 A warm welcome to everyone to the fourth annual mistake session formally titled a failure shared is not a failure, learning from our mistakes. My name is Carrie Rainer and I'll be moderating today's program along with Tony Segal and Rebecca Gridley. I'm speaking to you from Los Angeles, the ancestral and unseated territory of the Gabrielino Tongva peoples, to whom I pay my respects and acknowledge as the traditional land caretakers of this region. Today's session is our second virtual event and fourth annual session overall. We want to extend a special welcome to our colleagues from the Society for the preservation of natural history collections. If this is your first time joining us for a mistakes event or you'd be interested in viewing materials from past sessions or related resources, we highly recommend checking out our webpage on the AIC learning community. As Ruth noted, this this format of the session is a zoom meeting rather than a zoom webinar so we encourage you to keep your camera on if you feel comfortable doing so, but please keep your audio muted while others are speaking. We do also welcome the use of reactions and the chat box in response to the presentations. As Ruth mentioned again we will be recording the presentations today to be posted on AIC YouTube channel, however, due to confidentiality reasons, not all of the presentations will be included in the public version of the recording. We are very pleased that eight speakers will be sharing their experiences with you today. We have given our participants a time limit so if you hear a light ding like that. This is a signal to our presenters to start wrapping up their talks. Halfway through the program will have an opportunity for questions and a five minute intermission, and there will again be time for questions following the end of the session. We hope to spend the last half hour having a lively discussion with you and we would love to hear your comments reflections and ideas. If you feel inspired to share your own mistake you're also welcome to do so. And the final portion of the program will not be recorded. The past years will be using a few fun facts provided by our speakers as introductions. So I'll be introducing first your three moderators and starting with myself. Since moving to California during the pandemic I've been learning to surf. I've not yet attempted to stand up while catching a wave. My style at this point is more to hold on to the board for dear life, but I enjoy being out on the water. Our third moderator Tony Siegel has developed an obsession with his lawn. He recently went in on a rechargeable mower with his neighbor, which he adores. His wife has become concerned, and his new novel crab grass a love story comes out later this summer. Our third moderator and co organizer today is Rebecca gridley, who has recently discovered she has a green thumb, and she has become a voracious reader of late but alas, mostly a picture books. I would also like to recommend Anna at the art museum, a book suitable for anyone who needs to learn the rules for visiting a museum. It even features a visit to a secret workshop where paintings are being cleaned and repaired. And with that, I will hand it over to Rebecca to introduce our first speaker today. Thank you. Can everyone hear me. Okay, great. So I'd first like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which I am standing is the territory of the Mohican Golden Hill public asset and Wappinger peoples. I'd like to thank them for their strength and resilience and stewarding this land in Connecticut. And it's waterways through the generations. And with that, I would like to turn to our first presenter Ruby Auburn if she'd like, if they'd like to start setting up their screen. Ruby is from Melbourne, Australia, and moved to Boston for their fellowship six months before the pandemic early during during early quarantine they started roller skating, the type of skating they're trying to learn is jam skating, a style of roller skating developed by the black American skate subculture, evolving from the segregated roller ranks of the 1960s to have a profound impact on hip hop and rap culture in the 70s and 80s. Ruby wanted to learn a new skill in a way that would respectfully expose them to a part of the cultural landscape here that was outside of museums. So Ruby please take it away. Thank you, Rebecca. Good day everyone. I'm Ruby. And I'm presenting today from Cambridge, Massachusetts and I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional stewards on the land on which I currently live and work. The Harvard Art Museums acknowledges that Harvard University is situated on the traditional and ancestral territory of the Massachusetts people, and we strive to honor this relationship. And Albert Moore study for blossoms was brought to the stress center due to its tenting crack pattern. The painting is an oil study for large scale near life size painting blossoms, and that that's held by the Tate and at the right there just opposed to scale. Curatorial fellow Dr Sophie Linford and I have been researching more materials and techniques using technical analysis of