Nine years ago I wrote Happy Paper Anniversary?—a year’s celebration of the Archives’ conservation lab becoming a manifest presence within our primary location. Since then, we have continued to grow, undertake unusual challenges, take on many interesting projects, and welcomed and said farewell to many staff, volunteers, interns and fellows we’ve supported from around the world. Many of our alumni have gone on to become graduate students, professional conservators and leaders in their own right, while some have carved new paths in related careers, including forensics and material engineering sciences. Some even fell in love…with each other!
Rather than focusing our lens on projects, we thought this should be a celebration honoring some of the many folks who have passed through our portal. (If you don’t find yourself pictured, note that it may just be because we don’t have a non-peering-through-the-microscope picture of you. Feel free to send us a selfie from your time here to add to our alumni album!)
In honor of the tenth anniversary of the lab, here is a glimpse into our own photographic history, in which we rely neither on tintypes nor direct prints on aluminum, but present a slideshow of images brought to you in part by multiple base, precious and rare metals, and as ever, photons.
Postgraduate Fellow in Conservation Beth Antoine prepares samples of iron gallotannate copying inks for artificial aging and treatment tests, assisted by volunteer Ricardo Penuela-Pava. 2010. Photo: Nora Lockshin
Volunteer Valarie Platz surface cleans Watson Davis’ Personal Papers in the processing room. 2011. Photo: Nora Lockshin.
Win Suen and Elizabeth Childs help assess and move collections during the pilot assessment for the Field Book Project. 2011. Photo: Anna Friedman.
Sarah Stauderman gets back to the bench in a workshop for the Field Book Project interns. 2013. Photo: Kirsten Tyree.
An exo-sortie mission to assess an unususual immovable object – the Photomosaic Globe Of Mars, NASM A20130178000. Tessa Gadomski with colleague Lisa Young pictured in foreground. 2013. Photo: Nora Lockshin.
An exo-sortie mission to assess an unususual immovable object – the Photomosaic Globe Of Mars, NASM A20130178000. Greta Glaser measures photographic condition with a spectrometer-colorimeter. 2013. Photo: Nora Lockshin.
Andrea K. Hall manages to maintain order of thousands of “toe tags” that had been removed from bird specimens to a ledger book at some point (we try not to do that today!).
Noah Smutz tries his hand at marbling on a “Fun Friday”, even if it appears to have been a Thursday. 2013. Photo: Nora Lockshin.
Janelle Batkin-Hall and Kirsten Tyree try their hand at marbling on a “Fun Friday”, even if it appears to have been a Thursday. 2013.
Archives of American Art interns Sarah Casto and Marie Desrochers hang handmade solvent/heat-set repair tissues to dry. 2015. Photo: Nora Lockshin.
Laura Dellapiana patiently poses for our “Faces of SIA” portrait corkboard at the start of her fellowship. 2015. Photo: Nora Lockshin.
Alison Reppert Gerber expresses the sheer joy of appropriate waste management, while colleagues discuss something completely different in the background! 2018. Photo: Nora Lockshin.
Melissa Carrillo and Joanna Shuker make custom heat and solvent-set tissues for the NMNH World of Maps project. 2018.
William Bennett and Miguel Resendiz look over the progress on humidification of the Dawson map. 2019. Photo: Nora Lockshin.
Heather Weiss removes an unusual fastener from a thick document prior to its’ imaging – leading Miguel Resendiz (behind her) down an interesting path of searching Google Patents! 2019. Photo: Nora Lockshin.
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