 Before we start, I would like to acknowledge that this webinar is being moderated on the traditional lands of the Mikosuke and Seminole people and their ancestors, and I pay my respect to elders both past and present. So to get started, I'm going to go through a few quick slides. You are here today for C2C Care, Care of Musical Instruments, one of our webinar programs. My name is Robin Bauer-Kilgo, I am the C2C Care Coordinator. And on this line also, you'll see Mike Morneau, he's our Senior Producer at Learning Times. At any point during the webinar, if you have any technical questions, we encourage you to use the chat feature, and Mike and I will get back to you as soon as possible. A quick rundown of our program, although I believe many of you are repeat customers, so we really appreciate that. We are Connecting to Collections Care. You can find our home on the web at connectingtocollections.org. There you will find where to register for the webinars, but also a full archive of all of our webinars. There are quite a few on there on many topics related to collections care, so I encourage you to go check that out if you have questions about anything. We also have our course archive, which is there for our in-depth courses that we hold. We're actually in the process of planning for two in the fall, so you should keep an eye on our website for announcements on that. And also links to our community, which is a moderated community where you can ask collections care questions, and our curated resources, where there are resources for all sorts of collections items, questions, comments, anything else that you might have about a question about collections care, you'll probably be able to find a resource on there, so I encourage you to go check out our home on the web. You can find out about CDC care through two venues on social media. One is via Facebook and one is via our Twitter feed. From there, you'll be able to see announcements on all upcoming programming that we have happening. As I said earlier, there are two ways you can communicate with us during the actual program. You have the chat box. The chat box is there to say hello, tell us what the weather is like for many of us up in the United States, North America, and Europe. It's hot. It's summer. Obviously, South America, Australia, you guys are experiencing slightly different weather than us, but feel free to share that if you'd like or even just say where you're from. Q&A boxes are there for questions for our speakers. If you have a question for our speaker at any point during the webinar, I encourage you to put a question in that box that will enable us to track the questions as compared to track them as compared to the chat stream, which is just a stream of consciousness. Sometimes we can lose the questions in there, so please use that Q&A box. Quick note on upcoming programming for CDC care. We offer a free webinar per month. Our ones for the rest of the summer are on July 20th. We're offering museum security fundamentals where you're going to find out all about how to do some basic security options for your cultural institution. So we encourage you to go check that out. That's being led by some of our contacts, the National Park Service. And then on August 18th, we have preparing for extreme weather. Since we are going to be in the heat of summer, we're going to be covering fire and hurricanes. We are going to be talking to some folks who have lived through both wildfires in California and also hurricanes in Puerto Rico. So I encourage you to register for that if you're interested in that topic. So I'm going to go ahead and introduce our speaker today. Her name is Jimena Palacios. She is a conserver and historian located in Mexico City who specializes in musical instruments. Jimena, feel free to start whenever you're ready. And I will see you all during the Q&A period once her presentation is done. Thanks and talk to you soon. Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for being here. Thank you so much to connecting to Collections Care and all the team that made this possible, especially I thank you, Robin, for all your kindness and all the facilities that you have given me for this presentation to take place. I'm so glad and excited for being here. And I am in Mexico City and I am here is a little bit earlier. So I hope this is a time that you will enjoy and that you have a we can have a nice chat after I would like to present myself. Thank you, Robin, for this presentation. As Robin said, I am Jimena Palacios and I am a conservator and historian interested in the conservation of musical instruments because I really believe these objects are extremely valuable because they allow us to know the wonders of human imagination and its expression through music, technology, symbolic uses, rituals, beliefs, among many other things. I would like to acknowledge that I am not a luthier. I am not a full time musician. I studied conservation and restoration at the National School of Conservation in Mexico City. And I have been involved with the care of collections with different characteristics. I have worked in small communities, documenting their instrumental heritage and also in large collections with objects from all over the world and every case is different. Well, currently I am working on my PhD thesis that analyzes the social impact of the use of foreign instruments in Mexico in the last decades of the 19th century. And this is relevant for me to tell you because in Mexico, as many countries in America and other parts of the world, we did not produce certain type of instruments that were very appreciated and used by that time, such as brass instruments or pianos, harps, for example, among others. So let's remember that recorded music is relatively new in terms of the history of performance and having instruments was indispensable to listen to music. So this research was born due to the amazing instruments we preserved here in different contexts. We don't have a large museum dedicated only to music. I don't know where you are from. I guess you come from many countries or many states in the United States and maybe you have a music museum where you live. We don't have a large one. Many of our historic musical instruments are in cathedrals or parishes, regional museums, schools, conservatories, academies, institutions for research and many others, which makes me think also in the conditions for their conservation and their current values. I have a PowerPoint presentation that I would like to share with you so I can talk to you and you can see a lot of examples and images. But I really wanted to see that what I want to say with this introduction is that musical instruments are not what they what we think they are always. They are not in the conditions that we can maybe think because we have visited a very beautiful large music museum. So they have this beautiful piano of Liszt or Chopin or I don't know. Musical instruments are everywhere and in different conditions. So what we will see here are the basic we can say the basic standards or the basic characteristics that can conform a collection of musical instruments. And I would like to go a bit fast because we don't have much time and this is a very rich subject. So I will share with you these slides and please feel free to write your questions in this in this chat that Robin said. And after I will try to give answer to all of them or most. So I will share this presentation with you. If everything is right, it should be visible right now. OK, let's begin. Well, as we