Posts tagged conservation
Treating the 1297 Magna Carta
Conservation at the National Archives is pretty amazing. Can you imagine treating one of the most important documents in world history? Not only have our conservators worked on the Charters of Freedom, but recently they turned their attention to the 1297 Rubenstein Magna Carta. Treatment was one phase of a major project leading to its encasement and public display.
This video shows a behind-the-scenes look at the treatment and encasement of this milestone document.
French Museum: Irradiate That Dead Mammoth, S’il Vous Plait
In July 2009, a hunter found the mammoth, now known as Khoma, partially frozen in Siberia. Foxes had used the animal as a giant chew toy, and it was missing bits of its head and trunk. Still, at over 50,000 years old Khoma was a prize: the oldest known mammoth infant.
Tests have revealed that really old microbes live inside the frozen corpse, and researchers say the mix may include the bacterium anthracis, which can lead to anthrax and black lung disease. Researchers want to irradiate the animal to kill off these microbes before giving the furry babe an autopsy and putting it up for display.
Laurent Cortella, a nuclear physician, told the AFP:
“Our baby, inside its box, will undergo three to four days of a continuous bombardment of 20,000 grays of gamma rays,” he said, grays being the unit that measures absorbed dosage…. “The slightest lethargic little germ from time immemorial hasn’t the least chance of resisting when you realise that one gamma ray of four grays kills a human.”
The lab has used the same technique on other old stuff, including one celebrity corpse: the 1,800-year-old mummy of Ramses II, who had a nasty fungal infection.
The Smithsonian is leading a team of cultural organizations to help the Haitian government assess, recover and restore Haiti’s cultural materials damaged by the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. A building in Port-au-Prince that once housed the United Nations Development Programme will be leased by the Smithsonian and will serve as a temporary conservation site where objects retrieved from the rubble can be assessed, conserved and stored.
Smithsonian American Art Museum objects conservator Hugh Shockey is traveling with several other Smithsonian employees on the recovery team, and has been sending us updates and pictures of the tasks at hand. Hopefully, with the hard work of Hugh and his colleagues, Haitian conservators can be trained to take over the restoration and protection of objects displaced by the earthquake, ensuring their safety and preserving Haiti’s rich heritage for generations to come.
For additional coverage visit our Flickr set of Shockey’s photographs and our Facebook page.
