The conservation treatment of the project focused on stabilizing the entire collection to permit handling by researchers and by staff for cataloguing and digital imaging. Michele Hamill, Paper and Photograph Conservator, supervised Louisa Bennion, conservation technician for the project, in the sorting, surveying, cleaning, and rehousing of the collection. The sorting, by size, and by country, and in some cases by city within country, was conducted prior to cleaning to impose some organization on the collection to facilitate cataloguing and arrangement by curatorial staff. After sorting, the photographs were cleaned to remove the heavy, damaging and disfiguring surface dirt, which greatly improved the appearance of the photographs and facilitated handling and storage. Most mounts of the larger photographs were reinforced on the edges and minor tears and breaks were mended to improve structural stability and handling. A survey was conducted at this point to flag those photographs requiring major treatment beyond cleaning and minor mount repair.

The largest photographs (20" x 24" and 22" x 28") suffered the greatest damage over the years, being stored for decades slumping in bins or haphazardly on open shelving. These photographs were severely warped, which prevented safe handling and storage. Because these photographs were also very dirty and had major mount breaks and tears, they required more conservation treatment to achieve stabilization. Michele Hamill performed extensive cleaning and mount repair, and conducted humidification and flattening to reduce the severe warping. This treatment was highly successful, resulting in improved condition and facilitating the handling and storage of these photographs, some of the most important in the collection.

 

In addition to the mounted photographs, photograph albums were stabilized as part of this project. A collection of 118 large-format photograph albums with mounted albumen photographs, the Clifton Beckwith Brown Memorial albums, were surface cleaned and stored appropriately on library shelving. Photographs from several other albums or scrapbooks —all disintegrating and damaging the contents—were cleaned and rehoused in folders and boxes.

More Information on the Conservation & Preservation of the A. D. White Architectural Photographs
General Information	Re-housing & Progress
	Treatment

The A. D. White Project is funded by a grant from the
Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation
and by a gift from Mr. Patrick A. Gerschel.
The participation of the Cornell Insititute for Digital Collections
has been funded by a gift from Mr. Arthur Penn.

Read a press release about the grant
and the collection