said, musical instruments are a real wonder in every sense. Their materials, technology, aesthetic characteristics, symbolic presentation, representations, uses and the possibility of producing so many different sounds make them very complex objects that are a challenge for any conservator. If we focus this talk in collections, either private or public, we can try to recognize in one context we can find these subjects. For example, we have different types of collections that may contain diverse objects related or not to musical practices, others that focus on instruments in one type, such as pianos, harps, guitars, string instruments, those that have ethnographic instruments or that represent many regions of the world or museums of music with musical heritage of all kinds, including musical instruments, maybe a combination of all these types is possible too. So this is due to the history of the institution that holds them or the collector, but regardless of the nature and the origin of these objects, they all share something in common, they have values that have driven us to collect and preserve them over time. These values, historical, musical, aesthetic, economical and many others have defined their use and place in the collection. It is essential to recognize these values to draw up a conservation plan. When I say recognize the values, I will tell you some of the most important things that can be recognized in the musical instruments, not only their sound, but all these technology and marks of use and all the things that we are going to see a little bit later. But in any case, someone at some point in the history thought that this musical instrument was important and they kept them and now it's our responsibility to keep preserving it. So it's also our responsibility to know what that is and what has been done with it through time. So this is summarizing a little bit that we said about these values. A collection has multiple functions and not all are intended to use their instruments to give concerts, record their sound or exhibit them permanently. Some of them conserve them because they want to research them and others are not sure of what is best. Perhaps the resources of some are limited and the conservators prefer to keep them in storage. Despite all, restoring an instrument to recover its sound has been a crucial topic in past and present discussions and this is why we will bring it up in our talk later. So before talking about sound, why do we conserve? Why do we want to preserve our objects as long as possible? Well, I would like to point out that it is a process, it is not a solitary action. It needs methods that consider the function of the collection, that is, if it serves for research, for contemplation, or if its function change according to the person in question, we must remember that nobody's perfect and that there is not only one way to act and that we must not stop informing ourselves to know the potential of the collection. Let's remember that the act of conserving is wider than just trying to find an equilibrium between the object and possible causes of decay. Conservation implies being aware of the importance of an instrument or a collection in time to transmit its values to my generation and those that will come. So interpreting what I see through documenting, conserving its materials and maintaining this collection in the best condition possible should be the best thing to do. I mean that conservation is a discipline that envelopes different levels of practice, as you can see in this diagram, research, documentation, preventive conservation, restoration, repair and maintenance, as well as dissemination. But let's start with documentation and registration. For me, the most important thing before anything, the most important thing concerning the conservation of a collection is to know what objects are in it, how many there are and their characteristics. This is essential to know what kind of tools I have to register and to know them, how can I improve them? I would like to share with you a very simple tool that I call technical data sheet that has to be filled up with the minimum data of each object and that might be useful for you also. Well, these are some of the basic things that I should know about any object, but in this case a musical instrument. So we have a name. The instrument must have a name. I should know if it's a guitar, a piano or a recorder, I don't know. Maybe I know the type and with type, I will talk a bit later, but I can say if it is some kind of drum or some kind of flute, something that I recognize that is a type of that instrument, I should I should know the maximum dimensions, the total length, the total width, the depth. An inventory number is really important or any number that identifies the instrument in the collection. A photograph might be general or some details that depend that depends on what I need. A general description, the provenance or a place and approximate year of manufacture, the material state of conservation, the sound condition that I will talk about a little bit later, location in the collection and the person in charge of the collection or the maker of the pieces. Well, I would like to share with you three examples of different technical data sheets that I made in a collection that I work with that is a very nice collection that I would like to share with you whenever you come to Mexico City, you're invited all. And well, I worked as a curator of the musical instruments collection of the National Center of Research and Documentation of Music. So here we have a collection that has between 300 and 350 musical instruments. And these are, this is a center of research. It's not a museum. The instruments are not exhibited, but they are in a very special place with all the conditions of the preservation conditions, the conservation conditions they need to be in the best shape possible and that we have to prepare them to be. Well, we can sometimes we need to make some research about something. So it's really important to have an efficient access to each of these objects. So this is a technical data sheet of a Rauery. This is a very beautiful kind of violin from the Wichol et Nia, which is in Nayarit, a state in the west of the country. So here, for example, I wrote, well, this is a Rauery. It's a string instruments, a violin type. The dimensions are forty six and eleven centimeters in length and white. We have two inventory numbers. The first one, it belongs to the institution. The center of research of music belongs also to the National Institute of Fine Arts. And can you imagine the National Institute of Fine Arts? It's enormous and they have a lot of things, a lot of objects and they have an inventory number for each object. And it is very complicated. So for us, it was more efficient to have inventory numbers just for the collection of musical instruments that we registered here. The provenance, as I said, it is from the Wicholes and it was made approximately in 1940. Now, as a general description, I wrote it is a string musical instrument made of wood. The case tends to be oval and the F holes are only incinerated. The tailpiece has a cut in the middle and it is fastened with a strip of leather. It has a straight horsehair bull, as you can see in the photograph. Now, it is important for me to say that some insurance companies ask you to have at least this information if something happens. I think the next talk that you will have is very interesting. Interesting on that we have, as Robin said, about fires and all