Hi all, I hope you're all faring as best as can be during this challenging time.
We have some large sculptural furniture (varying from 2-10 metres) items being shipped from South Africa to here in Melbourne, Australia, and we are trying to plan for potential pest issues and possible quarantine directives. They comprise of a metal framework, with stretched and stitched leather, woollen cord made into essentially a deep-pile carpet, recycled plastic components, and various padding materials. Historically our government quarantine department usually advocate methyl bromide for pest treatments, and we will often acquire permission to use our low-oxygen/nitrogen system to treat works instead to limit any damage the gas can do to proteins (as we've read about). However in this case we wont have enough room or time prior to display to be able to use this treatment method. Our other option then would be to freeze the works, but this has potential risks too with the stretched leather, and that they may not be able to be prepared for freezing as we normally would (wrapping in plastic with buffering material, packing out airspaces etc). The institution we normally use for freezing large objects may not have space available, so we'd also need to consider off-site commercial freezing. To my knowledge we don't have any heat treating facilities here and have no experience using them. Would anyone have any suggestions of alternatives or experience of damage they've seen from methyl bromide to artworks, or freezing of stretched leathers? I'm trying to work out what treatment method may present the least risk of damage, with ideally an approx two week turnaround, if we are obliged to treat the works under a quarantine directive. With thanks for any advice you can offer, Suzi Suzi Shaw Conservator, Frames and Furniture National Gallery of Victoria 180 St Kilda Road Melbourne VIC 3004 T: +61 3 8620 2123 F: +61 3 8620 2555 M: NGV.MELBOURNE Follow us at NGV Melbourne: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter. Share your experience via the hashtag #ngv while here, then come behind-the-scenes, keep up to date and interact with us post-visit. Visit the NGV Blog and sign up to NGV e-news. DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for [email protected]. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute, copy or alter this email. WARNING: Although the National Gallery of Victoria has taken reasonable precautions to ensure no viruses are present in this email, the organisation cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this email or attachments. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MuseumPests" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pestlist/ME2PR01MB3972C60FC1FB67BC9837CB3A8B690%40ME2PR01MB3972.ausprd01.prod.outlook.com.
