 Bill, pass things off to our host, Robin Bauer Kilgoe. Go ahead, Robin. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another C2C Care webinar. This one's titled Care of Outdoor Collections. Before I start, I would like to acknowledge that this webinar is being moderated on the traditional lands of the Mikazuki and Seminole people and their ancestors. And I pay my respect to both elders, past and present. So again, welcome to everyone. We are really excited to do this presentation today. It should be a good one. I'm going to go through a few slides, and then I will hand the actual presentation over to our speakers. So as I said, my name is Robin Bauer Kilgoe. I am the community coordinator for C2C Care, and you just saw Mike, our senior producer, over at Learning Times. Before we go into it, I did want to reintroduce our community or the group that's listening today to our home on the web. We are at ConnectingDeCollections.org. We recently kind of did some reorganization on the front page, so if you have questions on where thing is, feel free to shoot me an email at our email address listed on there, or you can comment along. We're pretty excited by the redesign, just generally speaking. We hope it'll make people find things a little simpler. There are two big information areas on the website right now that I want to draw focus to. One is the webinar section, and one is the courses section. Webinars actually happen once a month. They are free. This is one of the ones you guys are at right now. If you go to the webinars section, you will be able to see upcoming program. Also, an archive of all the webinars that this program has done going back for years. So if you want to dig around in there, feel free. We also have a separate courses page that lists the different courses that C2C has taken on. C2C courses, C2C Care, excuse me, courses are a little different. They're more in-depth. We do charge for them, but they still are really great content. We have one going on now about physical media and digital storage. So if you're interested in finding out more about that, just go to our website and look under the courses area. I also have the community tab. That's the discussion area. It's a really protected, great area to ask questions of our different people they might have or different questions they might have when it comes to collections care. It is moderated. So we approve all the messages that go in there. And we have a fabulous group of monitors who will take a look at those questions and get you expert advice from different conservators from around the country. So I do urge you to go take a look at that. We have two homes on social media. They are our Facebook home and our Twitter home. It's a great place if you're on either of those platforms. Feel free to follow them. If you do, you'll get notifications for all of our upcoming programming. Speaking of upcoming programming, we have one that we're in the works with right now, but I think the date's pretty firm. So I wanted to let everyone know. On November 9th, we are hoping to do a panel on social justice and museums collections round table. So we're gonna be getting speakers from across the country just talking about how we're dealing with museum collections with kind of these sensitive subjects right now. So once registration opens for that, it'll be blasted across social media. We will have it on our website. And if you're interested in listening and I do urge you to go ahead, it'll be a free program. So we hope everyone will enjoy it. Mike covered this already, but as you guys have seen, we have switched platforms. We are no longer on event center. We are now on Zoom for our programming. So I just wanted to cover again that if you decide to use the chat box, that's great. The chat box is for technical questions or just commenting on things. The question box is what you're gonna be using to actually ask questions of our panelists. So I just urge you, if you have a question, feel free to use that Q&A box. We will be keeping an eye on both boxes throughout the entire webinar. But the Q&A box is really a good spot to put it in a question because we can kind of track the questions as they come in for everyone. So I'm gonna go ahead and introduce our three speakers today. We're very excited by this. We have Nancy Rabnel from Shelburne Museum. She's an objects conservator. Kelly, who's the principal conserver at our Rosa Lowinger Associates and Christina Varvey, who's also a conservator at Rosa Lowinger's Associates. We get to talk about collections. We get to talk about all the different parts of the country we live in today. So we're pretty excited. So I'm gonna go ahead and stop sharing my screen. And I'm gonna hand the mic over to Nancy, who is our first speaker today. And we will see you at the end for our Q&A period. Thanks. Thanks, Robin. I'm gonna go ahead and let's see. Share my screen here. Sorry about that. Oh, Foo. I'm just gonna have to open this back up. Sorry about that. Just when you thought you had it all together. Right. So my name is Nancy Rabnel, and I'm the objects conservator at Shelburne Museum, located in a place now known as Shelburne, Vermont, between Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains. Shelburne, as well as the town I live in, is part of the ancestral and seated lands of the Wabanaki Confederacy and the Wabanaki people. I would like to acknowledge the Wabanaki community and pay their respects to their elders, past, present and future. Now, because of our location, the winters are cold and snowy, averaging about 72 inches per year of snow. Early spring is referred to as mud season, and our summers are warm and moderately humid. All of this has an impact on how we care for outdoor objects at the museum. So I'm curious about how you would describe the climate where you are. And Robin, could you put up the poll about asking that? And we'll take a few minutes so that you can respond. I don't know if we can see results when it's sort of tapered out. This is Robin. I'm popping back on the screen really quick. It's looking like we have a lot of people who are having cold, snowy winters and warm, humid summers. That looks like the majority, although the next step would be cold, wet winters and hot, humid summers. All right, interesting. Well, hopefully we've got a few things that will help, things that I can share that will spark some ideas for you all. So if you're not familiar with Shelburne Museum, it was founded in 1947 by Electra Havermeyer Webb, who when pressed a character I Shelburne Museum, described it as an educational project varied and alive. And that doesn't give us a term, but it gives us a lot of latitude when as we think about the museum, as it moves into the future. The exhibition buildings are a combination of examples of vernacular New England architecture moved to the site and purpose built structures. And the intent was not to create an authentic historic village, but to replicate the feel. And this romantic vision of the past in turn informs the placement and presentation of many of the objects displayed outdoors. So in this exhibition, I'm going to show you some of the objects that I'm going to show you. And as I describe us as a medium sized with about 65 full time year round staff that do all of the things at the museum. Three teams at the museum are tasked with direct care of outdoor objects, depending on our skills, location of the objects and the objects themselves. So Robin, here's the second poll. If you could put that up for folks. I'm interested in knowing what roles you play. So I'm going to start with the poll. It looks like we have a lot of collections care. Not surprising. It's kind of impressive to see the level of where it is. I'll go ahead and end it. And then you guys can take a look at it real quick if you want to. Oh my goodness. I'm surprised that. We don't have more people who wear more hats personally, but that's, that's nice that people are, are wearing more hats. I'm glad that we have people who are pretty strongly. Collections care here. It's interesting. So here I've listed some of the individuals at Shelburne museum, who have been involved with our collections outdoors. I especially want to thank Jes Galis for her view for sharing her viewpoints and the grounds crews processes with me. While the museum's landscape is perennially popular with our visitors, In a typical year, all of these people do play some role in how we care for objects displayed outdoors, alongside seasonal staff and volunteers that expand the landscape and ground staff. Turnover is a given, and so ongoing training is necessary. However, this year the museum did not hire extra grounds crew and gardeners for the season, and many of the people on this list including the carpenters, the painters, the art handlers and me. We're helping out in on the grounds and in the gardens this this summer and so in addition to our usual job descriptions, and this has helped encourage new conversations about how we care for objects displayed outdoors. So what I'm saying here is that our program continues to evolve and some of what I'll be sharing is how we're working to improve. So what kind of objects are we talking about at at Shelter Museum some are accession and catalog while others were placed on the grounds at some point during the museum's history, but we've not yet found the paperwork about how they got there. And I don't think we're the only museum on this webinar that has found in collections items that's pretty much state of seems to be a something we can all share. In addition to historical items like the granite snow roller and if you don't know what a snow roller is it's a sort of a precursor to a snow plow it just kind of compressed the snow on the roads rather than actually removing the snow. We also have sculpture like turtle baby seen in the top, who also is a fountain, and, and then so care of