<![CDATA[Museum Textile Services - Press Releases]]>Tue, 22 May 2012 18:55:55 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Camille Breeze to Offer Hands-On Workshop on the Conservation of Museum Textiles Using Nylon Net at the New England Museum Association Conference]]>Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:51:06 -0800http://www.museumtextiles.com/2/post/2011/11/camille-breeze-to-offer-hands-on-workshop-on-the-conservation-of-museum-textiles-using-nylon-net-at-the-new-england-museum-association-conference.html_Camille Breeze will present a hands-on workshop on textile conservation at the 93rd Annual New England Museum Association Conference November 16-18, 2011, in Hartford, Connecticut.

Andover, Mass. – Camille Breeze, Director and Chief Conservator at Museum Textile Services, will be leading a hands-on textile conservation workshop at the 93rd Annual New England Museum Association Conference. The conference will be held at the Hilton Hartford Hotel in Hartford, Connecticut, November 16-18, 2011.
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_On Thursday, November 17, Camille will lead a hands-on workshop to teach museum staff how to safely stabilize fabrics in their collections. Textiles deteriorate over time, and conservators often use nylon net to stabilize fabrics and provide preventative conservation.

"Textiles are among the most common museum artifacts and their fragility can be an obstacle to safe handling and display," said Camille. "Stabilization with nylon net is appropriate for museum staff and volunteers to learn, assuming they have a knowledge of hand-stitching. Taking care of this procedure in-house can save a museum thousands of dollars, which allows them to use their conservation budgets more constructively."

Participants in the workshop will learn to evaluate a variety of textiles to determine which are suitable for nylon net stabilization and which should be turned over to a professional conservator. Participants will then practice stabilizing textiles with nylon netting, gaining invaluable hands-on experience that can be used on the objects within their own collections.

The 93rd Annual New England Museum Association Conference will begin with PechaKucha on the evening of November 15th. The conference will run from November 16-18, 2011 and will examine how museums throughout New England reflect the diversity of our communities. For more information, please visit the New England Museum Association’s website at www.nemanet.org.
]]><![CDATA[Camille Breeze to Speak about the Ancient Peruvian Textiles Workshop at the Northeast Conference on Andean Archaeology and Ethnohistory ]]>Fri, 14 Oct 2011 09:41:47 -0800http://www.museumtextiles.com/2/post/2011/10/camille-breeze-to-speak-about-the-ancient-peruvian-textiles-workshop-at-the-northeast-conference-on-andean-archaeology-and-ethnohistory.html The 30th Annual Northeast Conference on Andean Archaeology and Ethnohistory will take place October 15-16, 2011 at the R.S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology in Andover.

Andover, Mass. – Camille Breeze, Director and Chief Conservator at Museum Textile Services, will be speaking at the 30th Annual Northeast Conference on Andean Archaeology and Ethnohistory. The conference will be held at the R.S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology in Andover, Massachusetts, October 14-16, 2011.

On Saturday, October 15, Camille will share her experiences as Director of the Ancient Peruvian Textiles Workshop. Camille established the Ancient Peruvian Textiles Workshop in collaboration with Rommel Angles Falcon, Director of the Municipal Museum of Huaca Malena, in 2004. The need for the project was first documented by Rommel. In 2008, Camille published a paper documenting the project’s development and success. 
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Huaca Malena is a pre-Inca ceremonial complex. During the period of regional development, 400–500 A.D., it functioned as an administrative and religious center. Between 700 and 1100 A.D. the upper platform was used by the Wari culture as a cemetery.

To the ancient Peruvians, textiles played a fundamental role in the dispersion of political and religious ideology. They were used to clothe the body, both in life and in death, as well as for social functions such as paying taxes. Every hand-weaving technique invented anywhere in the world was also known to the ancient Peruvians, which illustrates their ingenuity and resourcefulness.

It is this unique textile legacy that has brought North Americans to the Municipal Museum of Huaca Malena to collaborate with Peruvians in the conservation of artifacts from the collection. Over the course of five years more than forty textiles, mummy bundles, and mummified heads were conserved by forty-four participants in this collaborative effort.

The 30th Annual Northeast Conference on Andean Archaeology and Ethnohistory will begin with an informal gathering on the evening of Oct 14, will continue on the 15th with plenary session talks, a reception, dinner, and a keynote talk by Richard Burger (Yale University) on Hiram Bingham and Machu Picchu, and will conclude with a half day of plenary session talks on the 16th. For more information, or to register for the conference, please visit the conference website.

About Museum Textile Services

Museum Textile Services, the premier textile conservation studio in New England, specializes in the preservation of fabric-based materials for cultural institutions and individuals. Museum Textile Services documents, cleans, stabilizes and mounts historic textiles. Through educational programs and outreach initiatives, Museum Textile Services teaches individuals and cultural heritage institutions how to ensure better preservation of their textiles. For more information, visit www.museumtextiles.com.
]]><![CDATA[Museum Textile Services Launches New Website]]>Wed, 28 Sep 2011 13:58:00 -0800http://www.museumtextiles.com/2/post/2011/09/museum-textile-services-launches-new-website.html New site provides improved navigation, a new blog and a rich array of textile conservation resources for museum professionals, conservators and private collectors.

Andover, Mass. – Museum Textile Services has launched its new website. The redesigned site at www.museumtextiles.com, created by staff and interns, embodies the company’s forward-thinking vision and commitment to the growing needs of cultural heritage institutions and those who own historic textiles. The new website offers improved navigation, a new blog and a rich array of textile conservation resources for museum professionals, conservators and private collectors.          

