CULTURE • INNOVATION
Members’ Magazine
Spotlight
Left to right: Assistant Registrar Tessa Sabol secures a textile in a passive mat, which will keep it safe during travel; over one hundred boxes are already packed and ready for the move to GW. Photos by Chita S. Middleton.
Collections Rooms Come to Life A Peek Behind the Scenes This time next year, The Textile Museum will be poised to reopen its doors in a new location at the heart of the George Washington University. The TM's remarkable collections—more than 19,000 rugs, textiles, and related objects—will be securely housed in a new conservation facility in Virginia. Today, the museum’s second-floor galleries at 2320 S Street are an efficient “re-housing” workshop, where members of the collections and conservation departments systematically secure, pack, and store museum pieces in preparation for the move. This team recently completed a year-long comprehensive survey of the museum’s entire collections. Now, they are addressing roughly 8,500 pieces that require some form of intervention before they can safely leave the building. The re-housing rooms buzz with activity as staff, volunteers, and interns work together to build standard mats and special mounts, tuck fragile textiles into acid-free boxes, and scrupulously record each object’s movements along the way. On a typical afternoon, Associate Conservator for Collections Angela Duckwall mans a wall-mounted mat cutter, cleanly slicing archival blue board down to a standard size. Amanda Varnam, GW graduate student and TM intern, uses the pieces to a construct a passive mat, which will gently secure a Peruvian textile for travel.
Next door—in what was previously the Textile Learning Center—metal shelves are filling with neat rows of blue-grey boxes, packed and clearly marked with detailed labels. Assistant Registrar Tessa Sabol has developed a custom labeling system that will be crucial for tracking objects during the move and for maintaining easy access to the collections. These color-coded labels provide essential information about each box’s contents—unique identification number, full list of objects, geographic details, etc.—in a consistent, visually coherent format. Sabol’s system also saves time: throughout the move, staff will be able to track the contents of each box in aggregate, rather than monitoring each object separately. Maximizing efficiency is a top priority for a team faced with tight time constraints and an impending deadline. The collections and conservation resource center in Ashburn is slated for completion this fall, and objects will be introduced to the new space as early as January 2014—once the building has been conditioned, new equipment tested, and storage furniture installed. The physical transfer of the collections from D.C. to Virginia will be a gradual, months-long endeavor. Boxes must be wrapped in plastic and frozen in batches (to prevent infestation) before they can be admitted to the new facility. Every step of
the way, staff will continue the critical, but time-consuming process of recording each object’s movements. With over one hundred boxes already sealed and ready for transit, this small team of four staff, four volunteers, and seven interns is making steady progress. Their hard work will pay off down the road—the new collections center will enhance the care, study, and enjoyment of the TM collections for decades to come. Chita S. Middleton Communications and Marketing Associate
help move our collections The cost of moving the collections is the responsibility of The Textile Museum, and it is only through your support that we can give each piece the care and attention it needs. To make a gift in support of the museum's collections care and other work, contact Eliza Ward, director of development, at (202) 667-0441, ext. 11 or eward@textilemuseum.org. For more images from The TM's collections survey and move, visit www.textile-museum.tumblr.com
Fall 2013 members’ magazine 5