these tragedies that can sometimes can arrive us. And what do we do? How the insurance companies can take some of the responsibility? Did I insure my objects? And how does that work? So in this case, this is the minimum information they ask you to fill up. And also it is the minimum information that I want to access when I work with something. I also have a file that belongs to each instrument that has more photographs, maybe an article written about that instrument. Maybe about some analysis that have to do with some material questions that I had about how it's made. So I made examinations and analysis that I filed at some point. But this is only a technical sheet that makes me know what I have and what are the characteristics of that thing that I have? I'm sorry, my printer just turned on without notice. Well, this is one you have the rest. I would like just to go a little bit faster because there are so many things I would like to share with you. And this is a Pame flute or a Pame recorder. I noted actually that the type was a recorder. It's the most similar thing of a recorder that I can think of. The dimensions are here. Also an inventory number. This was made in San Luis Potosí, which is another state in Mexico. And the etnia that the community that made this flute is called Pame. This is why this is a flauta Pame. So this is a very special instrument because it has a spider web as a mearliton that bites whenever I blow into the instrument. That spider web bites and it produces certain sound that makes this flute a very special object. And so the spider web is lost because obviously this happens over time. These are very sensitive and delicate materials that they don't tend to to be there for for long. It's not the intention to. And for example, in this case, it doesn't sound. It is located in show three level two. I was in charge of the registration and the conservation of the collection. And for me, it was important to note some things about the some recommendations about the conservation in case the object is going to be displayed. So this we are going to see later. We are going to talk about humidity and temperature and what they do in materials like strings, like membranes. But now I would like just to show you that I put this to have a reference and in a very quick way to I would like to share the third technical data sheet that you have also that you can look more carefully after. This is a very nice. I hate to interrupt, but you're the slide. We're still seeing the word doc, the PDF right now. I didn't know if you were advancing the slides or if you wanted to have the image appearing on the screen right now. I would like to share. Can you see it now? Yes, now we see the technical data sheet with the image of it looks like an organ or a piano on top of the cube. Exactly. That's that's perfect. This is what I want you to what I want to share with you. This is an instrument that is called. In French, it's on Martin and Martin of Waves. We can make a translation. I don't know if it's the correct way to say it in English, but these Martin of Waves were a very popular thing in the 20s or the 30s, even the 50s of the 19th century. This instrument was invented by Maurice Martinot in 1928. We have one of a little bit more than 300. He didn't make a lot. It was it was an invention that took certain time and certain it was made for certain music, electronic music of the 30s. I mean, can you imagine? So we have one of these and this is the same thing. It doesn't sound but it's important for me to say how is it made and why we have to recommend some special needs that the instrument will that the instrument needs to be displayed. That's what I meant. So you can see all this material after and whenever you have some time. Also, the presentation is with you right now. And I would like to share the PowerPoint presentation as we were. Can you see me if you see the technical data sheet with the name, type, etc. Can you see that slide? Yes, it looks perfect. Thank you. OK, thank you. So well, these are the three examples that I showed you. And also I can have different tools to register anything that I want. Here I wanted to show you two types of registration that I made for two flutes of the Carlos Chavez collection of musical instruments. Carlos Chavez was a very important composer at the time at Silvestre La Vuelta. I don't know if you have heard their music, but Carlos Chavez was a very important art figure in general in Mexico and all over the world in his time. And he has a very interesting musical instruments from different communities. These are two flutes that I wanted to register with the sound and I wanted to register the sound. We will talk about that a little bit later. How do we do that? But in this table, I wanted to share with you how do I register each tune, for example, each note? So I made a table with these recorders that had four holes. There were 38 recorders and each one of them was registered with when one of the holes was close, the other one, the other one and the tuning of the whole flute. So everything that we do depends on what we want or what we need. Do we want the instruments to be displayed? Do we want to make a record of them? Do we want to make certain type of music with them? What do I want and what do I need to achieve that goal? That depends on my imagination, my resources and my needs, of course. I would like to share with you also some technical database now that I made for the the collection of musical instruments of this National Center of Research. This is in Excel and now that I have all the technical data sheets of all the instruments that belong to the to the collection, I can think about another type of tool that allows me to organize the information in another level. For example, these I'm sorry, but I only translated the first line because it's a very large document. But I wanted to show you that here I use the same data that I used in the in the in the sheet, for example, type of document in this case, because there are not only musical instruments, but there are photographs and letters, other things. But what type of document is the title, the inventory number, a physical description, which I already wrote in the in the other in the other technical data sheet. The dates registered for the instruments. Sometimes they have it. Sometimes I don't know them, so I put an approximate date. The location of in the in the collection and a general photograph just to, you know, make me think, OK, this is the one that I was thinking of and to know what I'm looking for and associate documents. In this case, we have an archive of many things that some some of the documents of those archives relate to the instruments collection. And so there is some notes in the file numbers seven hundred and ten that talks about this melody on or accordion, and I wanted to make put the reference here. So you can do whatever you want with the information you have. The important thing, as I said before, is to know what I have at least to measure it in a simple way. I will go to the presentation again. We can talk about this later as long as you want. And well, we talked about some of the most important things about collecting information, but about the type of the instruments that I have, that maybe I should have talked about that before, but I wanted to talk about it now because it concerns the type that organologists have given to the main groups of musical instruments that exist some in some sort of way. And this is the chord of phones, art of phones, membrane of