Samuel H. Kress Foundation awards grant to BPOC and BACC for an innovative resource for conservation & collections care training

Media Contact: Maren Dougherty, Balboa Park Online Collaborative

San Diego, CA –The Samuel H. Kress Foundation has awarded a $145,000 grant to the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC) and the Balboa Art Conservation Center (BACC) for ConservationReel, a project to gather and present video on art conservation and collections care in an online resource intended for museum and conservation professionals, students, and interested members of the general public.

No such centralized resource of this type currently exists, and the project is particularly relevant given the challenges faced by today’s museums of providing cost-effective training opportunities and funding staff travel to conferences and workshops.

ConservationReel’s content will include video on collections care practices such as framing, packing, and storage; behind-the-scenes videos of conservators at work; videos from conservation conferences along with supporting materials such as slide decks and transcripts; and videos on related topics from international conservation organizations and museum conservation and scientific research departments. These resources are currently difficult or impossible for users to find online.

The resource will be modeled on the groundbreaking ArtBabble site developed and launched by the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2009. ArtBabble gathers video contributed by museums and arts organizations in a free online resource that promotes an educational interactive experience for art enthusiasts, students, and professionals. The successes of ArtBabble and the Smarthistory project—which relies on video storytelling to communicate the history of Western art—have demonstrated the value of video as a medium for teaching and learning in the museum community.

ConservationReel will build on the achievements of those projects to develop a resource that will focus on the specific needs of museum and conservation professionals. Janet Ruggles, BACC’s Executive Director and Chief Conservator of Paper, will serve as the project’s content lead.

“Video programming through the Babble platform is an important means of delivery to allow museum staff ready access to training,” said Ruggles, an experienced conservator who has worked at BACC since 1982. “Our goal is to provide a continuum of training experiences for collections-holding institutions—particularly the many with serious time and budget constraints.”

BPOC’s Director Rich Cherry will serve as technical lead, working closely with the development team at the IMA Labs at the Indianapolis Museum of Art to customize and implement the Babble platform software.

“This award is important both for the project's value to the conservation and museum communities, but also to the public at large who are generally very interested in the conservation and transformation of works of art,” said John Wilson, Executive Director of the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego. “It is also significant as recognition by a major foundation that BPOC is the right partner for using cutting edge of technology to address cultural organizations' mission related tasks. We at the Timken are very fortunate to have BPOC as part of our cultural community and thankful for the support of the Kress Foundation and the Legler Benbough Foundation for supporting this exciting endeavor.”

About the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

The mission of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (est. 1929) is to sustain and carry out the original vision of its founder, Samuel H. Kress (1863-1955). The foundation supports the work of individuals and institutions engaged with the appreciation, interpretation, preservation, study and teaching of the history of European art and architecture from antiquity to the dawn of the modern era. www.kressfoundation.org

About the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC)

Founded in 2008 by the Legler Benbough Foundation, BPOC supports 27 cultural institutions in San Diego’s Balboa Park. Its mission is to: facilitate and execute a fundamental change in the way museums, cultural arts and science institutions in Balboa Park approach the use of online technology by making online technology an integral part of the way the institutions fulfill their missions, interact with patrons, and collaborate; improve their technology capabilities while reducing costs by bringing organizations with similar needs together on mutually beneficial projects; and allow smaller institutions the benefit of having technology systems of the same quality as larger organizations, who in turn benefit from streamlined expenditures. www.bpoc.org/ @bpoc_sd

About the Balboa Art Conservation Center (BACC)

BACC is a nonprofit regional conservation center devoted to the preservation of material culture. The Center serves both institutions and private collectors in the western region of the United States with an approach to collections care that is comprehensive and broad based. The conservators on staff are highly trained and well qualified to provide services such as environmental evaluation and storage design, the formulation and implementation of complex treatments for works on paper and paintings, and technical analysis in support of art historical study. BACC also operates the Western Region Field Service Program (WRFSP), which currently provides museums and historical organizations with workshops in basic preservation theory and practice, on-site preservation planning surveys, consultation of specific preservation issues, and reference and technical inquiry response services. www.bacc.org