the sculptures have historically been tasked to collections team, while care of the historical objects in the architectural structures to create pictures like the painted signs are under the purview of preservation and landscape. To further activate the landscape, the museum has hosted a yearly outdoor sculpture exhibition, running from May to early November since 2016, and we have been borrowing contemporary works directly from artists or their galleries. The first exhibition was works by George Sherwood a new England artist who creates kinetic sculptures. While they are on the grounds is worked out as part of the loan agreement crafted by the registrar for exhibitions and loans with input from the artists. So here's a couple more examples of the kinds of works we've hosted. Typically, we receive initial care instructions from the artist, and they are further refined through conversation with staff, including grounds and gardens manager me, the preparator and occasionally the deputy director, especially if there's an interactive component. Occasionally we find to have we find we need to have an ongoing conversation with the artist regarding care during the run of the installation which again it runs about six months. In addition to collaborating with the artists regarding maintenance, the curator leading the installation the preparator and the director of preservation and landscape work with the artists to determine where works are placed on the grounds. Naturally this is done with an eye towards potential weather related risks. We are seeing increasing storm and severity in in this part of the country, including more high wind events, and this recent interactive opinion piece in the New York Times indicates that we should also be expecting more hurricanes and extreme rainfalls in coming years in our area. And just to show you a couple more examples. These are from this year. You'll note that the sculptures that have painted wood elements are lifted slightly off the ground and that was again done in conversation with the, the artists who who fabricated the bases for those objects. For the objects in our own collection, the way we monitor condition has been changing over the years. It began in the collections department with notebooks of annotated images like the one I'm showing you here. In collections update to condition and maintenance information is recorded in the collections management database, but the database isn't easily accessible to other departments. And so how we communicate that information internally is one of the areas that where we could improve. Since buildings preservation team uses the software Microsoft one note to record and share their condition and maintenance information. I foresee that something similar could be done for outdoor objects so that condition and maintenance instruction notes could be made in the field and be more easily shared among the staff. And while we operate in a somewhat segregated manner, we also work collaboratively when specialized tools and skills are needed. For instance, because members of the building preservation team are trained to operate this lift to maintain roofs. They also monitor and document the condition of weather veins and other decorative elements on those roofs. And depending on the work needed, as I alluded to earlier, they also may be what the ones providing the care. Most of the maintenance does not require a conservator. For instance the lichens growing on this cast iron hitching post were brushed off using water and nylon bristle brushes. The post has been in this location for several decades and the weathered patina on the metal is appreciated and has not appreciably changed over the years. For the troughs, the grounds crew empties them of water on a regular basis and washes the surfaces with water occasionally to remove any algae if it has formed. In talking to the landscapes and gardens manager, the processes they used have been handed down in oral tradition and she's in the process of writing them down so that we can get that information into the records and make changes if necessary. Then there is the maintenance that needs to happen so that other areas can be maintained. The journal boxes, the assemblies that allowed the wheels to turn on and the brakes and the locomotive and private car need to function so that the cars can be pushed and pulled and stopped along the tracks. And so the tracks can be maintained and kept level. In practice we find that the tracks need to be leveled about every 15 years and we bring in a firm that maintains the railroad tracks in our area to move the cars and do the work on the tracks. And it truly, we are there while they're doing the work and it is amazing how gentle they are in employing their equipment with our artifacts. We have seasonal closing processes that include draining and covering the fountain. And covers are also applied to the steamboat Ticonderoga, like the foredeck, the whistle, the light and the walking beam, which you can just see over here. The sign that normally is located here is removed to indoor storage for protection. Following heavy snows, the decks are shoveled. Since the loaned outdoor sculpture show will stay with us for another year, those works removed indoors in keeping with our agreement with the artist. Objects that are close to paths are marked with tall stakes to ensure that the plows avoid them. And as I mentioned earlier, because we have been looking at our landscape and the collections displayed outdoors with new eyes, and I seem to be seeing increasing requests for moving sculpture and other objects outdoors. A few years ago I worked with colleagues to draft a broad conservation management tool for outdoor and working objects to achieve the following goals. To verify roles around the conservation and maintenance of those collections to articulate the skills needed and to develop a methodology for assessing risk to acknowledge budgetary needs and to facilitate program assessment and to ensure that future staff members will know what we've done in the past. And as I go through this through, I'd like to share two recent projects with you. While the kinds of processes could be adopted if you don't have a conservator on staff, I do recommend that a conservator is included in discussions as you develop plans to care for your outdoor collections. So what's this tool. The first object that I'm showing you here is, is as it looked this year. And I'm going to describe the incremental process that we're following with it. The cast iron Danby fountain came from the town of Danby Vermont and was given to the museum in 1953. It is made of multiple pieces of cast iron and has been used for decades at the museum as a planter. A few years ago after some work was done to raise the fountain onto a new stone support the museum director asked in a somewhat teasing manner. If it could be returned to use as a fountain. As you see here the fountain was once displayed. It's right there. In front of the museum circus building and prior to it moving to its present location it had been at the south end of campus near the visitor entry approximately a third of a mile away. Because I had never known the fountain without a garden inside of it. I asked grounds to empty it of dirt so I could better assess the condition. As you can see we learned that the fountain does not drain, and that there was no lining between the dirt and the iron. We determined that a great deal of work to the object as well as adding new water service infrastructure would need to occur to have it function as a fountain. I put together an incremental treatment proposal addressing what I could achieve that first year which was to clean surfaces of dirt and apply a commercially available but well studied what rust converter. As part of that proposal I asked ground crew to add spacers between the bottom of the basin and aligning to reduce the amount of weight that was being added to the basin, as well as set off the space surrounding the fountain with stone, so that they wouldn't need to trim so closely to it. The lining will be used to lift the planting dirt out of the basin this this winter before actually before the winter comes, and they will be covering the basin so that the water and snow do not collect while the museum is close to the public for the winter. I hope to get the fountain painted in the coming year either by fitting it into my schedule, or the building preservation team team schedule before it is time to replant. So assessing the size of the rocks around with the gardens and manager, we both felt that it should be a bit larger and so we'll be extending it in the spring. So that's an example of the conservation tool as applied to an object that's already in the collection. Here's an example of one that is new to our collection. Marie Zimmerman designed metal work inspired by historical precedents, including ancient Egyptian classical and Chinese forms, and she's known for experimenting with color and patina. The metals of her work in jewelry and precious metals can be found in large museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. This garden gate initially came to the museum on loan for an exhibition from the artist's descendants, and at the close of the exhibition they gave it to Shelburne. The curator was interested in putting it on display outdoors, and so we put the conservation tool in play. In the initial loan examination, we had already noted that traces of what might be the patina applied by the artist, and happily there was some already published information on how Zimmerman finished her ironwork. We do have a working blacksmith shop at the museum, and so we would be able to recreate the missing elements. But I had a number of questions for the curator before I could propose a treatment and maintenance plan for the gate if it moved outside. This question about how many other examples of