phones and earphones. And this type can be written also in the information that I collect of the instrument. But now this is a little bit obsolete because if I say that a guitar or violin or or any other kind of instrument with string is a chord of phone, it's not representative when I'm registering. So I just wanted to bring it up because sometimes organologists tend to use these four groups of of instruments, you can use them or not, that depends on you. So documenting can be as deep or detailed as I want, depending on my interests and goals with certain instruments or the entire collection. For example, I will share with you other things in while I talk about this, because there are technical drawings designed by experienced luthiers that were made to copy the instrument as an ultimate goal. The precision is remarkable in these technical drawings and every millimeter counts, but I can decide if I need sketches, plates, drawings to understand what I'm seeing. I believe that registration is the best way to observe an instrument and to start valuing its historical evidence. So many things arise during an observation exercise, either performed by me or other colleagues trained in organology, construction, conservation, and any of them can provide many tips or for registering, measuring or documenting. This is also a technical battlesheet of a guitar that I will show you after, because in the National Center of Music, where I worked and where these instruments belong, we have also other type of documents that belong to the instrument as itself. So for example, we have guitars and this guitar belonged to a group in Mitra Can, another state of Mexico that donated the instrument to the National Center at some point in the 40s, in the 50s. So we have that and this is in the file. How do I connect the information of the instrument with the other cultural heritage that I have, even if that's my case? Well, that depends on what you want and what tools you have. Many of the tools like Excel, for example, a word or a file maker depends on your computers and your systems can give you options to storage the information. So you just have to know what you need and what would you like to do with that information? Do you serve scholars or do you work in an academy? Do you work for yourselves? Do you have a private collection that you just own and you want to share? Well, that is also a challenge. I mean, everything is a challenge if you have a if you have musical instruments in general. So about practical methods of measuring of the registration, there are some considerations about measuring and manipulating the instruments. It can be old and fragile or by moving parts without caring, I can cause more damage. I know that wearing gloves can get in the way when handling the object. And if I don't feel safe, the process can be dangerous. If I wash my hands and keep them clean, I don't need I won't need gloves. But sometimes it's important to use them because I can damage certain type of varnishes, color surfaces and other delicate materials. Also, whenever I measure, I must be careful when the tools and the object surface are in contact. For example, if I use metal objects such as a ruler, a compass, a square or any type of rigid surface that has contact with the object, it can be dangerous. So I have to be very careful. But plastic sometimes can be useful. And sometimes the precision is not the best. So I'd rather use metal that depends on how careful I can be. Let's remember that there are many options out there and that everything depends on my goals and resources. Here is a pipe organ that I wanted to talk to you about if we have some time time flies here. So I would like to share this conservation and restoration project with this pipe organ that I had the opportunity to lead in 2013 and 15 with a community in the state of Hidalgo. Just that's the north in Mexico. So this pipe organ was completely forgotten. As you can see in the picture, there is that is in your left hand. And the other picture is the instrument instrument restored. So the calls at the beginning were not clear. We didn't want to restore just because we want to. We knew that these type of objects are especially delicate. And we didn't know if the community was intended or was interested in playing the instrument. Or do you know that restoration as we will as we will see before is very expensive and it's really important to acknowledge also that. Restoration project with consciousness takes time and takes resources. So at first we decided to analyze the object and we use all kinds of things that we have. For example, we made a lot of analysis for the fibers for the textiles for the woods, the different types of metals. And we all made sketches and drawings and we measured everything because by measuring and by observing my instrument, I can say how it is made. What, how is it so damaged in some parts? And the marks of use, for example, are really evident when I'm close and I'm close enough to put my ruler and see centimeter by centimeter if I have the time and if it is my goal to see what I have in front of me. Let's just forget this idea of when an instrument comes to a workshop and it's all shiny and it sounds beautiful when it when it when when the project is finished. It is it's not like that. It's more complex. So for us as organologists and as students of conservation and restoration and and professionals on the field, we are very, very committed with this to see what we have is really important. Here we have a render, for example, and digital images based always on the on the observation made by hands with a pencil and a paper that I have on my hands, you know, the simplest things. Here is the final render. This is made in Sketchup by Google, for example. So it is for free. I think you can pay for some to have more tools, but this was made for the students by the students for free. And they were so enthusiastic about the project that they made all kind of plates and sketches and drawings, everything. And well, about measures before anything, millimeters are the universal standard of measuring. But these depends on each creator and collection. The most important is to have the same units for everything, because let's remember that larger units are less accurate when we work with small parts or with little details such as musical instruments about documenting sound. There are so many options and ways for recording that can adjust to our goals and resources also, as I said before. Let's remember that everything depends on what I want. And I can make a video, for example, or an audio with a simple device or I can find some more specialized software. Many of them, as I said, are for free that register frequencies in a very accurate way. Or I can go further if I have more resources and design my own device according to the interests of the research. I would like to share with you this photograph that I took when I spent some time at the Museum of Music in Paris in France. They were analyzing a group of serpents. I don't know if you heard about this instrument. It was very popular in the 18th century, mostly in the beginning of the 19th century. So these instruments are very particular. They were handmade, as you said, as you know, and they wanted to know the impedance of the instrument, the impedance is a physical property that some musical instruments, some wind musical instruments have, that is some sort of a digital, like how do you say, like a fingerprint of the instrument? Because every combination of frequencies due to the