the painting primary source research and experimental art history. For today's mistake session, I wanted to discuss how I plan to treat the cracks, the adverse reaction that occurred and how that scare caused me to reflect and change my treatment aims. As an emerging conservator material mistakes or adverse reactions are really particularly horrific. And I hope that by sharing this I can inspire some solidarity and confidence in my fellow emerges mistakes happen and understanding their cause and problem solving their resolution of skills and our toolkit from training, even if they do make you feel dreadful. So this, this is the cupping crack pattern on study for blossoms depicted in raking light. So these open intended crack patterns extended to the turnover edge and through the thick ground. The treatment began with technical imaging and analytical investigation. And then the painting was surface cleaned the edges consolidated and filled in the varnish removed. During time to treat the cracks, I felt like I had everything figured out. I had based the treatment on this article by Jerry Hedley and Caroline villas and others from the 1990 icon meeting. I had enthusiastically made a miniature suction plate to be used in combination with a warming match that was controlled by digital thermostat and damp body paper to lightly warm and humidify the paint isn't glass was to be encouraged. So I started painting with the suction from the plate and heated with a miniature spatula to plasticize the pain and lay it flush with the canvas, despite rigorous and successful testing and everything working in theory. When I began to treat a larger crack in earnest, the paint layer blanched. The medium had broken down exposed, leaving exposed pigment on the surface. So I had a panic. I took a deep breath and I put my little suction plate back into my tab array. My supervisor Kate Smith alleviated my anxiety induced nausea with supportive words and a kind response. I had researched and tested and despite all of that a reaction had occurred. Blanching is a possibility. Blanching is known to occur on paintings kept in a humid environment or undergoing conservation heat treatments and into an interesting observation to note that was when I was testing in the background brown of the composition. Blanching didn't occur. It was only when I went into the figures drapery and earnest that a reaction happened. I'm going to find a reason why only the drapery blanched this paper from 2015 suggests that paint compositions such as the nature of pigments and the presence of dryers predispose the paint layer to blanching if exposed to appropriate heat and moisture. So now I had a different problem to solve. Is it possible to reform blanched oil paint. Yes. According to this article in studies in conservation from 1972 Herbert Lank who would go on to become the first director of the Hamilton car Institute in 1974 writes about a painting which had blanched significantly underneath the varnish due to water damage. He had successfully reform the blanched oil paint by suspending muslin soaked in DMF or dimethyl formamide over a painting in a mesh contraption for various exposures. Could I use solvents to reform the blanched oil on study for blossoms. I would just take a moment to note that while this sounds like Pettencoffer's process. I did not consider using solvent vapor or copavia balsam. The risks of swelling of components was considered and testing was made easier due to the absence of the varnish. Using a small paintbrush I tested most of the solvents mentioned in the article acetone ethanol diacetone alcohol and time various applications. And finally I tested DMF and I tested DMF last as it's a highly toxic solvent and and despite being equipped with a respirator mask and exhaust trunks and appropriate PPE I wanted to try all other options first. And it reduced the blanching and this is confirmed under the microscope noting that the paint surface had again become darker in color and smoother in texture resembling the appearance of the unaffected paint surrounding it. So I used the small paintbrush to slowly and carefully and in very small sections administer DMF directly to the surface to reform or melt the paint. And this is the result. But pausing on the treatment of the cracks I returned to my research partner and began to investigate potential causes of these raised cracks specifically in relation to this study. There are multiple research rabbit holes that Sophie and I have fallen into and both are historical and material and a number of these have been born out of research in the origin of these cracks. We found plausible cause for the pat pat. We found plausible cause for the crack pattern that relate to the paintings creation and this supplemental archival information allowed us to view the cracks and appreciate them in a different way. Does a painting need to be flat to be read as a painting and appreciate it, especially if the deformation is caused by original materials and techniques and is stable in its current state. We used to thinking of the flattened wax resin lined paintings in museums as the visual