Oral History Project

1. Where were you born? Where did you grow up? What was your early training in art? Chemistry? Did you or your parents draw and paint?
2. What schools did you attend? Did you go to graduate school? What were your early jobs? Where have you lived? May we have a copy of your C.V. or your list of publications?
3. How did you first become involved with conservation?
4. Who were the first people you worked with? How did they give you instruction? What were materials used? What were philosophies or approaches? Who were other students who worked alongside you? Please describe your mentors and their approaches to training you.
5. If you were with a conservation department in a museum or private situation, when was it founded? Who founded it? Who were the sympathetic, interested curators? Who were the sympathetic scientists?
6. What was or is your involvement with international groups such as the IIC, ICOM, ICOMOS, etc? Did you attend early meetings and conferences? Which sessions or speakers do you remember as particularly valuable? What were the typical concerns of conference participants in those days?
7. Have you invented any treatments or methods? Brought any materials or approaches to the attention of your colleagues? Are there certain treatments or accomplishments in which you take particular pride? Do you have an especially important moment regarding a treatment or discovery?
8. Do you take apprentices? What students have you trained or worked with? Do you have any children involved with conservation or art? Whom might we interview further about you?
9. What would you consider to be the ideal characteristics of a student or a trainee you would gladly welcome into your department? What do you feel is the ideal method of training?
10. Do you have a different philosophy and approach now? How much of what you do now reflects the theories of your mentors? Do you work for museums or private collectors? Has the type of treatments you have done changed over the years?
11. Would you describe for us a particularly satisfying moment in your career?
12. How much do you feel the conservator or art historian is obligated to educate the public about the profession of art conservation?
13. What part of our profession needs the most research in the future?
14. Do you have suggestions for other people who should be interviewed for our oral history archive?

NOTE: Please try to obtain a formal C.V. or resume from your interviewee as well as a photo. If possible, record the interview with a voice recording device or app. You may also wish to meet virtually; ask if you can record the video meeting. 

Copy and paste this text into a Word document, Google Doc, or PDF and submit the filled and signed form with your interview materials. Send to Oral History Project, c/o Dr. Joyce Hill Stoner, Winterthur Museum, Winterthur DE 19735, 302-888-4888; FAX: 302-888-4838, jhstoner@udel.edu.

Foundation for Advancement in Conservation Oral History Project

Release Form

I hereby give and grant to the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation as a donation for such scholarly and educational purposes as the Foundation shall determine the tape recordings and their contents listed below.

Signature of narrator

Name of narrator

Address of narrator

Signature of interviewer(s)

Name of interviewer(s)

Address of interviewer(s)

Date of agreement:

Subject of tape(s):

Date(s) of interview:

NOTE: Permission to publish any material will be requested separately. By request of the narrator, any portion of the tape or transcript may be closed for a specified time period.

1. Before you go to the interview, learn everything possible about the person to be interviewed and the material you hope to cover. Confirm interview date in writing and by phone. Arrive and depart punctually.
2. Take the whole process seriously. Plan in advance for the interview. Have questions jotted down that you want to ask in addition to the general list for all specialties.
3. Be sure you understand the workings of your recorder. Practice a bit with it before you actually interview. Bring an extension cord to avoid depending on batteries. Use only high quality tape. Please use a good recording system or regular size audio cassettes not the mini ones. Please place the microphone nearer your narrator than to yourself! Please do not do the interview in a noisy room or outdoors.
4. Remember that your narrator is giving the information. Don’t inject yourself unless absolutely necessary. Look interested—be a visibly good listener. Nod, etc.
5. Don’t argue with your narrator and don’t turn the whole thing into a pleasant little chat. Should something be said that you can’t understand, ask questions until you clarify it, and follow up interesting leads.
6. Be very polite to your narrator. S/he is doing you a favor. Keep in mind, however, that you are also doing a favor for your narrator. You are granting him or her a little bit of immortality. People will hear or read these words long after his or her death. This is no small thing. 
7. Before beginning the interview, do everything possible to relax the narrator. This is the time for your chat. Explain what is going to happen. Let the narrator pick the location. 
8. The recorder is there. You can’t hide it. However, be careful to keep it unobtrusive.
9. Take notes as insurance against garbled tape and recorder failure. Also this will help to take the focus off the machine. If new questions occur to you during the interview, add them to a separate list you can consult as needed—this will also prevent uncomfortable pauses or abrupt interruptions.
10. If the narrator drifts off the topic don’t stop him or her. You can always pick up your subject later. Sometimes terrific things emerge by accident. However, utter trivia should be halted as soon as possible.
11. Try not to let the narrator forbid the use of a recorder at the last minute or insist on turning it off periodically. Simply explain that no note taking can be as complete. The tape can always be destroyed after the transcript is typed. (If the recorder is turned off for an anecdote, etc., please try to reconstruct the issues discussed during that period from your memory and give us the notes or the topic, and remember to turn it back on!)
12. PLEASE ASK FOR A C.V. if possible—this turns out to be a crucial component of the file— AND a photo of
    your interviewee, please.
13. Disregard any of the above if you find something more applicable. Develop your own judgments and techniques. Interviewing is a personal thing and that which works for one may not work for another.