Marie Zimmerman's ironwork that could be found in public collections and how much of the exterior surface he was interested in retaining was really at the crux of the matter here. Assessing the impact of deciding to place it outdoors, I noted that I'd need to collaborate with the blacksmiths, and that would have an effect on their normal production. I would need to slot the treatment work into my own schedule. Preservation and landscape would need to prepare a site for the gate, ideally with some protection from elements and visitors, and we would need to secure the work. And before we could get any further in the process, the curator then decided that we would, and also because he wanted to get it up quickly, he decided to put it on view inside. But the internet in this initial planning process to move it outdoors has been documented and added to the objects record so that future staff will be able to build on that discussion if necessary. And so with that, in conclusion, when thinking about caring for your outdoor objects, think broadly about who is already caring for them and collaborate with them. Assess associated risks. And when you monitor and maintain outdoor objects document and assess the processes on a regular basis, so they can be adjusted improved when needed. And now I'll hand it over to Kelly and Christine. Thank you Nancy. So welcome everybody. And we're speaking to you today from Los Angeles, California and Miami, Florida, which are part of the unseeded land of the tumor, Trumash and Seminole tribes. We are honored today to have the opportunity to acknowledge these communities and pay heartfelt respects to their past, present and future elders. We'll be continuing the discussion regarding caring for collections in outdoor environments. We've just seen through Nancy's presentation how this is managed in the Northeast where there's a conservator in house. And now we're going to present information on how institutions who don't have in house conservation staff manage this as well as condition issues associated with the southern and western regions. So a little bit of background information about us. We are a firm based in Miami and Los Angeles, and the bulk of our practices focused on the care and maintenance of artworks, sculpture, architecture, monuments, artifacts, decorative features. Our firm was founded in 2008 by our president and chief conservator Rosa Lohinger, who had previously owned a similar firm in Los Angeles. And the structure of our firm is that trained conservators, conservators work with trained conservation technicians to complete the work. And just to give you an idea. This is our team out in LA and our team here in Miami. I'm speaking to you today from Miami. Okay, so what do we work on as a private practice we work on a wide variety of items and materials. And on the slide are some, but not all of the materials that we work on. We work within the framework of requests from our clients in order to meet their needs and maintain their collections. So while our expertise ranges from museum quality objects to historic structures. In the talk, we're going to talk mostly on some more non traditional collection items that are mainly located outdoors and these include integrated architectural elements, such as mosaics, terrazzo fountains and decorative walkways, plazas or other types of flooring, light fixtures, seating gates, weather veins, mausoleums gravestones, basically, if it's not a painting or photograph or film, we tend to work on it. With a wide range of materials, we also provide a variety of different services and tools to our clients. We tailor a combination of these options to fit our clients specific collection and environmental needs. And we'll go into this in more detail as I go on. Specifically what this might look like in regards to non sculptural collection items. We're doing this work for this is just some broad generalizations of clients that we work with. Of course there are traditional clients like public art collections and nonprofit organizations and museums. But we do service a wide range of clientele really any entity that has any culturally significant objects or features in their collection. So because of our offices, our office locations I should say we deal with a variety of conditions associated with hot sunny humid and dry environments. These conditions affect how we approach the treatment and also the frequency of care. Our weather can be extreme. We face natural disasters such as hurricanes floods fires and earthquakes, but also high temperatures high winds, full sun on a day to day basis. So day to day care, as well as preparation for catastrophic events is a big part of what we offer our clients. The majority of which do not have in house conservation staff. We'll talk to you about not only dealing with maintenance in the southern and western climates, but also the variety of ways that we work with a range of institutions all over the country, and within budgetary constraints of course to care for outdoor collections. Okay, so what are some conditions in the south and west that may differ from those in other regions and to be clear. We have listed these as being particular to the south and west, many of these conditions are also applicable in other regions of the US just maybe in a different way or not with as much frequency. So we'll start off with extreme heat. This is something that we experienced both in the south and also in the west and of course in the summer throughout the country. But we often see large fluctuations between daytime highs and overnight low temperatures, and this can create extensive expansion and contraction in materials. And materials together that have different thermal coefficients of expansion, meaning that one expands more than the other. Together, this can result in physical damage like cracks and falls. Also objects can become extremely hot to the touch and people may not realize it before interacting with a collection items such as a bench or gate or railing. So sometimes we recommend employing signage about these around these frequently touched surfaces during extreme heat events. It can also affect how treatments respond. For example, waxes in these high heat environments need to have a higher melting point so that they can sustain longer periods of heating. We may need to wax the treatment and we may need to adjust how we treat it to accommodate that heat such as buffing wax early in the morning or later in the day to make sure that we're not removing softened wax. You can see sometimes like in this photo here on top. Sometimes we even have to work at night for to keep the conditions controlled as best we can. It can also be physically dangerous to staff or conservators treating the treating and maintaining the works for prolonged periods in the extreme heat. And I love this picture on the bottom of our staff tied an umbrella to the scaffolding to keep that direct sun off of their work. So sometimes we try to, or we do try to schedule the work early in the mornings or late in the afternoons to avoid this heat. So particularly in the southeast Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest we experience year-long humid and wet environments and this promotes accelerated corrosion and microbiological growth. And while, like I said before this is present in many regions throughout the United States it's a little heightened here because of the amount of rain that we get. It can also be problematic for certain outdoor treatments such as repainting sculpture with periodic rains you can have longer cure times. This is true, particularly for us here in South Florida. We have sort of moratorium on painting outdoor sculpture during the rainy season. Because of this reason, the weather can be so unpredictable and rain periodically, and also just having high humidity in the air can affect the paint layer. Salinity, again, this is a condition that many coastal environments experience. Objects within 5 to 10 miles of the coast are at high risk for ambient salts, and the closer one is to the coast, the greater the detrimental effects of the salts. Also you can see from this map from NASA that the water off the southern coast is higher in salinity in salts. So this can affect the frequency of maintenance. For example, these images here, this is a gate that we maintain for the city of Miami Beach that is right on a pier over the water. So you can see the water in the background of these photos. You can see the boat going by in the background off the pier. And while we're working on it, we're getting sprayed with salt spray. And so you can imagine how extreme that condition is for the painted surface as well. And you can see in this image, these white lines are actually salts that have collected on the surface. And it also leads to a corrosion of the aluminum surface below the paint layer which bubbles the surface. So this gate requires more frequent maintenance than if this gate was even a mile from where it is right now. And we've seen this example in different sculptures, the same sculpture on two different properties, requiring different levels of care. One that was right on the surface or right on the water needing to be maintained once a month, while another that was 30 feet away and separated by landscaping only needed to be treated every four months. So it has a drastic difference just simple sighting. And Christina will take over. Thank you. Okay, so dry or arid environments are classified as those where moisture is rapid rapidly evaporated from the air and there's very little precipitation. This type of climate encompasses the majority of the West with some exceptions in coastal and mountainous regions. This type of climate can adversely impact your outdoor collection and that prolonged lack of humidity combined with other environmental factors can lead to improvement and cracking of some materials if not