standard of what we are aiming to achieve. The thick lead brown layers are unlikely going to be softened by moisture and heat, the paint layers are stably adhered to the canvas which is in plain and appropriately taught. There are no structural issues to justify a major intervention like lining. The primary purpose of flattening these cracks was the affinity for a flat painted surface. Was this my mistake? So I proceeded to move forward without flattening them flush with the varnish removed. I retouched the obvious wide and darkened cracks in ambient light. The cracks do not visually distract the viewer from more harmonious composition and carefully chosen colors. As a leader of the aesthetic movement, I'm sure more would have appreciated my inner philosophical discussions about aesthetics, form function and how a painting should look. In the end, the reason the painting came to the lab and my grand plans of flattening these cracks did not come to pass and that's okay. Learning about the artist's materials and process in combination with a slight scare reassured me that in this case the cracks could be valued for what they were. The material's age after all and study for blossoms is stable and legible considering her 140 years of life. Thank you. Thank you so much Ruby that was terrific. I'm going to introduce Diana Galante's video which she pre recorded because she couldn't be with us. Diana lives next to an incognito wwe wrestler who says quote, she does live video production unquote Diana quote fixes old junk unquote. She also enjoys when sales reps mansplain about HVAC systems. Diana has a long standing date with her daughter at Disney archery club. Hence the pre recorded video. So, thank you, Diana. Hello, my name is Diana, and I made a mistake. Here is my true confession. 10 years ago, when I was a young, a young and inexperienced objects conservator, I did a fellowship at the Harvard Art Museums. I had been suffering from imposter syndrome because I had so little practical skills doing ceramic treatments. And we all know that objects conservators are experts in ceramic treatments. Lucky me I thought there was a major exhibition of Islamic ceramics scheduled for later in the fellowship year, and I would get to treat a lot of ceramics. Better yet, I would learn from one of the true masters in the objects conservation field, Tony Siebel. Spoiler spoiler alert. Tony's the worst. Here is a before treatment photo of the frit wear bowl with over glazed luster painting. It looks fine right. So it does not. It had step joints, some unstable joins small losses and over paint that was hiding something. Tony thought it was a great straightforward disassembly reassembly project for a fellow. Tony was wrong. The bowl really didn't want to come apart, but eventually it was convinced after days of trying combinations of steam, hot water, acetone, acetone gel, isopropyl alcohol, acetone vapor and methylene chloride stripper. And the adhesive identified as an epoxy was not coming off readily. And in a few instances, there was frit wear body and glaze broken off from the opposite break edge. The shirts didn't fit back together properly with all the adhesive and the break edges. And again, water, acetone, isopropyl alcohol and methylene chloride stripper weren't taking off the epoxy. As you know, methylene chloride is pretty nasty stuff. And in the Clean Air Act of 1990, it listed methylene chloride as a hazardous air pollutant. It had been used extensively in the automotive and aviation industries, and those industries were developing alternative products in the 90s. Benzal alcohol is listed in a patent for a paint stripper from 1916. The next instance I found of its use isn't until 1988. By the time I did my fellowship in 2011, Benzal alcohol gel was being used in some conservation labs. I was working on these break edges for days and I was losing patience. Oh, try the Benzal alcohol gel, Tony said. And I don't remember his exact wording, but he led me to believe that it was nice and gentle. So I put it on the break edges of two of the smaller shirts, including this one, wrapped them in cling wrap, and left them overnight. Done. When I came in the next morning, there were dozens of tiny bits of glaze in the gel that had spalled off the fragment. No, no, no. I thought to myself, has anyone been fired from this fellowship? How do I fix this mess? And also, I am never listening to Tony again. So what happened? It seems that the Benzal alcohol gel had swelled the epoxy, but it didn't solvate it. The epoxy apparently had a low enough viscosity that it went into the pores of the of the frit wear. And when it swelled, it popped off bits of glaze, along with the ceramic body from the break edges. This seemed like a total catastrophe. But I think I went about working through the problem pretty well. I made a tracing of the fronts and backs of the two fragments on the water paper. And as I carefully collected glaze fragments, I put them on the corresponding tracing so that I had a chance of putting them back together to back in when I reassembled the bowl. At this point on, I set up a UV booth around my stereo