The artwork Le Terrain du dictionnaire A/Z was created in 1980 by artist Rober Racine. It is composed of 55,000 words taken from the dictionary, Le Petit Robert, adhered to cardboard labels and arranged in alphabetical order on polystyrene panels. The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) requested to have the artwork conserved at the Centre de conservation du Québec (Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications) due to significant changes in condition which prevented the museum from approving loan requests. The piece was affected by several types of deterioration over time, especially the cardboard labels, on which a third of the applied adhesive tape had yellowed. This deterioration altered as much the materiality of the artwork as its appearance. But this problem hid another. Many of the cardboard labels were in the wrong place, in contradiction with the artist’s intent to rigorously respect alphabetical order. In collaboration with Rober Racine and the MAC, we began the work of historical documentation, reflection and discussion about different conservation treatment options. Should we treat the adhesive tape or not? Should we intervene and move incorrectly placed words to the right place? Between considering the artwork’s conservation needs and respecting the artist’s intent, this article presents our decision-making process as it relates to issues specific to the conservation of contemporary art.

Conservators and archaeologists share common interests around the preservation of important iconographic information as manifest in physical remnants, but there has long been an “uneasy relationship” between the two fields, partly due to a divide that begins early in the education of both professions. North American graduate-level conservation programs and classical archaeology departments have been making efforts to bridge divisions in learning through coursework, joint workshops and field training. In Canada more specifically, faculty from the Master of Art Conservation Program and the Department of Classics and Archaeology at Queen’s University have addressed this issue by fostering interdisciplinary exchanges using the Diniacopoulos Collection, a collection of ancient Mediterranean artifacts that was acquired by Queen’s University for the purpose of training students. Queen’s faculty took collaborations to the next level through an initiative that called for archaeology and conservation students to create something together: in 2022 graduate students developed an exhibition and symposium – Antiquities through Modern Eyes – highlighting their investigative work on an Athenian black-figure lekythos, an Athenian red-figure lebes gamikos, a Tanagra group and coins. In addition to the exhibition, students created a printed catalogue of the pieces on exhibit and a website in order to share images and didactic information on the artifacts. This paper will outline the process of deepening interdisciplinary understanding through joint knowledge sharing.

Used in architecture for millennia, mortars and renders represent an important source of scientific information (historical, technological, geological and territorial) that can play a major role in understanding our construction practices and their evolution. Intimately regional, the composition of mortars and renders evolve according to the availability of materials and technological advancement. The study of mortars at the monastery of the Hôpital général de Québec helped deepen our understanding of traditional practices and techniques in the use of mortars in Québec, Québec City in particular, since the 17th century. Pierre noire du Cap (Cape blackstone), traditionally used for masonry, is at the heart of our study, having been shown to be the origin of the hydraulic lime used in mortars within the region for centuries. The present study is a step towards a better understanding of our historic construction materials and their durability from a documentation and dating perspective, but also for the purposes of restoration.

This technical note presents an illustrated, step-by-step process for making refillable silica gel cassettes from acrylic sheet offcuts and Reemay non-woven fabric. This technique was developed by conservators at Ingenium – Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation as a cost-effective and green alternative to buying commercially made cassettes. These reusable cassettes provide a more robust and efficient alternative to sewn sachets. Deploying the cassettes on edge maximizes surface area and air flow, and allows for an increased rate of response of the silica gel during changes in relative humidity. Ingenium conservators created standardized sizes for ease of deployment and have found these sturdier cassettes beneficial for travelling exhibitions.

Birch bark biting has been a traditional practice amongst various North American Indigenous communities for generations. It involves delicately compressing marks with one’s teeth into thin, single-ply birch bark resulting in a symmetrical image. A birch bark biting by Cree artist Angelique Merasty (1924–1996) was brought to the artifact conservation laboratory at Queen’s University in 2021 due to a tear splitting the right third of the image. With no extant conservation literature on the structural repair of birch bark bitings, a treatment plan was created, informed by historical research on Merasty’s practice, general conservation studies of birch bark, imaging methods, microscopic analysis, and testing on fresh and aged birch bark samples. Drawing from techniques developed for tear repair in paintings, paper and textiles, tests of adhesives, carriers and application methods were performed to determine treatment options. Results were evaluated based on strength, workability, aesthetic impact, flexibility, potential risk and retreatability. The tear repair method chosen used hair silk threads coated in Lascaux 498 HV and applied with a heat set technique. These threads provided the necessary tensile strength to limit further tearing and loss, and minimal visibility to allow for potential display of both sides.

