Historical Perspectives on Preventive Conservation (Readings in Conservation) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1606061429 ISBN 13: 9781606061428

Publisher: Getty Conservation Institute, 2013

Synopsis

This is the sixth volume to appear in the Getty Conservation Institute’s Readings in Conservation series, which gathers and publishes texts that have been influential in the development of thinking about the conservation of cultural heritage. The present volume provides a selection of more than sixty-five texts tracing the development of the field of preventive conservation from antiquity to the present day.

The volume is divided into nine parts: Philosophies of Preventive Conservation, Keeping Things, Early Years of Conservation in Museums, Relative Humidity and Temperature, Light, Pests, Pollution, The Museum Environment and Risk Management, and Future Trends. Writings by such well-known figures as M. Vitruvius Pollio, John Ruskin, and Rachel Carson are complemented by selections from diverse sources including early housekeeping books, eighteenth-century archivist manuals, and Victorian novels. Other seminal texts include John Evelyn’s seventeenth-century tract on air pollution in London and the founding manifesto of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings by William Morris. There is also a wide-ranging representation of recent scholarship, including writings from non-Western traditions such as India and Japan. Each reading is introduced by short prefatory remarks explaining the rationale for its selection and the principal matters covered. There is also a bibliography.

Intended especially for students, this volume will also be of interest to conservators, museum curators, collection managers, and others involved in caring for collections and objects.

About this title

About the Author

Sarah Staniforth is museums and collections director at the National Trust in London.

Edition details

• Publisher: Getty Conservation Institute
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1606061429
• ISBN 13: 9781606061428
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 456
• Editor: Staniforth Sarah