monitored and included as part of a routine maintenance or conditioning plan particularly would also without periodic rains to naturally rinse off surfaces and if you have deferred maintenance, you begin to see build up of corrosive accretions like bird droppings and vehicle exhaust particulates over time needs particulates build up and can become encrusted on the surface making them more difficult and time consuming to remove later on from a conservation standpoint you'd want to work with someone familiar with how this climate impacts treatments. So even with basic cleaning, you have to rinse more frequently as you work in sections so that the surface doesn't dry out and re deposit soiling on your object. The same when you're applying various chemicals or cleaners, we have to monitor them more closely than in other climates and possibly reapply or re wet surfaces to make sure the material doesn't dry out too quickly before you achieve the desired result. It would be especially tricky when patching or repainting because the materials tend to cure or kick off a lot faster than in other climates. So we have to make accommodations for that like creating more humid micro climates for patches to slow the cure process and keep our repairs from cracking. We've all likely seen the effects, the eventual effects of UV regardless of climate, but in the West and the South the sun can be particularly brutal. These effects can be seen in a relatively short period of time, especially when fabricators and manufacturers have used materials that were not designed to withstand prolonged exposure to UV, or your collection items came to be in a time before the effects of UV were fully understood. This type of degradation presents as coatings fading or shifting color, you'll get bleaching or blanching glossier surfaces will become more dull or matte. It also affects certain colors more acutely than others like reds. And this is another type of environmental condition that can lead to in brittle men of coatings plastics resins, as well as accelerated yellowing of these materials. Some deterioration can be slowed down through applications of sacrificial coatings or other less reversible coatings with UV inhibitors erecting shade structures over your object or other similar measures. That being said to our knowledge there's no clear coat wax or paint that we know of that is 100% UV proof. There are industrial grade paint systems that are getting better every year. And depending on the color you need can last supposedly anywhere up to 20 years. Those coatings clear or paint usually last around a 10 year mark with wax coatings lasting significantly less amount of time. But those higher warranties also come with a heavy price tag. So again, working with a conservation professional that knows your collections materials and UV exposure. You can review all of the options to see what makes the most sense for your objects and budget. Maybe your access is not complex and it makes more sense for your budget to recode something every 10 or so years. Or maybe the cost of access you're having to shut down an area of your institution or property is so onerous that you might opt for a slightly more expensive coating to buy you more years between more in depth treatments. Western states and parts of Florida have the hardest water in the country and by water hardness we mean the amount of dissolved minerals largely calcium and magnesium in your water. It's problematic for collection items because these minerals can edge the surface of your objects think water spotting. They can form a haze on the surface or in extreme cases like you see here on the bottom right, thick mineral crust form. Soiling and corrosion runoff products can become embedded in these deposits as well, further discoloring the surface. Soiling can be very difficult and time consuming to remove. We usually see this on surfaces that are routinely hit with overspray from sprinklers or lawn care staff, as well as on fountains and nearby pavers or benches. Anything really that gets hit with overspray. So the best things you can do is redirect sprinklers away from collection items or even better switch to drip irrigation for fountains periodically draining the water completely and refilling can help bring down the mineral content of the water since as the water evaporates over time. It leaves the denser minerals behind in the basin so the standing water becomes increasingly mineral laden. And for some materials where it's not possible to avoid overspray or exposure to hard water. It may be possible to apply a sacrificial coating to help mitigate deposit buildup or etching. And while natural disasters can and do happen anywhere in the south, anywhere in the US actually the south and western regions have regular seasons where preparations need to be made in order to protect collections. For example, the hurricane season and fire season. Add to that your round vigilance for earthquakes in seismically prone areas and now higher water levels we're seeing in regular title flooding like with King tide in Miami. There are obvious dangers of some of these events like total losses in a fire where something's burnt beyond saving, but there's some possibly less obvious ones as well. So if you have a fire in your region, allowing ash to dwell on surfaces can be problematic because it's corrosive and can mark or stain the surface. With any flood event it's not just the fact that your object is wet that's the problem it's also everything else that gets pulled into the flood waters like chemicals and toxins sewage salts. There are wind damage events where objects may be broken into several pieces we often see fragments lost in the cleanup process by well meaning people or volunteers who didn't know what to look for in the debris. We can and have given whole presentations on this topic alone, because there's so much to impact but we did want to touch on it here because it's such a big part of what we do and think it's really important for collection staff to be actively thinking about these things and start to pull together a plan for their collection, especially with non traditional collection items where it may not be clear to other departments what is and is not considered part of the official collection. There are multiple resources online for developing a disaster preparedness plan and we highly encourage you to at least start putting a basic one together. It's important to identify other decision makers in your organization who could be involved in general disaster mitigation at your site, like facilities managers groundskeepers etc. You should walk through your outdoor collection items with them so it's clear what the priority should be in terms of protection temporary relocation if warranted and salvage in a worst case scenario. Conservators prepares well by stocking up in house for these seasons with triage materials such as towels and blankets for absorbing water, brushes and sponges to remove so labeling bags to collect fragments of damaged artworks. And this is something that you can do in house as well as part of your plan. Public interaction again not something specific to our regions but we felt it was important to underscore especially for collection elements that are highly accessible to the general public. Sometimes people interact with artworks but do so even more with other collection items that have more functional uses right so gates and doors benches railings and other integrated architectural elements. Though it may see obvious to us it's unlikely that many people would be able to immediately identify or associate some collection elements as an artifact or something that's considered part of your collection, or they just don't care. So they'll start messing with it will climb on it sit on it, especially if it's particularly instagrammable, let their pets relieve themselves on it. So in that regard these collection elements can often be more susceptible to primary or collateral damage and they need more frequent monitoring and or maintenance depending on their location and level of public interaction. Okay, so now that we've discussed some of our regional climate differences we wanted to talk about the various ways in which we work with collection stewards when they don't have a cons a conservator on hand to assist them. Balancing and understanding conservation practice is defined by the type of engagement with the site or institution, because every institution has a varied collection and priorities, we work with clients to develop maintenance and conservation treatment plans that meet their needs. Ideally the goal would be to develop a long term partnership between your institution and your conservation professional. Obviously the longer we can work with a collection the easier it is for us to track changes over time, help determine treatment priorities as well as develop and tweak long term maintenance planning. And then you also get that invaluable institutional knowledge of a collection. There are many different types of partnerships that we and other private conservation firms have with collections. We typically work directly with chariots registrars public art consultants or dedicated public art departments. However, that's not always the case. Sometimes there is no dedicated arts department or person. So we work directly with facilities managers urban planners, recreation and parks departments and or maintenance personnel. In any scenario, there's usually one dedicated staff member who works directly with us to coordinate projects, archive our documentation that we hand over at the end of a project, work through plans for ongoing collection maintenance. And where possible it's usually helpful to work with the same core group of people project after project. Once you've established a relationship of a conservator, what should you be doing or implementing to help care for all aspects