Think about it: how much time do you spend working with colleagues to achieve preservation-conducive conditions at your institution and managing expectations? How much of that work have you had to do on the fly? In the hall? At lunch? Looking at HVAC equipment, or over floodwaters? Wouldn’t you like to sit down and enjoy a day to focus on shared goals between conservation and facilities colleagues? Join the American Institute for Conservation’s (AIC) Collection Care Network (

This weekend, Dr. V, Jake, and myself went up to Albany to visit the New York State Museum. We had the very good luck of running into Kate Weller, Chief of Museum Education, Visitor Services and Public Programs. She gave us all the information we needed to have a great day – and at the same time, she was managing a slew of events for the New York in Bloom event that day. Many thanks! New York State Museum Cultural Education Center. RL Fifield Photo, 2016. I had no previous kn

Originally published at rebeccafifieldpreservation.com. If you’ve ever taken a management or marketing course, you’ve probably heard of the elevator pitch. An elevator pitch is a short, 30-second statement about you, your business and goals, and what you can do for your potential client or employer. Recommendations for crafting such a statement include “make it about the audience” and “don’t use jargon or acronyms.” We can also make elevator pitches for the preservation work

I was at a children’s playgroup in Beacon, New York yesterday with my son. Yet again, I was trying to pull together in a coherent thread that thing I do. This challenge can be difficult among my cultural heritage peers, let alone a more generalist audience. I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great to have one of those jobs where I could say “I’m a dentist!” and everyone would understand what I mean? Preserving and celebrating cultural heritage is my dream job, but I realize

If you mourn the destruction of the late, great Pennsylvania Station in NYC, you’ll find this glass heralding the coming of the new Madison Square Garden as chilling and cheap as the new building itself. Yesterday found Dr. V, Mr. J, and I at the Danbury Railway Museum. I had used the Metro North Danbury station before but never made it inside the doors of Danbury’s 1903 New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad Station. I had ridden up to Danbury to visit with Ms. M, a Danb

Originally published at rebeccafifieldpreservation.com. Lots of folks go to New Orleans for conferences. Within the distinctive streets of the French Quarter, it’s not uncommon to trip across people tagged with conference badges. The overtones of business lend an air of “networking” to the nightlife, though the line between tourist and conference-goer in New Orleans is rather thin. I saw at least 2 other conferences sharing the city with the conferences I was attending, the A

I have spent my life caring for cultural heritage. As a museum collection manager, my work aims to preserve the physical and intellectual values of collections by limiting risks, such as pollutants, inappropriate environment, pests, physical distortion, loss of information, and so on. When I was a teen, I worked with the rural material culture of Maryland farmers. Later, I worked with collections at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and eventually,

RL Fifield. I attended the American Institute for Conservation’s Annual Meeting in Indianapolis at the end of May. The opening reception was on a steamy night at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA). While the reception was welcoming, it was difficult for the conference attendees to fully forget during these festivities that IMA had just decimated several senior conservation staff positions, part 21 positions lost during recent restructuring. However, as I worked my way throu

I’m in residence at Winterthur Museum, Library, and Garden working on my 18th century runaway project and participating in a preventive conservation exchange. I’m extremely grateful to have this time to focus on my projects and to work with the incredible collection and staff at Winterthur. While my posts won’t be as regular, I’ll try to slip in a few tidbits here and there. To the books! #slavery #research #Winterthur #Delaware #runaway #museum #indenture #collectioncare #li

There was a thread on the Registrar’s Committee of the American Association of Museum’s list serve this week about the Ideal Registration Kit. By the end of the week, the whole discussion had become rather punchy and the list had grown to include a forklift (mind you, the tools were supposed to fit a small toolbox, or garden tool bag). But I enjoyed what tools colleagues had cobbled together for their work and there were some especially good ideas for head lamps. I’m  a colle