This research investigates, through laboratory testing, the suitability of PSS 20 and APP S, two sacrificial polysaccharide-based anti-graffiti coatings, for the protection of outdoor contemporary murals. The properties of these coatings, as described by their manufacturers, are promising for conservation applications: easily reversible, clear, non-toxic, biodegradable and compatible with most surfaces, including painted ones. Primed and painted clay bricks and cement board surrogates were prepared and coated with PSS 20 and APP S. Some surrogates were left unaged while others were aged artificially for 9 and 29 hours. All surrogates were subsequently marked with spray paint or permanent felt marker. The efficacy of graffiti removal using pressure washing on aged and unaged coated surrogates as well as the impact on the painted substrates were evaluated using colorimetry and microscopy techniques. Both coatings showed promising results on the unaged and 9-hour aged surrogates in terms of ease of removal of graffiti and minimal alteration of the substrates’ colour. When artificially aged for 29 hours, the coatings were significantly less effective in protecting against graffiti. The coatings are easily reversible with warm water and moderate pressure with no or very little damage to the surface (depending on the texture) provided they are dampened with water and allowed to swell beforehand. Since this research was undertaken, PSS 20 has been used successfully in our private practice for the protection of outdoor sculpture and public art made of stone, metal and varnished wood. This experience has confirmed that a polysaccharide-based anti-graffiti coating can provide appropriate protection for heritage surfaces under threat of graffiti vandalism.

The choice of sturgeon isinglass in conservation treatments may become more feasible if more economical and environmentally sustainable sources of the glue, of comparable quality to the traditional European sources, become available. This paper describes the processing of raw air bladders from New Brunswick wild Atlantic sturgeon, Acipenser oxyrinchus, into dried collagen, and the collagen into isinglass films, along with the resulting percentage yields at three extraction temperatures. Glue from this source has been used by the author since 2010 in a limited number of conservation treatments, including unstable paint consolidation and, in combination with wheat starch paste, for Heiber’s thread-by-thread tear repair method. If ongoing and future investigations continue to show that the isinglass from this and other species of sturgeon, obtained from more local, regulated fisheries, is of comparable quality to that from traditional sources, they may become the preferred sources for this valuable conservation material.

In 2019, the Royal Saskatchewan Museum undertook a storage reorganization project using the RE-ORG Method for its Indigenous Studies Collection. This collection was suboptimally housed in a storage room outfitted with inadequate and overcrowded storage furniture. Access was impeded by the physical storage configuration, object storage methods and gaps in collections management. A RE-ORG evaluation of the space, its storage furniture and small equipment, and the collection, its documentation system and administrative framework informed the planning and implementation of a storage reorganization, a comprehensive collection inventory and condition assessment, and overall resource management. Improvements were made to the physical storage configuration by replacing a large portion of the static open shelving with mobile shelving and by installing gridwalls and new cabinets, in addition to reusing some existing furniture. Storage mounts were designed and fabricated to improve collection preservation and ease of access, and in some cases, to aid in the temporary relocation process. This paper discusses the planning and implementation of this storage reorganization project, and details how collection preservation issues were addressed to facilitate both immediate and long-term access and use.

Results of a technical study of six oil-on-canvas religious paintings by Louis Dulongpré are presented, supplementing previously published research on Dulongpré’s portraits. The earliest painting in the study is a signed and dated work from 1805, while the latest paintings studied are from c. 1823. Visual examination was followed by sampling and analysis using a multi-instrumental approach. Primary methods were scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (SEM/EDS), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and polarized light microscopy (PLM). In some cases, X-ray diffraction (XRD), gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and/or pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS) were also undertaken. The technical data from these religious paintings, together with those from the previous study of Dulongpré’s portraits, can contribute to attribution research and inform future conservation treatments.