materials, to the shape of the instrument, to the mouthpiece, to the reed, everything, combines to make that sound very particular, unique, let's say. So they wanted to measure how each instrument sound. And they made this device. It wasn't the simplest thing, but it's not the most complicated. And of course, they needed advice from people that was very into acoustics and the physics of instruments. But it's not impossible and it's not really that expensive. So that depends on what we want. Now, let's keep to the natural aging and preventive conservation. We can talk about more this later, whenever of whatever you would like to talk. But well, we have said that instruments are a real wonder in every sense. And in a broader picture, let's start talking about some very important topics related to material conservation. In musical instruments, we have inorganic, or organic materials interacting in a single system. I would like to show you some examples. Organic materials are the most vulnerable. And in the case of musical instruments, we have them everywhere in the structure, in mechanical parts, in elements that directly produce sound, such as strings, membranes. But inorganic materials are also susceptible to degradation, many factors participate as causes of our mechanisms in the decay of our instruments. But we will take a look at the main ones here. I would like to present to you these two maracas. We have maracas and rattles in the collection. But these, for example, are really amazing because as you can see in your left hand, we have human hair. And we have this thread, this red thread of wool and the seed. This it is a kind of coconut seal, but a little bit smaller inside. It has rocks. So when I agitate the instrument, it sounds because they crash into each other. And we have this collar made of beautiful pieces of rocks and perils. And we have this carrizo, some kind of bamboo that holds the instrument or you hold the instrument from there. So we have all kinds of materials. We have bone and combined with wood and different types of varnishes. So many things that we can see. This is a guitarra panzona, the one that I talked to you about. The belly guitar or the, yes, I don't know how this is very Mexican. So I don't know how to make the translation. But well, it has got strings and also metal strings. The woods are very thin sometimes or in this drum, for example, the true membranes are decorated with this red pigment that it doesn't hold perfectly to the membrane. So it's a little bit loose. And that's important during the conservation or to lose it. And well, so many things that we, this is a headphone, but I have to go faster because I have so many things to share and we don't have much time. But as you can see, we have paper, decorated paper, metals and wolves and mechanical parts that we're moving all the time. And they have a different kind of decay than the decorative parts. So something that we need to talk about is natural aging. And even if it's not a decay or if it's not related to decay, aging of objects can be slow or accelerated, depending on the characteristics of the nature of the materials. The manufacture techniques and the environmental conditions, as well as social uses to which the objects were exposed. The materials tend to lose their physical and chemical properties. For example, wood may dry out and lose its mechanical properties over time. Leather can become brittle and lose flexibility. Animal strings may lose their ability to be tightened. This means that aging process cannot be prevented, but they can be slowed down or I can prolong them as far as possible if I have the objects in the best condition. But despite all of this, we can affirm that the most important factor for the preservation of the collection is the correct control of the atmospheric conditions of its environment, such as temperature, humidity, lightning, pollution, biological agents and so on. When we talk about relative humidity and temperature in a collection of musical instruments, this is something important because as we have said, as you know, we have combinations of everything. Water and temperature, especially, they are an inseparable couple. And since they since well controlled, they are best ally, but poorly controlled, they can be our worst enemy. So the most damaging humidity and temperature ranges are the extreme measures too low or too high, very low or very high. But above all, the most damaging are abrupt and constant changes. Temperature, as you know, we can measure it in degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit. That depends on what you manage as a unit and humidity and percentages or relative humidity. Now, the ideal ranges of for musical instruments that can be made of everything organic or inorganic materials vary from 15 or 25 Celsius degrees or 55 Fahrenheit to 75, 77 Fahrenheit and 30 percent to 50 percent of relative humidity. Now, this is a model scenery. The most important thing is that my my storage room or my exhibition room is stable. Of course, if I always keep a high humidity or high temperature, even if it's stable in time, that will provoke damage. But it's much less than if I have this constant changes and it rains a lot. Then my storage room accumulates a lot of relative humidity and everything looks wet and it feels very humid when I go in and I cannot find how to how to have a equilibrium with the temperature. It can be messy, but it's important to not panic and to have one of these. I don't know if you are if you have one already in your collections or in your museums. This is a logger, a data logger of temperature and relative humidity that can tell me by minutes, by hour, by month, by week, whenever I want. What are my rates in these indexes? So this device can be put in any wall of the collection or in my storage room and I can measure whenever I want because it's connected to my computer with a software and there are many ways. But I can make different type of analysis when I have the data and I can say, well, for example, why on Sundays do I have all these abrupt changes and it starts going to the normal standards on Monday? Or if it rains too much where you live or if it snows, if it's too warm, that everything has to it has an impact in our objects. So it's very important that you get one of these and then you see how they change through time and then to evaluate what to do. But also another very important factor is light. Natural light, as you know, consists on different types of radiations that we do not perceive with the naked eye and that are very harmful for the collection. And once again, the materials most sensitive and most vulnerable to the deterioration caused by light are the organic ones, which are plenty in musical instruments. The incidence of light and on objects also produces heat and heat causes the drying of materials. Because of light, textile fibers are weak. Dyes are discolored, paper becomes yellow and brittle, the varnish yellows, the appearance change. And well, light can be really a real problem if I don't take some measures to secure the exhibition room or the storage room. Actually, in the exhibition rooms, light sources remain for long periods of time. And it is very important to ensure that they are not direct sources of radiation and heat. In the storage areas, lightning can be restricted to the tasks of locating or selecting the instruments. I turn it on when I go see the instrument. I look for what I want to and I turn it off. And in the case of exhibition rooms, this is not