microscope and used scalpels to scrape off the epoxy. Boy, was that tedious. But having mapped out where so many of the fragments came from, I was able to put many of them back in place. Some glaze fragments went in while the larger sherds were being reassembled with B72. And someone in later and were coaxed into position along with reversible film material. So this treatment was quite a learning experience. And actually, it was pretty great to have had this project at the beginning of my fellowship, as opposed to almost any other time in my career. I had a luxury of time well before the opening of the exhibition. I had a supportive supervisor and curator, and my salary wasn't based on productivity. In retrospect, I would have tested the Benzal alcohol on only one break edge of only one small fragment. I'm definitely aware of some of the challenges of ceramics conservation, and I don't assume that what works safely on a past project will work safely in the future. I also am very careful to consider the porosity of a ceramic body, especially when removing adhesive, because I could have a very different issue with a porous fruitware than with, say, a porcelain. And one more thing, I was strongly discouraged from talking about this treatment during portfolio interviews. When I did include it, because it's a pretty lusterware with a nice outcome, I pretty much skipped over the part about the exploding plates. I understand that what happened was not ideal. No conservator wants to damage an artwork or an artifact, but I do think that I did a pretty awesome job getting through the complexities and completing the treatment. I would think that any museum employer would want to know how a conservator thinks through treatment plans based on practical past experience and how they get their way out of a pickle when a treatment doesn't go to plan. I'd like to give a special thanks to Tony Siegel who asked me to give this talk, who didn't fire me, and who has generously helped me work through subsequent ceramic treatments over the years. Thank you. Well, I guess I get to say thank you back, and that that was truly a heroic response of Diana's to that situation. I'm really grateful for her presenting it to us. I also want to note that Diana is willing to take questions that we can text to her since she's not here today. So if you have questions for her, please go ahead and put them in the chat box and we'll make sure they get to her. Next, our next speaker is Tori Bunting. Tori has been a knitter for longer than she's been a conservator. Her favorite knitting projects include toys and Barbie clothes for her kids and sweaters for her dog. She enjoys knitting most when her dog is curled in her lap. And Tori, please take it away. In early 2018, after 25 years working in museums and a regional center, I decided to try opening a private paper conservation studio to supplement my occasional contract work in museums. I have a neighbor who owns a large 19th century mansion for his computer tech support business in a neighboring town. He had an office space available on the second floor across the hall from another tenant business. It's in this area with a ground floor shared entrance and all on full building security system and parking. The rent seemed reasonable for the smaller room in the back northwest corner that was adjacent to a shared kitchenette and large dumb waiter elevator. The ground floor had a ramp entrance and an empty room for consultations and an accessible bathroom. So I began to accumulate furniture and supplies to start my business. This part was quite exciting. The room contained an oversized sturdy desk that I kept for one work surface, and I bought an adjustable height work table stool and desk lamp. I bought a used map size file drawer unit and another work table from a former colleague. For supplies, my biggest expense was a DSLR camera and lens. I consulted with two knowledgeable colleagues about equipment and found these used at a good price. I was fortunate to get a portable flash light system for free from my brother-in-law, but I had to buy stands for the lamps and a wifi sync system, because I was afraid that using the sync cord could damage my camera. I bought Photoshop elements for digital editing as it was more reasonable than subscribing to Lightroom or Photoshop. My other supplies I was able to buy on Amazon, but only bought things, for many supplies, I only bought things as needed for jobs. The sync tabletop microscope scene here was given to me by a friend who rescued it from being disposed of by a college. The computer was another expense, but I had none at the time. The bro lights for light leaching was something I wanted to try and was able to return to Amazon. Some materials were given to me as gifts like the easel and the pastel set. I also received hand tools to supplement my own from a couple of former supervisors who had retired. I was fortunate to have several client referrals from local museums where I had worked and was known, as well as from former classmates working privately, regionally, and from friends, both personal and professional. I found that I was quite