Seeing the Invisible: An Insight to Conservation
The preservation and care of museum collections is an area of work mostly unseen by the public. It is in reality, a crucial component in the functioning of any museum.
Conservators would take as much care when treating a 1950s tin box as they would a 300 year-old painting.
“Seeing the Invisible: An Insight to Conservation” is an exhibition put up by the Heritage Conservation Centre in the Shaw Foyer Gallery of the Asian Civilisation Museum from 25 July to 13 December 2009 that unveiled the rare behind-the-scenes tour, to get a glimpse of what goes on behind the walls of the Heritage Conservation Centre (HCC). See what happens during the process of conservation treatment, and discover how ‘heritage conservation’ is an art as much as it is a science.
For those of you who missed it or would like to revisit the exhibition, this is the chance for you!
Heritage Conservation Centre invites you to browse through the various pages and spend time in the comfort of your home to understand more about Conservation. The exhibition consist of the following sections:
Singapore’s Climatic Conditions and Challenges
Conservation of Peranakan Wedding Bed
We hope you will enjoy this on-line presentation, do leave us your comments. For more information about Heritage Conservation Centre, please visit our website at www.hcc.sg.
NSF-Informal Science Education proposal on conservation science
Dear “Seeing the Invisible” exhibit director,
I am a physicist, conservation scientist, current fellow at the Metropolitan museum, Dept of Scientific Research.
I am writing you because of my project “Uncovering secrets” which is closed in content to your exhibit.
I submitted a 6-page preliminary proposal to NSF’s Informal Science Education program in collaboration with Portland State University and other partners. We have been “encouraged” to submit a full proposal, with 3 out of 3 positive reviewer comments. The full proposal is due 7-December.
We are proposing a project designed to engage audiences in Science topics through discovery-based traveling and virtual exhibits on the science of cultural heritage (conservation science). The traveling exhibit will contain hands-on activities through which the visitors will reveal “hidden secrets” by means of real and simulated scientific equipment and will be hosted by art museums in US. The virtual exhibit will illustrate at least 50 case studies of cultural heritage science. In partnership with IDEA.org, we will develop this virtual exhibit, which will be richly illustrated, contain interactive, virtual experiments, and include audio and video clips.
I’m writing to ask you if you can provide me with evaluation data regarding your exhibit. I need indeed to have data in order to check how people are interested to scientific investigation of art works.
I can tell you more about the innovation, broader impact, or send you the NSF pre-proposal and reviewer comments.
Kind regards,
Antonino