possible. Sometimes light has to be all the time turned on. But there are a lot of different types of lamps that I can use without radiation or without the damaging radiation. It is very important to see that my light, that my bulbs, that my lamps, they don't have UV radiation. That's that's terrible for everything, not only for organic materials, but for everything. So it is important to know if these lamps have filters or if I have filters in my cases, for example. So it's really important to evaluate how my collection is to improve whenever I with with many things that not always are expensive. It's just a thing that really make an evaluation of what I need. How can I organize it better? And I recommend that to measure the amount of energy using a lux lux meter and to keep the objects under 50 and 100 luxes, if possible. And well, last but not least are the biological agents. Very important to and very messy. I know these biological agents are fungus or fungi, insects, rodents, birds and they can damage in a very devastating way and irreparable way. So I, as a conservator or curator, have to be aware of what do I, how am I looking for these these biological agents? Do I bring food to the place where I work? Do I bring a lot of people without having the proper, for example, if this is a collection for research, do they use gloves? Do they clean their shoes when they go into the collection? There are so many things that can avoid this this terrible insects that eat everything they want from paper to wood in a very messy way. And well, I have to start closing because we just have a few, a few minutes. And one of the things that I know you are very interested on and that is one of the main topics of the musical instruments universities sound. Do my instruments have to sound when I have a collection? Do they all have to sound? If they don't, are they valuable? What about my role on deciding if I restore them to recover their musical function? Well, as we said before, conservation is a is a very large discipline that englobes or contains different levels of action when I am I am trying to preserve an object. And during a lot of decades and after many things, recovering the sound of an instrument became a point of a breakpoint for a lot of museums and collections because instruments were thought as useless objects if they didn't sound because why do you make an instrument if it doesn't sound? It is not, I mean, doesn't doesn't make any sense. Why do you make a chair if you won't sit on it, you know, these kind of reflections? So many questions arise when we have musical instruments under our care. And I propose that we think about what the collection means to those who care for it or what it is, what it is currently used for. A question that is perhaps on everyone's mind is, is it OK for the instruments that that conform my collection to not sound? Do I want them to sound? What is involved in having musical instruments that do not function as they are supposed to? What steps should I take to ensure that the objects prevail in if they are playing frequently? Are objects that can no longer sound valuable? Due to the sense of being of an instrument, which is to produce music or sound, unfortunate events have taken place just as the loss of material evidence during a restoration that with further investigation could have could have driven us to more knowledge of the object. Some instruments are modified according to personal criteria that pursuits an idea of how the instrument must sound. They end up forgotten because they are not useful as it has been expected. Restoring an instrument does not imply repairing it to play it again. It is an act that demands a conscious reflection about the irreversible irreversible modifications it represents. The economic resources it requires, the planning of maintenance actions and the documentation of the restoration process. If I know that historic musical instruments are just as valuable. I'm sorry, I missed my here. We are are just as valuable. If they sound or not, maybe my priorities can change and I can also change my perspective. So that means I have instruments that look in a very good shape and I want to restore them to be played. OK, we have to think about are these considered as cultural heritage? Are these instruments going to be played for many in many periods? Or do I just want to restore because I want because I want to hear them sound? What kind of repertoire I'm going to play? How will I maintain the instrument? Do I have the resources to maintain it? Do I have the resources to document what I'm doing? These are new questions. We're not new, but these are important questions that I have to that I have to I have to think about them when I when I think that my collection of instruments is not valuable because no of the instruments can sound because of their material condition. Well, that depends on what I want. It is really important to know that conservation goes goes first, that documentation goes first and that after after I know what the instrument is made of, what is it? What what some if I if I make some kind of research or a very deep research about the instrument that I want to restore, then I have more tools, more knowledge to make a very conscious, a more accurate decision to what restoration means. And well, this is really important because a lot of pieces are lost now because, as I said, for because of personal personal criteria, people just decide to recover the sound of an instrument to evoke a time of something and it just doesn't work. And they don't like it and they don't see how it can evoke anything. And they turn out to be forgotten in some storage and or in the trash. And well, it's just to make reflections with you. And I would like to show you so many kind of instruments I have to be closing now, but these are some of the instruments of the Carlos Chavez collection. As you can see, we have all kind of things. We have rattles. We have flutes, looters. Also, I would like to share these really nice instruments from Nayarit. And we have this type of violins that are called ravellitos or ravelles. These little guitar, they are played in couple all the time, the ravell and the canary. We have harps and I am showing you this because this is this is an instrument collection without being the largest collection of the most famous museum of music in the world. No, we just have instruments and we want to take good care of them. You know, we have this percussion arcs, which were very, very popular at the time. We have so many different type of drums, so many different. It's really impressive. If you can study only the world of drums, it's really impressive. The knots and the type of membranes and the animals they use and how they decorate them. For example, this drum here to your left in the left. It is if we measure it, the diameter is almost a meter. So the photograph doesn't make any justice, but it is a wonderful instrument, all decorated with this red pigment that is also very delicate. We have to be very careful when we when we manage it. And well, we have all these things that are not absolutely not the thing that I think that a musical instrument collection might have. So we have bones, we have teeth. We have different parts of animals that were arranged to sound, as I said, maracas and rattles. And to to summarize or to end this talk and to keep going with the questions and answers, I would like to let you know that there at least we can talk about three of the main institutions that are talking about musical instruments