The website’s homepage welcomes visitors with a simple design and clear navigation bar. It also provides direct links to connect with the organization on various social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. Visitors to the site can also sign up for occasional email newsletters filled with resources and textile-related news.

“We’re so pleased that our new website is up because it makes it so much simpler to get information to visitors,” said Camille Breeze, Director and Chief Conservator at Museum Textile Services. “The individual pages in the Conservation section really showcase the amazing projects we’ve been involved in and tie those projects in with research and scholarship on those topics.”

One of the greatest aspects of the new site is that it can be updated easily. This allows Museum Textile Services to share new information as soon as it becomes available. “Our Education and Disaster Response pages are a wealth of free information about textile conservation, collections care and becoming a conservator – definitely our most frequently asked questions,” said Camille.

Now, staff and interns can share conservation stories and answer questions on the MTS Blog. Blog posts and photo uploads help visitors access the depth of services available and provide further opportunities for hands-on learning for interns, who have always been an important part of the work done at Museum Textile Services. “It’s also great to see the gallery of past interns, all of whom have made such great contributions to MTS,” said Camille. “We look forward to feedback from our users and exciting new developments to come.”

About Museum Textile Services

Museum Textile Services, the premier textile conservation studio in New England, specializes in the preservation of fabric-based materials for cultural institutions and individuals. Museum Textile Services documents, cleans, stabilizes and mounts historic textiles. Through educational programs and outreach initiatives, Museum Textile Services teaches individuals and cultural heritage institutions how to ensure better preservation of their textiles. For more information, visit www.museumtextiles.com.

]]><![CDATA[Conservation of 18th Century Tibetan Thangkas Complete]]>Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0800http://www.museumtextiles.com/2/post/2011/07/tibetan-thangkas.htmlAndover, Mass. – Museum Textile Services will turn over the last of 18 Tibetan thangkas to the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College next month. The thangkas – cloth paintings depicting Buddhist deities and symbols, sewn into fine silk textiles – were the focus of a two-year conservation project. Picturing Enlightenment: Thangkas in the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College will open August 26, 2011. This will be the first time the thangkas have been seen by the public since 1953.

To protect these fragile objects from the potentially damaging effects of light, the collection will be displayed in two parts. The first group of 10 thangkas will be on view from August 26, 2011 to January 1, 2012. To accommodate the careful exchange of the works, the exhibit will close briefly and the remaining eight thangkas will be displayed from January 20 to June 3, 2012.

Camille Breeze, Director of Museum Textile Services was thrilled to work with the staff at the Mead Art Museum. “In April 2009 Collections Manager Stephen Fisher called us to survey the collection of thangkas. As a part of that process, we examined each piece, took extensive photographs and recorded measurements, construction details and current condition. The thangkas had been in archival storage for several years and were extremely fragile. When Elizabeth Barker, Director and Chief Curator, discovered the thangka collection, she really wanted to make them accessible – first through an exhibition and then later for study.”

A few months later, the thangkas made their way to Museum Textile Services, where they were gently cleaned, the painted surfaces stabilized and the silk supports reinforced. “We cleaned the thangkas with a gentle hand vacuum and vulcanized rubber sponges that absorb and remove a lot of the dirt and grime that accumulates over time. The thangkas were covered in an oily residue, which is probably from the traditional yak butter lamps used in Tibetan culture,” said Camille. “We took a lot of time reinforcing the silk supports to ensure that the thangkas would not be damaged when they are exhibited this fall.”
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Museum Textile Services used vulcanized rubber sponges to gently clean the Tibetan Thangkas.
This August, the last of the thangkas will be returned to the Mead Art Museum. "We have really enjoyed learning about the thangkas and Tibetan Buddhism," said Camille. "From a conservation perspective, this project had a lot of exciting challenges. Thangkas consist of two distinct components - the painting and the textile boarder - that are conserved in two very different ways. It allowed our team to draw upon all of our skills as conservators."

About Tibetan Thangkas
Thangkas function as objects of Buddhist meditation. They are also used as teaching aids and serve as a visual recording of history. Each thangka has a central painting surrounded by a fabric mount, usually made of Chinese silk. This fabric can become damaged over time from rolling, moisture, light exposure and the weight of the hanging thangka. Many thangkas have a silk veil that hangs over the image and can be raised and held in place by a silk cord for viewing. The images depict Buddha, bodhisattvas, other deities or eminent monks. The deliberately conservative artistic styles and iconographic forms used by painters of thangkas have changed little over the course of this thousand-year tradition. During the painting process, the artist performs specific rights. At its completion, a consecration ceremony called the "opening of the eyes" ensures that the resulting image is an accurate reflection of the deity depicted. Most of the thangkas in the Mead's collection were commissioned for a single monastery in Lhasa, Tibet. Religious leaders specified the paintings' subjects and the completed thangkas were displayed in groups, sometimes numbering more than one hundred in a single room.

About the Mead Art Museum
The Mead Art Museum houses the art collection of Amherst College, totaling more than 16,000 works. An accredited member of the American Association of Museums, the Mead participates in Museums10, a regional cultural collaboration. During the academic term, the museum is open Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to midnight and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday. For more information, including a complete schedule of events, all free and open to the public, please visit the museum’s website.

About Museum Textile Services
Museum Textile Services, the premier textile conservation studio in New England, specializes in the preservation of fabric-based materials for cultural institutions and individuals. Museum Textile Services documents, cleans, stabilizes and mounts historic textiles. Through educational programs and outreach initiatives, Museum Textile Services teaches individuals and cultural heritage institutions how to ensure better preservation of their textiles.

Accompanying Image
A high resolution copy of the image included above can be downloaded here.
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