AIC 53rd Annual Meeting

Artifacts need to be stored somewhere, but there’s always a range of options from dirty basements to scorching attics with pests, mold, lead, and all sorts of other hazards and issues. It doesn’t happen in everyone’s career that they have to move an entire artifact collection, but usually when it does, they don’t get a choice on where the artifacts will be stored. Once in a great while, you get the opportunity to have a brand new custom storage facility, and if you’re REALLY lucky, then you’re included in the project to be able to advocate for the collection and how it will be stored. This was one of those times.

This was a construction project for a fully-roofed and insulated, three-hour fire-rated climate-controlled collection storage building inside of a “temporary” warehouse built in 1941. (We can see how well that temporary thing went.) To complicate this build further, this was to be done on a highly secure Naval base in Newport, RI. This complicates the process of finding contractors, getting people on base to do the work, getting construction equipment on the base, and what can even be ordered to be used for the project.

Thankfully, a trained conservator was brought into the project at the very beginning stages of it, making sure that every need was considered for the space to function best for the artifacts. Temperature, humidity, lighting, conservation equipment, sinks, door heights, exact high-density storage needs, fire suppression systems, office areas, etc. were all able to be considered in the beginning, instead of at the end, or not at all.

This talk will cover the struggles and triumphs from the very beginning of the project, through its completion. Unforeseen problems along the way will be discussed to help others in the future for their own considerations when completing a similar project. Conservators aren’t, generally speaking, also construction specialists, so hopefully, this talk will give some helpful tips to be considered in other collections’ construction projects.