of your collection. So we think that the first step is coming to the table and laying it all out there. What do we have to work with. Once we've worked through each client's needs the level of intervention they need or want from us and their budget. The following are the primary tools and services that we may recommend be implemented to wrap your heads around conservation treatments and routine maintenance as well as collection care planning, risk management and disaster mitigation. I wanted to stress again that every entity is different. We rarely have the exact same arrangement or partnership among our clients. And while these tools and services pertain to all objects in a client's collection, we're going to focus on how they relate to an impact more non traditional collection items. First and foremost, we highly recommend collection surveys as a first step for long term maintenance planning and budgeting disaster planning, or updating an existing plan based on current conditions budget needs and priorities. A survey provides you with a baseline of where your collection is that currently, and the level of detail included in a survey can be tailored to suit each institution's needs. Once you have all of this information, you can then weigh your curatorial priorities versus the conservation priorities that we recommend. And here you see some images from a survey we did with the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona last year. Their collection includes many integrated and functional elements, such as railings, bus shelters and bridges. So there's a lot of overlap between various city and county departments in regard to jurisdiction and who's responsible for what with these elements. So then they have to go back to those different departments and kind of prioritize budgets and planning between all the constituents. So conservators can do entire surveys in house it's also possible to do a hybrid of surveying between registrars and conservators. If there are budgetary constraints. We've had such an arrangement between a major county arts commission where their on staff registrar went out to hundreds of buildings that the county owns and documented all of their artworks there with photographs and brief condition reports. So we reviewed each of those reports and flagged any that seem like they may warrant more in depth assessment by a conservator, at which point we then went out ourselves to look at a much more focused group of collection items for them. And this is another example of a collection survey that we've done this is for the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, the similar sort of idea but it's a different type because it's for architectural elements on a specific building site. We looked at a wide range of elements including windows railings decorative features such as benches, urns and fountains, as well as exterior flooring and the portico ceiling. This report provided an overall look at the collection, it prioritized needs and provided costs for treatment and maintenance, and it gave them a look at what their treatment goals for the building and maintenance goals for the building and site overall would be in the future. It also allowed us to catch a potential problem with the portico ceiling and prioritize its treatment so we could immediately mobilize into fixing the needs of the portico ceiling because it had been identified as the highest priority and to take care of it. And it provides the report as a whole provides a document which they could use to prepare for future treatments as well as maintenance planning. So regular maintenance plans is something that we do a lot with our clients. It's crucial. If you're following a survey, or sometimes it's more of a less formal survey, we typically recommend that the artworks should be maintained. And then to what frequency they need to be maintained whether that's annually by annually, annually, and make recommendations for what should be done by conservation professionals and what can be done in house. We provide recommendations in house training if desired or necessary, and sometimes maintenance manuals and kits are provided to help for the time in between when we can be there for our maintenance. So this is an example of one of our clients at the Cumber Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida. We maintain their collection annually rotating collection items in and out depending on their need. So pieces like the fountains typically need to be worked on annually due to the hard water in Jacksonville. And while some of the other items can be done less frequency frequently. And this ties in to our recommendations for monitoring. So having a regular maintenance plan allows for regular monitoring of the collection, both by the conservators and by in house staff. So we have a regular photographic record of the pieces over time and can identify changes in the condition. So this is a good example of one sculpture at the Cumber. It's a Janet Scutter, it's a fountain, and you can see it was severely the surface was deteriorated, the patina. And so we treated this originally at our studio and then it was installed in place and these subsequent photos are each year after its initial treatment. And so you can see how regular maintenance is continuing to keep the peace and good condition over the years. In some cases we also provide condition or maintenance forms to staff if they are the ones providing the care. And this allows the in house staff to be aware of any changes that occurred, and also working with the staff on a regular basis allows them to be more aware of what's happening to their collection so, for example this iron, I think it is, on a bench was damaged, I think by one of their guests and the nose fell off and the collection staff was able to immediately collect all of the pieces and we were able to restore that for them during one of our maintenance. It also lets you know if there's anything out of the ordinary you should be looking for. So for example this sculpture is not at the Cumber but this was hit by lawn care equipment and so the collection staff was able to identify that that was not there previously through photographic records. And I just wanted to say a quick bit about this client of ours, we have a contract for on call maintenance and treatment services with them and have for many years, but they also handle a lot of routine maintenance and monitoring in house. The arts program staff walk their entire collection at least once a week to check on all of their collection pieces since pre COVID is such a high traffic area. They're right next to the bay and are exposed to the exhaust from the jet fuels from the planes and all the cars coming through. There's a lot of integrated pieces like an elevator that is an artwork decorative pavement seating and elements throughout their parking structures, and the stuff will do some light cleaning themselves if it's accessible but they also work with and supervise their contract custodial team with some light routine dusting of select larger scale items. And before they let them touch anything they'll have us review their work plan make recommendations on what they should or should not do. And should or should not use on select artworks. And so the whole arrangements a lot more cost effective for them. And if we say that only a conservation team should treat or clean a collection element they're 100% on board with our recommendations. And while we as conservators would love to do all of the things for you we understand as we've been saying this whole time that it's not necessarily realistic in those cases. Often times in a survey or in discussion with a client will make recommendations for what should be done strictly by conservation professionals, and maybe things that can be done in house, just like at the airport in the comer. For a few clients we've provided hands on training and left them with maintenance manuals and kits of supplies. This is particularly useful for those with a limited maintenance budget or if you're located any conservation desert, where there are not many nearby, since it can be cost prohibitive to have us come out with the frequency that some collections require. We've done this with museums in Florida, public art commissions, and most recently with the Hawaii State Foundation on culture and the arts, where they directly hire local technicians to do routine maintenance cleaning and waxing bronze surfaces, and part of their condition of higher maintenance having gone through our training program. Other clients will piggyback on one another's treatments to help reduce travel costs. This is particularly true in Hawaii where if one institution asked us to come out will often reach out to a few others we've worked with in the past to see if they need anything or want us to come by and look at any elements while we're out there and we'll split some of the travel costs among a few institutions. One of the exciting recommendations is something we usually do in conjunction with a survey or survey update will comment on citing and make recommendations to improve citing conditions or advocate for relocation in some instances if it's that if that's viable. Oftentimes citing conditions can change the frequency or methodology for maintenance. We've discussed before like redirecting watering and limiting accessibility to the general public, cutting back overhanging tree branches that can drop plant debris can fall and damage an element or invite birds to hang out over top which leads to more droppings and standing on your collection element. Management physical barriers can be employed even for nontraditional collection elements as well and may help the public better understand that certain elements are part of your institution's collection and should be treated accordingly. So, things always start with an assessment or a survey, and then