Textile Museum Members' Magazine - Winter 2013 - Feature: "Inch by Inch" by Claire Marie Blaustein

WINTER 2013

ART • TRADITION • CULTURE • INNOVATION

Members’ Magazine

FEATURE

Inch By Inch

Moving The Textile Museum Collections In addition to the museum on GW’s Foggy Bottom campus, The Textile Museum is gaining a home for the collections at the university's satellite campus in Ashburn, Va. This new facility will have many advantages—greater temperature and humidity control, centralized storage, better flow for incoming objects to be processed, and more generally, a situation that will allow greater access to the many beautiful, rare, and fascinating objects in the collections. But before The TM can take full advantage of the new facility, the collections have to move.

Moving collections safely is a process that can take years, but The TM is working on a timeline of about twenty months. In order to make this possible, it will take creative thinking to streamline the process. Part of that thinking is evident in the way that the Collections Management and Conservation Departments, specifically Chief Conservator Esther Méthé and Assistant Registrar Tessa Sabol, have undertaken a complete survey of the 19,000 objects in The Textile Museum’s collections. Since January 2012, they have moved from room to room, using a custom database built by Sabol to create a picture of the current status, requirements for the move, and the future needs of the collections.

A basic part of the survey is for collections management staff to confirm the exact locations of all the objects, so that every piece can be tracked at any phase: within The TM, to the trucks, and into the new space. Any confusion in tracking objects as they are relocated could result in their misplacement, and render them inaccessable for years to come.

The assessment of the collections by conservation staff ensures that objects will be properly secured for transport and safely moved. A large portion of the collection is rolled objects, such as rugs and larger flat pieces, which are mostly safe to move as-is.

It is the smaller, flat textiles that need to be addressed—individually protected, and placed in containers for transport.

For the last six years conservation has been working on a standardized storage system for objects. This includes acid-free boxes, which will be used for the move as objects are removed from the oversized drawer units (which are too big to fit through the doors), as well as for future storage.

The boxes also offer some buffering against sudden environmental change, which can be a real concern, especially when objects are in transit. “We've proven with environmental data that these boxes buffer objects against

This piece, resting on a board and inside an envelope, might slip during transport. It is logged in the survey as needing to be rehoused, and that should be placed in a standard-size passive mat.

fluctuations, which can be harmful," said Sabol. "Although we are moving to a place that will have a stable environment, should we suffer a power outage, for example, the immediate spike in temperature and humidity won't affect the objects.”

Within any given box or drawer, each individual object is stored in a variety of ways. Currently, some are on boards, or in a muslin envelope, or between layers of tissue.

If the current housing of the object is found unsafe for travel, it will be rehoused, and for smaller flat textiles, much of the time that means placing it on a passive mat.

Passive mats are made of an acid-free board with hinged flaps. The textile rests between layers of tissue paper, and the flaps hold the tissue in place without placing weight on the object itself. This method is preferred by conservation as it provides ease of handling, safe access to the textile, and sufficient protection (see photo below).

This is the second part of conservation's standardized storage. As Sabol explained, “Conservation has designed a way of making standard sizes [of mats] for the standard boxes that we use in storage, so mats fit snugly in the box and don’t shift in transit.” Within a box, mats can be made to fit the full box, halves, quarters, etc. There

Once the rehousing process is done, the object will be in a mat like the ones above—the piece is layered in tissue, and held in place by the flaps of the mat—and placed in a box.

Above: Intern Amberly Meli and Esther Méthé surveying an object, photo by Claire Marie Blaustein.; Objects in passive mats, photo by Esther Méthé.

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THE TEXTILE MUSEUM

FEATURE

is a maximum size of object for each mat configuration, so it is simpler to determine what size mat an object needs.

In Sabol’s database there are menus enumerating all the possible variations for rehousing—every size of standard mat, possibilities for custom storage, and more. So by searching the database, staff can see that out of the total number of objects surveyed (on this particular day, 11,076), how many of those need standard-sized (1,676) or customsized (117) mats. Further, and important to the time-consuming construction of the mats, Sabol can break down exactly how many of each standard size of mat is needed, allowing staff to calculate material usage and optimize board cutting, reducing expensive waste.

Mat materials can be calculated in advance, but the production of mats will have to wait until space is available. The twenty-one current storage rooms at the S Street location are small, with some having originally been closets and bathrooms, and none have sufficient space to accommodate all the additional mats and boxes.

“Once Dragons, Nagas, and Creatures of the Deep closes [in January], that space will be converted into rehousing central,” said Sabol. As other exhibitions close, those spaces will also be used to prepare for the move, both for rehousing the objects and then for storage, as the rehoused objects begin to take up more space. Méthé used archeological fragments as an example: “Multiple fragments fit in a box, layered in tissue…once they get mats, it's going to increase from one box to four boxes.”

Multiply that growth by the number of pieces being rehoused, and it is clear why every space is needed.

Expecting this kind of growth also allows Méthé to estimate the kind of storage that is required in the new facilities, which is one example of how the survey is not just about the current state of the objects, or even just the move. It is a mechanism for looking at what the collections need far into the future.

The future needs of the object are the last piece of survey data collected. The shortened timeline means that textiles that could use additional conservation, but are secure enough to move, have to be of lower priority than objects that could be damaged during transport. When the collection is settled in the new space, work can begin on conserving these objects, rather than a time consuming re-assessment of the collections.

Having such complete data is not only valuable for knowing which objects need care, but also in raising the funds needed to pay for that care. “For each group of objects, we now know how much material we will need [to rehouse them], how much it will cost, how many people we need, and we can match that to an appropriate grant," explained Sabol. "The survey is very of the moment now, but….we will hold on to this database, and use it as a tool to plan projects for the next decade.”

Claire Marie Blaustein, Communications and Social Media Associate

HELP OUR COLLECTIONS MOVE SAFELY Archival materials for matmaking are extremely expensive, and the costs of moving the collections are the responsibility of The Textile Museum.

To make a donation and support the museum’s collections care and other work, turn the page for information about the Annual Fund.

Right, top to bottom: Carpet, Iran, Kiman, 17th century. TM R33.6.11. Acquired by George Hewitt Myers in 1926. Photo by Irina Rubenstein; Band, India, 18th century. TM 6.49. Acquired by George Hewitt Myers. Photo by Katy Clune; Hat, Peru, Tiahuanaco culture, 700-1000. TM 91.744. Acquired by George Hewitt Myers in 1957. Photo by Claire Marie Blaustein; Mantle fragment, Peru, Ica Valley, Ocucaje. TM 91.906.

Acquired by George Hewitt Myers in 1957. Photo by Katy Clune. Background photo: Measuring a fragment painted in the Chavin (one of the oldest cultures in Peru) style during the survey. Photo by Claire Marie Blaustein.

The survey is an important part of the museum's move, and it is also a chance to look at some of the treasures of The TM collection. For regular updates on what the survey is looking at, visit The TM on tumblr:

textile-museum.tumblr.com WINTER 2013 MEMBERS’ MAGAZINE

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