interested in the advertising aspect of building my business, designing a website, ordering marketing materials like a pamphlet, business cards, poster and banner, and using these products to advertise at my local town day booth. Of course there were less fun elements to establishing a business, signing a lease, getting an employer identification number from the IRS, getting a business business permit from the town and getting insurance. I'm fortunate to have a friend with successful painting conservation business in New York City, who advised me on insurance and also shared her treatment proposal to contracts for me to copy the standard language for liability coverage with clients. The bottom line was that I was unhappy working alone. Once I had clients at work, I found that I did not enjoy working in the space alone. I missed the camaraderie of coworkers, the give and take over treatment discussions, the daily conversations of non-work topics. My mistake was that I did not listen to the little voice inside me that knew I was not cut out to run a private practice. I do not like the uncertainty of the workflow. I do not like to sell myself and my skills to unknown people. It's like constantly having a job interview every time you meet or talk to a new client. It's expensive to pay rent without heavy intake of business. I decided to close my business within one year of opening. It was a difficult decision and one that caused me a lot of stress. Maybe more than the stress I already felt from having the business. I felt like a failure and that I had let down people who supported and believed in me. I lost a lot of money in rent payments. I was able to resell and donate much of my furniture and supplies to a friend with a paper conservation business in Vermont. I also donated some things like the map file to my kids middle school art department. I had to offload load a few unfinished treatments to area conservators, but by the time I was done I felt relieved and content. I had learned a lot about myself. I felt like I was true to my needs, and I was fortunate to find other contract conservation work in the area museums that I found exciting and rewarding. Throughout my career as a conservator, I have benefited from the support and training from many talented and caring people. I received much advice and support and many tools and referrals from kind colleagues past and present while establishing a private practice. In the past year I have come to realize that my life has been one of great privilege. I want to acknowledge that privilege and give my gratitude to those unrecognized people of the past who stewarded this land before European colonial settlers invaded and who subsequently labored under their rule. Their displacement and subjugation made it possible for my ancestors to thrive here. In my geographic region, the ancestral people were a confederation of Patucket and the Massachusetts who live here. These include the Nipmuc nation, the Abenaki nation, the Mash P Wampanoag tribe, and the Massachusetts of Pankapoag. In addition, I acknowledge that my white privilege and that of my forebears over people of color, particularly those of African descent who are the descendants of brutally enslaved people. We have only begun to acknowledge and repair the damage to generations of lives that European colonial enslavement and genocide have brought. Thank you Tori that was a great presentation. I think the little voice inside of all many of us is the source of many of the problems that we're going to talk about today and not listening to it so I applaud your bravery and discussing kind of a bigger picture mistake and how you navigated that so thank you. Next, I'd like to introduce Bill Simpson. Bill finds that working from home since March 2020 has been challenging, but working on site now three or so days a week is helping bring his sanity back. I think we can all recognize that as well. In his free time he has an old wooden sailboat. He likes old things that he hopes to actually put in the water this summer. Bill is coming to us from Chicago at the Field Museum with Sue in the background. So Bill if you can take it away. Thanks for the introduction, Rebecca. I'm very pleased to speak with all of you about a shelf collapse that we suffered and what we learned from it. In the late 1990s the fossil mammal collection at the Field Museum was compactorized, and it included long span open shelving with beams about seven feet long. You can see them here. At one point we hosted a traveling exhibit, Extreme Mammals, and we wanted to add a few specimens of our own to the exhibit, including this massive Brontothera skull weighing many hundreds of pounds. The way we transfer things off of the shelving units is to use a scissor lift. You align the two surfaces and then just slide the object from the shelf onto the scissor lift. And that worked fine for this heavy skull and it was put on exhibit. And then after the exhibit we went to put it back onto its shelf and we aligned the scissor lift and had just started sliding the skull onto the shelf when this happened. So you can see that one end, the right end of