AIC 53rd Annual Meeting

At the 2024 American Institute for Conservation (AIC) Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, the AIC Emerging Conservation Professionals Network (ECPN), Utah Field Services (UFS), and AIC Textile Specialty Group (TSG) joined forces to describe, assess, and rehouse a collection of ski fashion history objects at the Alf Engen Ski Museum in Park City, Utah. The 2024 service day, or Community Partnership Project (CPP), brought together UFS and AIC members  to serve a local audience in the conference host city.

The Barbara Alley Simon collection comprises 350 separate items and accessories spanning 30 years of ski clothing history (1968-1998), and it is a cornerstone of the Alf Engen Ski Museum. Until recently, the collection featured in an annual fashion show, demonstrating a heavy use of collections in a community-focused way, but in opposition to preservation “best practices.” Textile conservators had not previously consulted on this collection of objects as few conservators work in the region, with even fewer textile-focused conservators available. 

Utah Field Services is a partnership among the Utah Division of Arts & Museums, Utah Humanities, and Utah Historical Society. Together, UFS supports the preservation and access of collections by assisting Utah’s museums and collecting institutions. UFS staff facilitated a community-centered approach, avoiding the extractive/negative associations a host site might feel when allowing strangers to directly handle and address  their collections. TSG was brought into the project, providing specific necessary textile expertise and insight to materials. TSG, is a subset of AIC; conservators interested specifically in the care and preservation of textile materials. AIC and USF ordered supplies and coordinated logistics to support the success of this new interdisciplinary partnership, from conservators to service providers, to host site staff. 

 On May 21, 18 volunteers, spanning from pre-program to professional levels with varying textile experience, broke into production teams. The volunteer teams worked side-by-side with UFS and Alf Engen Ski Museum staff to photograph, assess, label, and fabricate custom protective covers for this unique collection. More than 40 objects were addressed, including  vacuuming furs, creating quality, long-term storage solutions for ski suits, and completing condition documentation for a significant representation of the collection.  

This project helped provide Alf Engen Ski Museum staff the knowledge to continue to care for this collection for the future. Conservation volunteers gained first-hand experience with a very unique collection, with a museum without conservation staff, and with colleagues outside of their region and direct networks. One of the visiting conservators remarked, “This site and project scope allowed conservators to connect, learn, and teach, all while making lasting connections outside of our day-to-day jobs.”  Further, ECPN officers were able to successfully plan and execute collaborative programming, typically outside the scope of their career stage. When practitioners and service providers come together to collaborate with a host site on a project, as participants did at the CPP, the potential for growth and learning, meaningful connections between communities and practitioners, success and productivity, and the long term stability of collections is increased.