it's determined, whether or not a complete conservation treatment or maintenance is needed. And so sometimes a complete conservation is treatment is needed after a baseline survey. And this is one of those cases for us this is seven south Florida animal themed terrazzo plazas that are in the village of Keybus game they're designed by artist Jose bedia. And we did an initial baseline survey for them, and it was determined that not only was their surface conditions like fading biological growth but there was also some delamination of the surface that needed to be addressed. And so we went straight from a baseline survey into conservation treatment. But one of the things that we realized is that a lot of this was due to deferred maintenance of the surface coatings they had lost all of their surface coatings, which had caused the overall fading and loss of definition, particularly to the blue and black colors. And because they all had different sighting, they all sort of responded differently. For example, this is the Pelican Plaza the blue one, which you can see is severely faded this is the before photo and this is the after photo. This is quite plaza because it was under shade trees had less fading and more biological growth because it was stayed damp for longer, and wasn't able to fully dry out. So, these are some of the things and now to consider because now the conservation treatment has been done. If regular maintenance is is completed. These can continue to stay in good condition, and some of it is having a conversation with staff as well the way that they were cleaning the plazas were actually was actually removing the protective coatings and so having a conversation about the appropriate way to clean and maintenance moving forward has allowed them to maintain these plazas in house. So I wanted to show this site as an example of a client congregation that was working closely with a preservation architect and general contractor for rehabilitation of an entire historic structure. Then the preservation architect brought on board conservators to identify surfaces and objects that required specialized care historic elements that could not and should not be treated by a general contractor. There is a conservator on the project team who wrote the specifications, and then we perform the work based on those specifications and with their oversight. And so planning for, you know, large construction projects or special events. This is another way conservators work within assist our clients and it can include anything that's under your purview, object wise. This typically relates to construction such as restoration general repairs around a property improvements or expansion or additions. If a collection item is part of your construction project meaning it will be actively worked on. We can provide assessments and recommendations for specific collection elements that can be treated by conservators or by others using our specifications and possibly the conservator oversight. Depending on the scope and breadth of a project we can also help determine whether or not an element should be de-installed or moved or protected in place and what would be the best way to do so. This particular service doesn't necessarily. Am I still in this. Yeah. Okay, so it says I've been signed out because your account is signed in from another device. Okay, so this particular service doesn't necessarily have to be related to construction. Many institutions we work with allow film or photo shoots on site or host large events like weddings or fundraisers. All where a lot of equipment is brought in and these vendors and guests are not necessarily looking around worrying about whether or not a railing or flooring is part of your collection. You've been consulted on everything from the use of fog machines by a degradable glow in the dark powder liquid silicone that looks like water fountain dies. In the photo on the bottom left you can see some darker diagonal stripes on this historic tile flowing from where film crews taped down wires and left adhesive residue. And on the right is a swimming pool at a hotel in LA that was painted by David Hockney in the 80s. And in addition to getting beat up by pool chemicals and the guests. We also host an Oscar party every year where they drop decking into the pool to give them more floor space. So after we repainted crescents we've provided recommendations on how to pad the decking to help mitigate scratching the artwork. And if we're not doing the work ourselves our role in construction monitoring and conservation oversight can range in scope and scale. However, regardless of the size of the project if it's a true construct construction site we typically follow a similar format in terms of scope of work. We'll perform documentation and undertake testing and sampling provide detailed specifications for carrying out treatments. And once the contractor is selected there's usually a mockup phase which we highly recommend will review their work and provide feedback into our approval of mockups and then depending on the project needs will perform periodic quality control site visits to ensure that the collection resources are protected and work is being carried out correctly. And finally at the end we'll go through and create a punch list for closed out items. What you're looking at here is a very large gold and glass tile mosaic feature at the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in LA. So our team did the initial testing sounding sourcing replacement tiles identifying cracks, and then all of the construction monitoring and quality control through to project completion. Okay, so another example of this is the is the Sky Museum and Gardens. We've done a variety of various projects for them, including several different construction oversight jobs. And we're currently doing one for them right now as they are undergoing a complete re roofing of the main building. And we worked, we started by working with the architect on specifications and to make sure that they were appropriate for a historic structure but also the surrounding historic elements. And from there we provided an assessment of the historic features that could possibly be impacted by the roofing project and you can see some of that here. In these two pictures on the right side, assessing what sort of damage was already present but then also how things are currently being impacted by the roofing elements and the condition their current baseline condition so that the both the entity and the contractor could know what their what their work was doing to impact those features. We also make recommendations for their care and protection so that they can be protected during the construction. There are two weekly meetings to assess the resources and opine on their treatment related to the construction. And so we will look at mock ups. For example, this is some mock up for the staining on the roof on the underside of the ceiling. This is their mock up and this is the original material so we sign off on any of the treatment that they are doing that would affect any of the historic resources. Disaster planning as Christina mentioned earlier is a big part of our lives, unfortunately, or fortunately, however you want to look at it. The survey again is a great tool to help start pulling together your disaster plan because it provides a baseline for what your what state your collection is in, should anything happen to it. The survey highlights the priority pieces and the safety concerns and any citing concerns that you'd want to take into account. The conservator can work with you to pull together a plan based on the size of your organization and your resources and help identify at risk elements in your collection, as well as what your curatorial priorities and what items you should have in your emergency kit. Another step is to determine if there are any collection items that anything you can do for your collection items before a disaster hits so for example, this lantern here. This is a project that we took on again for Vizcaya and what they wanted us to do in addition to treating the surface of it was to come up with a plan for how it could be easily de-installed and then have crates built so that they could, if a storm was coming, in-house staff could remove the lanterns and put them in the crates for storage so that they wouldn't need a conservator or art handlers to come out at last minute to move something like that. Similarly for preparations, this is a sculpture at the University of Miami that is particularly susceptible to wind damage and what they have done here is they had us put in eye hooks into the concrete pad so that we could strap the sculpture and keep it secure during any high wind events and this is actually been tested by a previous hurricane and actually worked really well for securing that particular sculpture. Another really basic thing that you can do just cut back plants that could impact sculptures so if you have any tree branches that are on top of your sculpture or your gate or any item in your collection that could is at potential risk for falling during a storm and if you just simply cut that back before a storm hits then it's less of a chance that it will impact your collection. Another thing that we do is prefabrication conservation reviews for new commissions. We work with artists and the client to review proposed materials installation methodologies citing long term care and maintenance to give new elements incorporated into your collection the best start possible to help prolong their service life. And this is not just for sculpture. It can be for other visual improvements like integrated architectural elements mosaics torso flooring I know we've done like by block stations and things like that. And we can also do this for object donations as well because sometimes it's helpful to know what level of maintenance and