this beam, let go of the vertical upright. The other end is still hanging on valiantly. And then the other beam is not affected. And you can see the shelving panels that bridge the beams have fallen down here. So we were lucky no one had been hurt. The heavy skull stayed up on the scissor lift. Thank goodness. So we documented the collapse with many photographs. And the preparators began repairing the damaged fossils. And then we undertook a sort of a forensic analysis of just why the shelf failed. So this is, these are the various parts at either end of these seven foot beams. There's this flange, which can extend in or out, and it's held in place by these two bolts. So this is what it looks like when the flange is retracted that allows you to put the beam, approximately in place. And then, whoops. So when you have it in place, you loosen the nut and extend it. And this is what it looks like when the flange is extended and would engage with the vertical post. This is what the vertical post on the right side. The, it looks like you can see just faint subtle markings on it. But when we looked at the end of the beam, we could see that in fact the flange was not extended out fully. And if you look carefully, you can see a mark here that tells me where the nut was tightened down. And I think the flange was forced inward a little bit further when the collapse occurred. But regardless, it should have been fully extended and the net should have been in place here. This is what it should have looked like. The other end, my computer is taking over. The other end, you can see the beam is valiantly holding on. The hooks had bent, and even the vertical upright had bent, but it was clearly well engaged. Compare that with the right hand vertical post which had these almost unmarked paint surface. And I've learned that there are two different kinds of flanges and use one with three hooks and one with two. We did not know that previous. So we now knew what to look for when the flange is fully extended, the hooks extend all the way through the slots, and then drop down over the rim of the slot locking the beam to the vertical post. And if the flange is not fully extended, the ends of the hooks are barely into the slots. And in fact, we found five or six more instances of this. I inspected the entire compactor array as you can imagine. And there were five or six instances like this, accidents just waiting to happen. However, you could only inspect those flanges on the posts that were in the middle of the compactor array. The ones on the end like the one that failed, you cannot see into those flanges to see whether they're engaged or not. And so we looked into this further and realized that the bottom of the flange extends below the beam. And if it's completely engaged, there is no gap. But if it's not completely engaged, you can see a gap here, what I'm calling the tail tail tail gap of failure. Back to a photograph that had been taken before we moved the big skull off of the shelving unit. And I wanted to see what it looked like where the beam met the post and indeed, there is that till tail gap. So had we known what to look for we would have identified this and fixed it before it failed. Now we can, now we are able to do that. This inspired me to then inspect the shelving units from all of our fossil vertebrate ranges this is what the fossil fish range looks like it's fairly obvious how this one works. This is a smaller load lighter load in the vertebrate paleo oversized range. This is the heavier duty stationary racking, and this has a little bit of a complication that we had to be careful about. There's a button, which you pull out, and then it allows you to lift the beam up and away from the vertical unit, the vertical post. So I inspected to make sure that all of the pins all the buttons were pushed all the way in which would prevent a beam from being lifted up and out of its vertical post. Here's another kind of shelving that we have that uses a locking pin to make sure that the disarticulation does not happen. So what did we learn examine shelving carefully understand exactly how each piece works, make sure the beams are locked into the posts practice taking a shelf apart and reassembling it to make sure that you know how the system works. And it also made me think about safety around heavy objects because as I say we're lucky that that skull didn't come down. What can go wrong is there another safer way who will be in harm's way with shifting someone's position around the object make them safer. And then finally, we decided to arrange the specimens so that the heavier ones are on the lower shells, and the lighter ones are up higher and that way if disaster occurs again hopefully the damage will be less than it was before. