Sarah Spafford-Ricci teaches “Storing Your Collection” workshop for museum professionals

Sarah Spafford-Ricci developed and delivered a workshop on museum and gallery storage to museum, gallery and archives professionals for the British Columbia Museum Association.  This workshop, held on April 15^th, 2014 at the Museum of Vancouver (MOV) was directed at understanding the agents that cause deterioration of historic and art collections, and how to maximize collection preservation in long-term storage. Topics that were covered throughout the day included designing a storage space for preservation, storage furnishings, preparing artifacts and archival material for storage, mitigating effects of a disaster, condition reports, and storage materials and techniques for different materials and object types.  Lively discussion took place and the session included hands-on projects wherein participants made a padded hanger and encapsulated an archival document.  Sarah demonstrated techniques such as dry surface cleaning prior to storage, and storage mount preparation, and participants received a sample book of acceptable storage materials to take back to their institutions.