NOTE: PLEASE have your narrator sign the release form AT THE END OF THE SESSION. (Otherwise we have gone 20-25 years with misplaced copies, etc.) Please explain that the transcript will be sent and corrections solicited, and that sections can be closed by request, etc. No researcher has yet asked to listen to a tape; all researchers to date have used only the transcripts. FAIC usually is able to pay for the transcription.

SEND TAPE AND RELEASE FORM TO:
Joyce Hill Stoner, c/o Winterthur Museum, Rt. 52, Winterthur, DE 19735 USA

by E. Richard McKinstry, Library Director and Andrew W. Mellon Senior Librarian, H. F. du Pont Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware

Beyond their considerable conservation skills, conservators often have knowledge that few others possess. Such a sentence might not surprise anyone reading this article, since the principal audience of AIC News consists of conservators. However, advanced researchers in the world of academics, Winterthur Library’s primary audience, are often unaware of the contributions that art conservators have made to studies that they are themselves pursuing.

Since our first acquisition in 1981 of the diaries and daybook of Horace Robbins Burdick (1844–1942), we have added about a dozen collections containing the records of art conservators, mainly from paintings conservators. Details about what we have are available through our online library catalog on Winterthur’s website at www.winterthur.org. Conducting a search using the subject ‘art restorers’ will reveal what we have.

Our records hold great potential for those who want to conduct technical studies, follow the work of a specific conservation trend, or study a particular individual. For example, this year we received an application for a short-term research fellowship from an art history professor who is interested in using our collec- tions for a study of American painting practices from the colonial period to the Gilded Age. In particular, he wants to concentrate on color theories and the history of artists’ pigments, oils, solvents, glazing, and binding media, along with other sub-topics. His application contains a list of materials that he wishes to see, including artists’ painting manuals, supply catalogs, books on color and art theory, original manuscript material from Thomas Sully and other artists, and paintings in our museum collection. He also mentions that he hopes to talk with Winterthur’s paintings conservators because of their knowledge of pigments and oil glazing media. Sadly, his application did not include a statement about the value of our growing collections of records of art conservators, specifically paintings conservators.We hope that he will discover the value of these records when he begins his research time with us as part of his fellowship award.

Such possibilities include the papers of Russell and Eleanor Quandt, which we received in 1991 and 1992. Russell was a paintings conservator dur- ing the 1950s and ’60s in and around Washington, DC, and Eleanor assisted her husband in his private practice, assuming responsibilities for technical documentation, reports, correspondence, and historical research.Together, and apart from performing conservation work, they conducted research into the materials and techniques of painting prior to the American Revolution, concentrating on the anonymous painters of the Hudson RiverValley during the first half of the eighteenth century. The Quandt papers have many folders with contents relevant to our research fellow’s topic.They studied, took notes on, and did treatments of many paintings of Upper Hudson Valley limners; they kept articles and papers by others on early American painting; and they retained their correspondence on many and var- ied topics. We suspect that our research fellow will find their work useful as he conducts his own.

In an article published in 2004, Joyce Hill Stoner and I wrote about the importance of making collections of art conservator’s records available to the public (Journal of Archival Organization, vol. 2 no. 3). Our views about the importance of preserving such records are summarized as follows:“As people consider artwork a legacy of American culture so too will they also consider the records generated by individuals who have spent their working lives guaranteeing its long-term survival. Conservators and archival repositories need to work together to ensure that records relating to the treatment of art objects in their many forms be retained and made available to researchers generations from now.”

In addition to their research potential, we have identified seven other areas of value of art conservator’s records:

• Documentation in writing and imagery of specific works of art undergoing treatment
• Documentation of lost works of art
• Information regarding provenance
• Treatment records used to inform subsequent treatments
• Art conservator’s records contributing to the study of the history of conservation
• Records of professional activities, meetings, and teaching
• Maintenance of reference libraries and supply catalogs

If conservators are considering the placement of their records in public institutions, they need to be mind- ful of confidentiality issues. It is of paramount importance to respect the privacy of individuals and their posses- sions; less so, arguably, regarding institutions. In placing records with libraries, conservators may wish to suggest restrictions on access to material that is considered private in nature. Contracts can be written stating that records will someday be made available to researchers, but it is difficult to add such a clause retrospectively.

Although Winterthur’s library has seen its collections of records of art conservators grow since 1981, I suspect that few other libraries have experienced similar expansion.These records present opportunities that archivists undoubtedly have not pursued either because they were unaware of the records’ value or do not know who the conservators are in their respective geographical areas. If you are interested in making your records available to new generations of researchers, please consider contacting a local library or archive and begin the conversation.

-Originally published in AIC News Vol. 32, No. 4 (July 2007)