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you bell I have a feeling that everyone will be checking their shelving units first thing Monday morning. I'm taking them all apart and putting them back together. So add that year to do list. Now we can enter a quick Q&A before we take a break. We actually do have one question we have a couple questions for bill directly in the chat box already. So I'm going to start in grid Newman if you wouldn't mind unmuting and just asking your question directly. Oh, sure. Hi Bill, thank you that that was really a very sobering. I'm stunned, but I was just wondering, did the manufacturer put together the shelving you know sometimes they do that when you purchase it, or is it more a matter that like if, if, if you did it on site, the instructions weren't good I'm just trying to figure out what, you know, do the instructions need to be better than they are or is the manufacturer. So the manufacturer installed the shelves and put them where we wanted them. So we weren't a set of instructions that came along with them, but I don't over the years, we have occasionally moved the shelves. Not very recently but I do not know whether that was the original manufacturer installation or whether that was one that we had moved but as I say, we found five or six other instances just like this. I think it most likely is a combination of both the manufacturer doing it wrong and perhaps us doing it wrong. Sure. No, I was just, I don't, you know, I'm just wondering because we've had, at RISD, you know we've had lots of shelving installed and you know this is really important to realize that we're all fallible right I mean even the installer that you that you pay presumably to install that they that we need to check it I think I think this is a really important presentation you made. Thank you so much. I think, thank you for that Ingrid. I think what another thing we learned was that this particular shelving design was a little more complicated and prone to error than some others that are a little more idiot proof. Well, we all have similar issues. Thank you so much. And it looks like Tori Bunting also has a question for you Bell Tori if you wouldn't mind asking. Hi Bill, I thought that was great and your I thought your illustrations are really great to show what to do and not do or how it should look and not look. And I was wondering if you were now installing images and instructions in your shelving area for the different types of shelving for present and future employees so that they could know and check if they ever needed to change anything or wanted to do a routine check the way you did. Tori that is an excellent idea and I'm going to do that no I had not thought to post the instructions but why not. I've given this talk in house at the museum but for future staff that will succeed me yeah you're right. Good idea. And Trina Roberts has a question as well. Okay I'm going to ask it in case Trina can't unmute at the moment. Do you feel that the weight in the center of those very long shelves causes the shelf to sag and the hooked bit of the flanges to pull up and in. IE that they could have been installed correctly but over time pull themselves out and I'm seeing in the chat that some people are saying things can move. So do you think this might have been one of the causes rather than installation. Let me think about that if if the beam is sagging a little bit it's getting longer a little bit longer and it's I would think trying to pull those flanges out farther not push them in if the flanges really locked down over the rim of the opening. I mean as you could see at the left end of that beam it really hung on and even the flange bent without letting go. So I sort of doubt that but I'm not sure. Okay we have time for one more question if someone wants to pipe up and then we're going to go to intermission. I'll just mention a situation that is a related that we had at our museum. A, you know, motorized lifting device was used adjacent to similar shelving to lift a very heavy object up to a high shelf. And even though there was a spotter in the corner of the lift platform hit the bottom of the same kind of beam as as bill showed us and it lifted it up enough so that it came down with a boom. And I happen to know that one of the conservators who's attending this was responsible for treating the porcelain bust that was broken as a result of that. So you know when you're using lifting equipment around these things unless the shelf beam has a positive lock, as I think a couple of them did that bill showed us, you really need to be extra double careful when using that kind of equipment around this kind of shelving. Yeah I second that Tony. So, our next speaker is Skyler Jenkins. She is a current Samuel H. Crest fellow in archaeological conservation at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in a recent recent graduate of the UCLA Getty Program. She raised dermisid beetles species trogoderma variabila aka warehouse beetle with a colleague, a small number of the larvae lived as long as four years feasting on starch peanuts and decapitated fig beetles. Of course, she is happy to share the story and photos with anyone welcome to listen. Welcome, Skyler. Thank you Tony. I just want to say I'm that I'm currently located in Williamsburg, Virginia. And I acknowledge that I reside on the stolen land ancestral kiss cake and further acknowledge the seven federally recognized tribes, and the many many others that make up the modern state of Virginia. I