Stop doing this! Switch from cotton gloves to nitrile. They’ve been with us for years. The basket of white cotton gloves we were taught to use to handle objects, to protect objects from the oils and dirt on our hands. Many of us have moved on to using nitrile, and here’s why the rest of you need to get on the bandwagon. You can’t get the gloves truly clean –  Don’t fool yourself. Washing them in the washing machine is not removing all the dirt from within the knit fabric of t

Has anyone else been outraged by the clips on WNYC when they ask people on the street “Who is Beethoven?” followed by soundbites of multiple people saying “a dog!” (see here for WQXR’s Beethoven Awareness Month program) Last week’s work took me to Bonn, Germany. The city still has an old feel, receiving less bomb damage than many of its counterparts. The rule here is to be a slightly lesser city right next door to two cities of greater importance. Beethoven’s Birthplace, Bonn

People generally know one thing about Johnstown, PA: the flood. The Johnstown Flood National Memorial is located on the rim of the former recreational lake that burst on May 31, 1899 and spilled 20 million tons of water into the town below, killing 2,209. The local Johnstown Flood Museum is located in a former Carnegie Library, a building built to replace the original library destroyed in the flood. Johnstown Inclined Plane – whoa! RL Fifield 2008. The Johnstown Inclined Plan

I think I heard about this study on the Registrar’s Committee of the American Alliance of Museum’s listserve, a very long time ago. If anyone knows the source, please comment below – I’d love to give credit where it is due. Edvard Munch. The Scream. National Gallery of Norway. Wikimedia Commons. A museum professional did a survey of murder mysteries set in museums. They tallied which staff members were most likely to be the victim of the crime, and by what means they were off

RL Fifield 2009. A fantastic collection in an incredible building tell the epic story of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The 1884 Roundhouse that serves as the centerpiece of the museum complex sits on the site the birthplace of American railroading, the ground dedicated to that purpose since 1829. The museum celebrates technology, travel, and business, and its quietness is a memorial to the shrinkage of the passenger rail industry and the shift of freight handling out of the

How to cover a 400 year old mattress? Comparing dusts vacuumed from a chair every three years to tell if it is deteriorating? Condition survey of a stone floor, tile by tile? A mummified rat from the attic? That’s a quick romp through the preventive conservation blog of the Conservation Team at Knole House, a UK National Trust property. Knole House Blog, UK National Trust. http://knolenationaltrust.wordpress.com Knole House is doing the important work of making preventive con

Integrated Pest Management (IPM). It sounds like I wield a tiny whip and chair in my top hat, taming a circus of cockroaches, mice, and odd beetles. Not quite. IPM is a system of monitoring, housekeeping, and selective treatment used to prevent infestation and the resulting damage to museum collections. It is one of the weapons in a collection manager’s or preventive conservator’s arsenal. Why not treat everything with pesticide, you might ask? That was exactly the approach f

I hear the occasional grumble. Why is that photo of that object so bad? Why isn’t there an online database? Why are only selected objects online? Why can’t museums get their acts together? Creating a structure to fit a mid-1770s gown. RL Fifield, 2003. I worked on a grant project for three years photographing a large chunk of a major art museum’s costume collection. In that time, we photographed 7,000 objects in three years. Pre-Columbian textile fragments. Black socks. Purse

This week I’m off to the American Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) annual meeting, this year in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It will be the first time I’ve visited New Mexico, so I’m looking forward to seeing friends and eating some good grub while I’m there. I understand if I want both red and green sauces, it’s called “Christmas.” Of particular note, this will be the inaugural meeting for the AIC Collection Care Network (CCN). The CCN is a net

A swatch preserved in the billet books at the London Metropolitan Archives. Thomas Coram Foundation for Children. Foundling number 12250, admitted April 2, 1759. In January of 2010, I arrived in London six hours late due to abnormal ice and snow conditions. One cancelled flight, one airport switch, and a six hour delay got me to the London Metropolitan Archives at 3pm. London was a mess – a shortage of snowmelt salt (which is a sickening pink) made all the sidewalks treachero