I am an archivist with very little experience with art. My institution is the special collections unit of a university library on a large university campus in the United States. Our goal is to preserve and provide access to our materials.
We have a collection of an artist's papers which includes 56 unframed oil and watercolor paintings on "millboard" that contains asbestos. Most of the paintings are 21 inches by 14 inches. When they were donated, they were marked as being on material that contained asbestos, and our industrial hygienist on campus testing and confirmed the presence of asbestos. The edges of some of the paintings are fraying. The paintings have been stored in flat storage boxes until now. Neither I nor our industrial hygienist have dealt with asbestos in artwork before. The industrial hygienist gave us the following options for what to do with these paintings: encapsulation (covering each painting with a sealant to prevent fiber release), enclosure (putting each painting in something that creates an air-tight barrier), or encasement (covering each painting with a hard-setting sealing material). My department director also suggested having our industrial hygienist scan or photograph a few of the paintings so that researchers could have a sample to view, then closing access to the boxes (and finding a way to make them airtight). Does anyone have advice as to which of these solutions will cause the least damage to the paintings and still encapsulate the surface well enough and long enough to be effective? I also would appreciate recommendations of any products that would be appropriate for encapsulation or enclosure of this type of painting. If we can get recommendations for products/solutions that our asbestos-trained personnel on campus can apply, that would probably be ideal. Thank you for your advice, Jane Metters LaBarbara Assistant Curator, West Virginia & Regional History Center West Virginia University Libraries 1-304-293-0352 [email protected] ****** Unsubscribe by sending a message to [email protected] Searchable archives: http://cool.conservation-us.org/byform/mailing-lists/cdl/
