AIC's 53rd Annual Meeting

The stewardship and exhibition of cultural heritage collections demands careful balance between preservation, institutional mandates, and visitor experience. Conservators and curators at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (CWF) have been refining tools and techniques for managing light exposure while navigating a range of factors that have impacted methods of implementation – creating challenges and providing new avenues for thinking about how our actions impact the collections in our care. Four of these factors will be discussed – institutional priorities, improvements to data collection and interpretation, impact on staff, and the role of visitors – with a brief discussion of future plans.   

With 35 galleries across two museums and limited staff, curators and conservators are regularly asked to extend exhibition periods beyond originally scheduled end dates. Institutional habits and staff resource availability have been the driving factor for exhibition decision making. The conservation team has increased efforts to incorporate data into exhibition planning conversations by tracking light exposure levels and durations for motion-activated lighting and measuring light-induced change through spectrophotometry.  These documentation activities are incorporated into long-standing exhibition practices. We are now able to introduce exhibit light budgets, based on this data, with a corresponding review triggered when the budget is near exhaustion. The predictive data from microfade testing is expected to further inform light budgets.   

Pressures to extend exhibition durations of sensitive media have a direct impact on staff. They express concerns about knowingly inducing significant change in collections. This has required a reframing of the language used to describe the impact of our exhibition policies, shifting from “damage” to “change”. Longer exhibition durations yield reduced opportunities for curatorial research and writing exhibitions. Collaborative conversations about exhibition lengths, initially framed around light levels and sensitivity of artifacts, have become a platform to advocate for limiting exhibition durations based on CWF’s mission as an educational institution and our preference to rotate objects or curate new exhibitions regardless of sensitivity of the media. Lack of long-term planning impacts how collections are treated. The perception of staff time being inordinately usurped by maintenance of light-sensitive media overrides consideration for the sensitivities of other object types like paintings and furniture on display in exhibitions not officially described as permanent.  

Historically, the visitor’s role in exhibition decisions has been based on assumptions. Staff now collect data on the use of light dosage limiting efforts, like motion activated or push button lighting, to better understand how visitors interact with exhibition spaces with low light levels. A new emphasis on visitor surveys provides valuable information to help us understand our visitors and their perceptions and preferences.   

The development of these policies is ongoing, with an eye toward addressing objects that have been on display for long periods of time. Bringing these discussions to the forefront makes us more collaborative in implementing decisions that balance preservation and access.