Preserve, Protect, and Defend

Preserve, Protect, and Defend: A Practical Guide to the Care of Collections is an essential text for museum professionals, volunteers and consultants across a wide range of responsibilities: curators, registrars, collections managers, archivists, museum administrators, museum educators, conservators, art historians, operations staff, designers, engineers, architects, building contractors, suppliers, security specialists, and pest control experts.The topics are wide ranging: conservation assessments; practical advice for examining collections and buildings to uncover collection safety issues; routine collection safety practices; preparing for the unexpected, including wind and water penetration, fire and smoke, and infestations; and controlling the museum environment including temperature and relative humidity, light and lighting, and air quality.The book also offers an inside look into the world of museums and the people who work in them. Written in the accessible—and sometimes irreverent—style that the author is famous for, this book is a must-have for everyone who cares for collections and the buildings that house them—museums of all sizes, archives, libraries, and private collections.

Barbara Appelbaum and her firm, Appelbaum and Himmelstein, consult for museums and other collections-holding institutions in the United States and around the world. Based in New York, Appelbaum was trained at New York University and began her career as a conservator at the Brooklyn Museum. In addition to her museum-consulting activities, Appelbaum maintains an active conservation practice where she has worked on innumerable masterwork paintings and objects of all kinds. Projects of note have included George Washington's leather portfolio, a Marcel Duchamp urinal, and a Marilyn Monroe dress. She is also the author of the ground-breaking text Conservation Treatment Methodology, which presents a unified approach to conservation treatment decision-making.