One of the many responsibilities of the Emory Libraries Conservation Lab is to rehouse scrapbooks from The African American History Collection at The Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library. The collection consists of scrapbooks and photo albums from prominent authors, educators, entertainers, and historical figures. The preservation of these items is important to chronicling Black lives through their own lens and supplying a counterpoint to popular historical rhetoric and ideas. Often they are overstuffed with rare photographs, personal memorabilia, or yellowing newspaper articles. The original pages can be acidic, brittle, and collected in a photo album that is degrading.

The Stuart A. Rose Library loaned rare 17th- and 18th-century books to the Michael C. Carlos Museum for the exhibition Through a Glass, Darkly: Allegory and Faith in Netherlandish Prints from Lucas van Leyden to Rembrandt. On this and other exhibitions, Emory University Library conservators work with the Carlos Museum conservators and exhibition designers to ensure that special collections books are displayed in the safest conditions.

Having worked with clay from a young age, I love seeing the diversity of ceramic objects in the Carlos’ collection. The range of techniques used throughout human history to form, fire, and decorate clay vessels and the similarities of techniques used across cultural lines is fascinating. Due to the fact that clay is such an accessible medium for creating, ceramic objects can be found in every gallery at the Carlos, some of which include slip-decorated Nazca vessels, a glazed Roman chalice, an incised Makonde pot, and a highly detailed black figure Attic vase. Each object was formed and decorated in its own unique way; however, the similarities in materials and processes used lead to a number of shared condition issues.

Before the Carlos Museum closed in March due to COVID-19-related safety concerns, museum staff prepared and installed a number of baskets in the Native North Americas gallery as part of an annual rotation to limit light exposure for especially vulnerable objects.

The Parsons Conservation Laboratory is located on the Plaza Level of the Carlos Museum, in an area accessible only to staff. In celebration of the museum’s centennial, conservators have set up a temporary lab space in the John Howett Works on Paper Gallery. 

This summer, in honor of the Carlos Museum’s centennial, a pop-up conservation experience in the John Howett Works on Paper Gallery will reveal one typically unseen aspect of museum work when visitors encounter conservators treating a Jain painting of a Cosmic Man.