care, you're going to need for a particular object before it comes into your collection. So maintenance is key to caring for any collections whether sculpture or untraditional collection items, more often than natural disasters or other one time damages. The treatments that we need to carry out come from deferred maintenance. Non traditional or sorry non sculptural items like flooring gates and benches tend to receive less attention than more prominent collection items, though they require the same level of care or more. In many cases, as these items are frequently used by the visitors to the sites. And thank you. I'll turn it back over to Robin. Thanks guys. You can go ahead and stop sharing your screen. No, that's fine. Take your time. It's not a big deal. Two things that popped into my head just listening to you guys as we enter into our Q&A period is kind of the importance of outdoor collections now what with so many facilities being shut down, or not, you know allowing reduced access, I guess, it's nice. I think a focus on outdoor collections is really nice right now because you know that's what people are able to access. When it comes to institutions. The other thing too is I love the idea of partnering with registrars like me, and basically saying hey, go out and do a condition report first. And maybe the problem areas and then work with you guys as conservators to really, you know, handle those issues because like a lot of us have this book sitting on our bookshelf. There is a CDC Web at CDC care webinar about basic conditioning that you can go take a look at. So that's like a good place to start and then we can identify the problem areas and then we can approach you guys with so I really like that partnership idea for sure. So we have quite a few questions coming in. So we'll start taking a look. One of the early ones that came in was someone saying, we have a lot of farm equipment pre 1940s, some wood, mostly iron, some sheet metal. And we were thinking to put them outdoors. What would you suggest they're located in North Dakota. Now I think my first question would be where are they stored right now, before we start talking about going outdoors. I'll let you guys have a look. I have a bunch of other questions too is how how are you planning to like what is the story you're trying to tell around it. Are these things that somebody's going to want to demonstrate on occasion are, you know, are you going to you know how close are you going to allow visitors to come, or are they just sort of static sculptures that are going to have one, you know, they used to be farm equipment but now in our institution effectively they become a static sculpture. For me for farm equipment, I look at some of the painted surfaces on them and I think that they're, they're not intended to be left outside if you want to keep them looking nice. Similar to our locomotive, you know, the decals and the paintwork. They became eroded even despite the fact that the locomotive is undercover. We repainted them and we were able to get actual decals but then we made graphic stencils from them and then repainted so that I think you need to think of it so in addition to where they stored now. How much time do you have to devote to their care and what kind of appearance do you want them to have and are they going to be static or functional. I think those are those are the questions I have. I'm sorry to be not giving you an answer with that's concrete but unfortunately there's so many variables that go into it that. I'm sure Kelly and Christina have other questions that they would ask as well. You know it's hard to give an answer based on on just it's farm equipment and we want to put it outside. Yeah I think I think I would echo a little bit of Nancy's answer there as well just I mean, we get asked that question all the time for various different objects and I mean, yes things can that can go outside but it's what level of care you're willing to have for it. You know so your services need to be well maintained. And it needs to be cited appropriately. And so there's a lot of considerations that go with it. You know frustratingly I always sort of joke that a conservators response is always well it depends. There's a lot of things you have to consider about the situation as a whole. Yeah it looks like he answered back with they have indoor snow plows tractors corn shelters, and mostly horse drawn equipment, no paint or decals but yeah it is hard. You know, and most of the stuff has been outside most of their lives which is like okay that's good. It's like you're not moving it from an indoor situation to an outdoors that's a slight thumbs up at least in my book. Let's see what else we have on here. There were a lot of questions about bird poop and how you need to handle bird poop. And this for one in particular it was we have an outdoor fabric wrapped graphic and some exhibit structures which get affected by birds. We are continuously looking for something for this not wanting to hurt the graphics or the structures so I guess can anyone wax poetic on the treatment of bird poop for a while just to kind of what your advice would be. Christina did you want to say something you look like you wanted to say something but if not I'll answer. Yeah, I mean I'll just, I mean, we tried so many different things it's it's problematic like I think I mentioned about, you know if you have anything directly overhead that they can perch on, but also, you know if that object is the only thing around for an they just want to sit all over it. We've tried on some flat surfaces, you know like a plastic reflect reflective mirror with with some wax outside just sticking it down not something that's permanent and if you can't see it, you know, it's part of the viewing experience. For some reason they don't like that when they're trying to come down and perch on something they get scared by their own reflection and it makes them more apt to kind of disperse and go somewhere else. It's kind of a similar idea to hanging kind of twisty reflective things in tree branches and kind of stakes around objects. Aside from that though. Yeah, somewhere else I know that they've put like rubber snakes in fountains and try and move them around to try and help you know deter them as a predator. I don't know how effective that is long term, but I think like your best defense is to just get out there as soon as possible to get it off. If it dried out, it would be more problematic and it's hard, you know what I mean I get it, you know, like I, again I live in Florida too and a lot of stuff is outside. So you know you come back to your car and you're like well that's good. You know what I mean after a chunk of time so. It does dry you want to make sure not to rub it into the surface. Yeah, it's probably a good idea. Someone had this is an early one it says apologies if you will cover this but how often our condition reports done. Is it on a regular schedule who's responsible for making sure they get done, I mean I think we kind of talked about that at different points but I, at least for places that I've worked with as a register a level it's on a cycle, right so you go out you know yearly or whatever and kind of take a look and see what's going on with the outdoor stuff but what would you guys suggest for doing condition reporting. So for a lot of our clients sort of depends on the frequency of care for the collection so in the example that I use with the Cumber Museum we go once a year and we walk the entire collection and look at everything and take photos and note anything that is not how it should be. We have private clients who we do that four times a year. So it really just depends on the frequency of care, I would say, at least once a year. And, you know, more if you can. Yeah, and for us, I will say that as far as formal condition reports go. I think it's been changing recently. I was having sort of the full gamut when I had an intern who was able to to get out there so maybe every other year, I send them out with a camera and do it and now it's more like I'm doing regular walks and when I notice something has changed that I'm making an update to the condition report that's in the collections management database. It's a, it's a slight change in how we're operating. But, I mean, as I would imagine that at the Cumber Museum, even though they're conservators and that's a fantastic thing that that you're able to do there is to go through with the conservator yearly and really focus on the outdoor objects. Our staff is out there monitoring all the time for, you know, daily out there. But as far as a formal condition report that's that's happens, not as perhaps as frequently as it would have been if we didn't have kind of that ongoing condition reporting software available to us. It's also, you know, like I know when I first started way back in the middle O's, you would write these plans like I call them aspirational inventories where you were like every year. I'm going to do an inventory of our entire collection and like pretty soon into it you're like this not going to happen like life gets in the way. I think it's kind of what you're saying like different levels of doing the condition reports and when I, you know, I've done everything from just what you were saying Nancy walking around and kind of like being like everything looks cool to, you know, know we're going to do a full out true condition report on this particular collection because either we have the time or we have a really good. I mean any of those reasons would be or we wanted someone wants to do an exhibit based on those things will often drive condition reporting your inventory so yeah I think you do the best you can when it comes to those for sure. This is kind of a big question have you seen any changes in rate or damage or types of damage to artifacts due to climate change if so how are you dealing with it so in the past