collections all the time. They their goal is to take care of musical instrument collections. This is the icon, the International Council of Museums that has the sim sim, you know, that icon has different. How do you say in English? Committees, yes. And sim sim is International Committee of Museums and Collections of Instruments and Music before musical instruments. This is this is in French, but this is the translation in English. So if you visit the the website of sim sim, you will find all kind of activities and recommendations and people that is involved in the musical instruments collections care. So I really invite you to visit this this webpage and this institution, just as the American Musical Instruments Society that is conformed by different curators and conservators of museums all over the world that are in charge of instruments. So if you want to give it a try and take a look, go to www.amist.org and you will find also a newsletter that is that they have memberships. You can be a member for. It depends the cost, sim sim is a little bit more expensive, but you can be a member for maybe forty dollars or if you are a scholar, a little bit less, or if you're a student, a little bit less. And there are a lot of things that these these people discuss that might be interesting for you. And well, I think this is it for me, and I I invite you to ask me a lot of questions and I will see if I can answer. I hope so. Thanks, Eman. I really appreciate that. I just want to let everyone know that I put some links in the chat just now for the presentation and the resource list and also a link to the survey. We always ask people to do for these webinars as well. As we have had questions coming in, which is great. So I'll start hitting those in a second, but we did have someone asking for a little bit more definition between restoration and conservation, just to make sure that we were getting the terms correct, because obviously, you know, we want to make sure everyone's on the same playing field when it comes to these terms. So what do you consider restoration and what do you consider conservation in your experience? Well, in my experience and conservation is the discipline, the main discipline that englobes restoration, preventive conservation, management, dissemination, documentation. When I talk about conservation, I talk about understanding some kind of problem and having a solution for this problem through different ways, either making some kind of research or restoring or documenting. But conservation is the general discipline in general. When I talk about restoration, it's to intervene the object to stop the causes of decay and the mechanisms of decay. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about conservation to stop the causes of decay and the mechanisms of decay, to recover the values that I recognized. If, for example, I recognize that the instrument is it can be a playable again, then I restore it to make it playable by also analyzing its material, its material state of conservation. I mean, otherwise, it could be more like repairing something, not restoring it, because by restoration, I mean to perform an act of of reflection to intervene an instrument. Did I explain myself? No, you did. That's perfect. I just want to make sure we were all talking so people understood the term. So that's perfect. Thank you for doing that. So we do have, like I said, a lot of questions coming in. One is a good one, which is how do you assess the sound condition if it is not an instrument that you can play, assuming scale is required to produce a quality sound, such as with a string instrument? Do you rely on a player to play it for you? Then make a judgment call or kind of what's the best way to handle that if you're presented with an instrument? Um, do we have those questions written? They are if you open up the Q&A box. So if you click on the Q&A box at the bottom, it is listed under there. It's about the third question down right now. OK. Well, this is complicated. There's not an answer for for general things when we talk about sound. It is really important to know what kind of problem we have. If it's not an instrument that I can play why, because it's not stable, because partially it sounds, but it is not in tune, for example. Of course, I always rely on players because musicians and skilled musicians in certain type of instruments have a lot of experience with with sound and with the experience of the instrument, for example, I don't know if you know Ophic Lights, if you are familiar with this type of instruments. They were very popular in the 19th century, and they were part of the orchestra before the tuba was born or before the tuba was very popular. The the Ophic Lights were also military instruments. Very familiar. OK. Well, the Ophic Lights were very popular until they were not because the others came. So there are Ophic Light players now. Yes, exactly. The symphony fantastic, the from Hector Berlioz. Yes, it's a very wonderful piece. Yes, exactly. So I called a friend that has experience in all this kind of brass instruments to play the Ophic Lights and because we were restoring a couple of them and we wanted to see what was the difference in B minor, let me think in English, because I'm translating in Spanish, in Siva Morn, which is B minor and in C. They were both in different tones. So we call this person to see what was his experience. But this was only after we were we were sure that the instruments could be played again because by cleaning them, analyzing them and seeing what how the material was behaving, we could say, OK, this is material for restoration, not before. Because if something when when you are observing it and you see things that you say, if I change this, I will I will absolutely destroy evidence that is important just because I am pursuing and a romantic idea of what sound means. You know what I mean? It is a very complicated discussion. It sounds like, I mean, as a registrar, because I'm not a conservator, I'm a registrar, I tended to have almost like an old school Rolodex or list of numbers of subject experts that I would call. Right. So like if I hit something that I was like, really don't know much about military, let's say, I knew to contact these certain people who dealt with military things. Right. And it kind of sounds like that what you deal with, it's helpful to have this like list of people who like know how. But actually when you if you're trying to make things make a sound, it sounds like it's useful to be like, oh, wait, I know people who can play these instruments or you know people who know people who do and that they that might be a useful thing to start building if you're dealing with a lot of these. Do you think that's true or do you think? Yes, absolutely. I think that every conservation work and restoration work for that matter should be with different disciplines all the time. And there should be discussions all the time because the conservator has certain training and we have the the skills to do something. But the musician can give an important opinion about what is to play that instrument. Actually, when we restore the organ, do you remember those pictures that I that I showed you? The player said this was for a nun or this was for a kid or it was for a chorus because the keyboard is so small. I cannot play it feels it doesn't feel right. And we said, well, that's important. I mean, as a player to go and study in your instrument before you can play certain repertoire. Do you want to restore? Do you want to modify? What if