continue to peacefully reside travel and conduct my affairs on their ancient territories and pay my respects and honor to their land and water, which I benefited from today. So the title of my talk today, as you say, as you see his shirts and charts facing the issue. And I don't want to one up Diana's glaze loss, but here we go. Next slide please. The project is the focus of my crest fellowship here at Colonial Williamsburg and the goals are to clean stabilize research analyze and reassemble a fragmentary blue person urn excavated in 2014. It was excavated from various contexts within a soft pit in the south yard of the Christopher Wren building at William and Mary. The vessel itself dates to the late 17th century and has a highly delaminated earth and where component shape rope twisted handle vessel with a dark blue tin glaze body with a white decoration in a shun was a restyle known also it was never swear or the ceramic shards are approximately 60 fragments and the glaze shards are an approximately 2545 fragments. Next slide please. So to touch briefly on the treatment that took place and led up to prior to the incident. It has included cleaning all plus or minus 2500 blade shards and 60 ceramic shards, as they still presented the soil from excavation. The shards were preserved almost in situ in place together attached to blocks of soil. Those were clean faced micro excavated and cleaned and reclaimed as necessary before being reattached to the ceramic as you see in the video on the left. In the areas on the ceramic with the glaze was lost during excavation and was not covered by soiling. It exhibits a black staining mold like effect seen in the images on the right. The black is present on a number of ceramic shirts and presents those lines and patterns of dots indicating where some of the glaze shards original location where a bit like a map for an effect. Using these outlines as a guide, many of the glaze shards have been able to be attached in the original location. Next slide please. So an issue arose when realizing that the glaze recently applied using those black guidelines was actually offset from either not fully being cleaned on all the edges, and or some adhesive and soiling, remaining between the joints of the glaze shards on the surface of the ceramic shirt. I decided to face the section of glaze and remove it from the surface of the ceramic free line. However, the adhesive chosen for the facing. The fact I probably didn't flush the area with enough solvent to loosen the adhesive between the glaze and ceramic and the inherent vice of the glaze caused extensive fracturing of the glaze shards, creating more misalignment and even end up lifting part of the ceramic surface near the top edge. Next slide please. So to give you a better idea, the sounds you hear in this video are an accurate reenactment of what happened as I was removing the facing, except with a bit more expletives. Hopefully you can hear all that. Shattering of glass is what you should be hearing. Next slide please. So after being privileged in my position of having a few months for this exact what she's working on. Tina turn off your mic please. To hide my mistake in a cabinet, I regained my confidence and reassurance in myself that touching the glaze was okay now. I knew it needs to be realigned as a fracturing caused many misalignments. All of the individual fractured charts also needed to be cleaned again, prior to being re-adhered to the ceramics. And a different adhesive should be used to the one that was chosen, which was too strong. So this led me to shard by shard, reface the entire piece. Next slide please. So I'm sure these are shared realizations after making treatment mistakes. But what did I gain from this experience? I know I need to own my choices and not let them sit in a cabinet for four months. Realize that they are salvageable and also make them a learning opportunity. I should not be seeing them as mistakes. An edit from a colleague was made to the description of this talk with a word change from mistake to choice. And I think that is a great way to see treatment decisions that do not go as planned. I've been so ashamed to let my supervisor know that this mistake was made, when I showed her her reaction wasn't reactionary at all, and her encouragement as I have been retreating the piece has been extremely helpful to maintain my course of action. As I self reflect, as I self reflect perhaps my response about this choice was a response I have been conditioned to do so due to past traumas. I often think about how our work is not permanent as meant to fail over the object. So why did I feel so ashamed to make an error in judgment. The treatment I performed led me to realize that I needed to do the same type of refacing and meticulous cleaning of several of these larger arrangements of plays. And I've been able to do so with gain confidence from this choice. And it has better prepared me for time management as I finish up the treatment within the next few months. Next slide. Thank you. Thank you all for your attention and thank you to the organizers for starting this session four years ago.