you know in your span of your career have you seen a difference on just what happened outside. Well as I mentioned earlier, we are seeing increasing wind events and harder rainfall and I think that has that has led us to move some things. I think also with the outdoor sculpture loan shows, we end up with certain sightings and then in, as we see weather patterns, playing out through the year we have unfortunately had to move some objects either around to a different place where we won't get that kind of impact from the weather. So that that that's sort of anecdotal, but I'm interested with killing Christine I have to say, given their location and experience. Yeah, I mean, just the extreme weather in general has been increasing I know, particularly here in South Florida and the fires in California, which Christina can talk more about but even just on a day to day basis I feel like the rainy season goes a little longer hurricane season goes a little longer. Robin and I were talking before the start of this I mean the weather has just been dreadful all week. And my technicians are out doing maintenance we're in maintenance season right now. And we're talking about how they were getting salt spray on the sculpture and you know, because the winds are so high, you know the rain stop long enough for them to do the maintenance and then the winds were blowing salt spray into it you know things like that I think just as the weather gets more extreme. The care of everything that's outside just takes more work. Christina has anything from LA. No, I think you're the same thing just different. Different factors are talking about right so the fire season is longer, and there's, you know multiples and it seems to be every year now that we're kind of bracing for it and you know, I've only been in Los Angeles about eight and a half years but from my understanding people have lived there longer than I have. They used to have a rainy season in the winter like every year it was it was something that would happen and now it's very hit or miss. When I moved there it was just getting into that really nasty drought in California so. Yeah, it's just, it's just all over the place and we have clients to you know in the Midwest that you know talk about wild swings you know they get feet of snow and sub zero temperatures and then they get extreme heat cycles in the summer. You know with severe storms thunderstorms tornadoes hail and all of it just amplified over the past like decade. Yeah, yeah they had hurricane force winds in Iowa this year. I remember thinking back like because you know I lived in South Florida since 95, no four is when we moved to South Florida and I popped around Florida since then. But I remember thinking like for a good 10 years we had nothing right, and I was just like the big ones going to hit like I did my head I just kind of kept going through my head like the big one and then we had like Irma and all these giant ones that went through the central and I was just getting more active and I know even from my pair of 10 year olds that I own, they are like hurricanes happen every year and I'm like they didn't used to like but it feels like it happens a lot so it is an interesting thing. Before I forget to because we have about seven minutes left I've already put the link to the survey for this webinar in the chat so if anyone wants to fill that out before we go it'd be appreciated. And also just a quick reminder that we are recording this webinar. So if you miss something we will have it up on our website and you know about probably early next week. So but until then, let's look at a couple more questions. So the thing about this is kind of a real specific questions it says we are in need of caring for three 19th century wagons in an extremely arid environment, New Mexico. Are there specific actions within preventative maintenance to combat deterioration or on untreated wood. So do you guys have any experience or advice with that type of thing, particularly in an arid environment. I have a question for my boss Rosa. They're longer than I have. Yeah, I haven't personally dealt too much with wood I assume I assume they're outside. And I know that there are conditioning treatments that can be done for wood in exterior environments. I have to look into that I'm sorry I don't have a specific answer for you. I would advise that person if they really want to why don't you post that in the community and the protect in our C2C care community and then we can get you with the people who might be able to give you a more specific answer. Just go to our website, hit community and we can see about getting that for you. We have a lot of service providers based in, in, in Tucson and things like that who like really have a much more even drier environment than LA. I dealt with that. How about this is again, again, a little specific we'll hear I'll move on to this one. Does heavy or excessive rain require particular attention. In the Midwest, we have hard water and our rain can even be a civic at times. I think we're all nodding. Yeah. If it were in a collection like mine, if you see that your outdoor objects are getting the brunt of a lot of rainfall, then you might look at what you can do to at least get them undercover for at least part of the year. That that would be my suggestion. Yeah, I think I would agree with that and also say if you want to monitor them, I would say so for example, the water at to use the comer again as an example but the water at the comer is it's very hard. It's it there's like on that map that Christina had there's like a sliver of red that runs down and that that's the comer and so there's a lot of clients like that and and we do it here for salts as well. We recommend rinsing the sculptures with distilled water to remove any of that contaminants that might be in either the hardware or the rain water. And if you're rinsing with distilled water than it's not adding anything to it and it's just getting off the contaminants. That might be something worth thinking about for particular for works that that particularly affects will say This is one actually Christina you might be able to answer to it says does lingering smoke from wildfires cause issues on outdoor sculptures, I'm guessing they're so involved. Sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it definitely can especially on encoded metals it can it can absolutely lead to corrosion and on porous surfaces as well. You know it can get worked down into the pores of, you know, wood masonry things like that. So yeah that's that's definitely after there is a fire event and once the the smoke literally kind of settles, we start making contingency plans with our different clients, kind of a triage you know to get ourselves out there and get our crews they're working to get that off of those surfaces as soon as possible, which has been tricky with some of these because they've you know the there was one a bobcat fire here that was largely uncontained for almost a month. And we're sitting there waiting and you know kind of like you know I know it's not great it's sitting there but if I clean it off there's just going to be more and you know, two or so years ago, there were multiple fires so we go out and clean it all off and then month or so later it happened again and it's, you know it's it's very frustrating but yeah the sooner you can get it off the better. And I think we have one more final one so they have this is a little specific but I'll ask it in general to what would you recommend for graffiti tagging removal, they say from rockets. So I'm guessing that's metal but any experience from also removing just graffiti or tagging just generally speaking from outdoor sculptures or collections. Yeah, I mean that comes up for us a lot. I imagine. Yeah, that comes up for us a lot of removing it from metal tends to be easier than removing it from porous substrates. But I wouldn't really be able to give any recommendations not knowing what the type of paint is that it's on. It's also what it is that you're removing, but yeah, I'm sorry that's that it depends answer again. But I mean, to remove the spray paint, you wouldn't want to damage the underlying paint presumably the rocket is painted. Don't worry. Oh, go ahead. That is a characterizing what was applied and that's all the solubility parameter of that material versus what it was applied to and the solubility of that. And then you can kind of dial in on on how best to do that if it's etched graffiti where they've like carved something into it then that's a whole other. Okay. That is, I mean, yeah, because I mean, I don't want to say your first inclination but it was dried graffiti before, you know, back in the day would have been like we'll just take a wire brush to it but then you're right like all of a sudden you're getting into hitting those under layers and you end up destroying the the object underneath, you know, especially if you end up trying to use some sort of crazy chemical that they might have that could really cause some damage. Well, it is 230 shockingly enough. So I want to say a huge thank you to all of our speakers you guys gave a lot of great information today talked about a lot of different object types. So thank you again for doing that. I want to say thank you to IMLS who supports this program FAIC our producers over at learning time. We hope everyone is enjoying the new zoom format if you have any questions or comments please put it in that survey I put in the chat link. If you're programming go over to our website connecting to collections.org. And I'll just ask our panelists if they have anything else they'd like to relate to the crowd. Thank you for your attention. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I hope everyone stays safe, healthy, and please remember to vote this year if you're located in the United States. Thanks again and we will see you all in November.