Mold Mitigation Project - Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center

October 2005 - January 2006

Conservation Technician

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Working as a conservation technician, I assisted the Ransom Center’s project to remove mold from contaminated books and works of art in their collection.  Working in teams of two, technicians removed a low-grade layer of mold from the edges of textblocks and boards of books and from the surfaces of paintings using a HEPA filtered vacuum cleaner, dust trapping cloths, and dry cleaning erasers.  All mold removal work was conducted inside a HEPA filtered fume hood while wearing protective gear.  (Proctective gear included Tyvek suits with hoods, shoe covers, nitrile gloves, and an N-95 paper mask or fitted half-face-respirator.)

Mississippi Gulf Coast Recovery Project - Winterthur Museum and Country Estate

May - June 2006

Student Intern

For seven weeks, I interned at the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate in Winterthur, Delaware as a participant in the Mississippi Gulf Coast Recovery Project.  The University of Delaware Art Conservation Program organized this project a few months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the coast of Mississippi and funded it with a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

During my seven weeks at Winterthur I worked under the supervision of Lois Olcott Price, Senior Conservator of Library Collections at Winterthur, and assisted in the assessment, documentation, and treatment of books and photographs damaged by the hurricane.  These items were sent to us from Beauvoir, the retirement home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, the Pleasant Reed House at the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art, and the Biloxi Public Library. 

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Due to a two and a half week delay in the arrival of Katrina materials, work on Winterthur projects was assigned by Lois.  Projects included co-authoring the mold section in the Winterthur Preventative Conservation Manual and assessing and treating 119 stained glass cartoon drawings from the Winterthur collection. The mold section outlined the steps for the prevention, identification and recovery of a mold outbreak. Treatment of the stained glass cartoons included humidification and flattening, dry cleaning, minor mending, and re-housing. 

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The attached report outlines the projects that Anna Friedman, a fellow conservation student at the Kilgarlin Center, and I participated in during our internship at Winterthur. 

Click here to view the report