we had decided to modify that keyboard to make it larger just to make it more comfortable? For example, I'm not saying dumb things. I mean, this has happened. So, well, I don't know if that. So some of us for modern instruments, do you store and or ship them in their cases or do you remove them for other things? This is examples of like guitars or stringed instruments. What would be your advice on that? If you don't want to exhibit them, you said? Yes, they just want to they're talking about shipping them or storing. Oh, well, of course, you have to find a good case. And if you travel a lot, there are a lot of persons that can give you some advice of what kind of case you need because the important thing is that it is that the that the that the case receives all the stress that the instrument should not. And sometimes if I have a very rigid case, it's rigid. It apparently it is it is strong because it's rigid, but it's not because it is not resilient. How do you say that they're resilient or it is a resilient when you when you have a I don't know. If you drop it or if if something happens, so the case receives all the stress. And there are some cases for travel or some cases just to for you and your instrument to play here and there. But if you go into a plane with that and you know that your instrument is going to be storage with all the luggage and you should be careful. Right. Makes sense. Someone asked just about best practices and the storage of instruments. Do you have any kind of general recommendations when it comes to kind of your best advice? If you walk into a facility and you see instruments being stored, what would be your top tips? Well, I think that for storage, it must be a clean place. It must be very easy to find things. Even if I have three hundred instruments in in a small in a small endorsement in a small storage, I can manage. I can organize things so I can easily go to the level number, find five and find my valid my link. And it is really important if I have if I'm sure that I can control the humidity and the temperature and the light. It is for me, it is better if the instruments are not in plastic bags or in any kind of in not isolated, if you know what I mean. It is nice to see them in the first few. It's nice to have everything organized, everything clean. If everything is fine, nothing will be wrong. And it's better because sometimes if I use a bag or if I made some kind of plastic, well, space or for the instrument, it can be things can be loose. And I can move some parts that I don't want to. Let's remind us that instruments are very delicate because they have different type of pieces and accessories. And it's better to to to see how they are all the time, just in case you is possible for you. And to manage the external causes of decay, which is temperature, what I said before, that's the most important thing for me. Let me see what else I got here. So this is this one, it's interesting. Is it best to store upright pianos with the keyboard open or close? Someone recently mentioned me that stains from old and and from blue over and it is close. Well, is it? Are you going to store them or are you going to exhibit them? Because I don't find many reasons for them to be open. It's better to be close because dust is everywhere, even if we don't want to. And people, we are very curious and we like to play and we like to touch. So it's better if they are close. Sorry, Rowena. No, no, no, that's fine. I was actually one of the ones I was going to hit because I was sitting there thinking when I read it, I was like, I think closed like that would be my inclination is to kind of cover it since it was used to cover because exactly what you said. Like, I know any time I go with my kids when they were a little younger, especially to houses that had pianos, like right away, it would be wanting to touch them. So I think that I would agree with that big time. Let's see what else we have. So someone someone's asking about, too, about stringed instruments where the strings have broken in the past, just where the object is sitting in storage. It's the question right above the piano one. Are there methods to help stop this from happening to other pieces in the collection? Should the strings be loosened for storage? This is a wonderful question and it applies for every instrument, string instrument, membranes. The thing is that I shouldn't tense the strings as if I was going to play the instrument because this is too tight and it can provoke deformations or even I can break the instrument. So it's better to lose them a little, but not to lose because when I try to tune them, they will force themselves a lot. So just a little bit under tension, but not too much. And also for the membranes, for example, if I have drums that have keys for tuning, it's important not to tense them as if I was going to play, I mean, not to tune them because in the long term, in the long period, the skin loses its physical properties. And sometimes it happens that in the future, I cannot tense it anymore because it's too tense. It was too tense before, so it relaxes and it relaxes forever. And also for brass instruments or wind instruments, people sometimes decide to storage the mouthpiece in one place or the wreath in one place and the instrument in one place. Everything depends on how organized I could be with my collection. If I can ensure myself or I can be sure of my team that everything is going to be in its place and if I move something, I will register that change of places and it's fine. But it's really important that if I have a mouthpiece that belongs to these instruments, we keep them together because as you can see in a lot of museums of music and musical instruments, we have a box full of mouthpieces or full of wreaths because nobody knows where they belong because they were separated from their instrument. Disassociation is never a good thing. Exactly, exactly. Disassociation, exactly. Two things that popped up in the chat. People are talking about more modern cases for instruments. Someone said be aware of humidity inside cases for long-term storage of instrument, especially ones containing wood. So just something to be aware of. Someone else was also thinking about for these newer cases, have you had experiences where like the foam has broken down or something has gone a little off-smelling? Is that common or what would you advise to people dealing with a situation like that? Well, maybe if you ask a musician that has certain type of instrument because it depends on the material of the case. If you have a wooden case, for example, or some kind of fiber, some synthetic fiber, well, it might be dangerous if the case gets wet or if I leave it in a very long period under the sun or about humidity inside the case, of course, we have to be really careful. But if I control humidity outside the case, unless I forget my Coca-Cola inside my case or my bottle of water, it's really difficult to have a different rate of humidity, at least relative humidity inside the case than outside. But you have to be careful, of course. Someone has, for general storage and maintenance of instruments that are never going to be played, right? So let's say you have an instrument in your collection, it's not going to be played, you know it's not going to be. Are there any general practices I should do annually to ensure that the instrument doesn't become damaged just through the passage of time? People are talking about like a trumpet with moving parts or do I need to press the keys occasionally to keep them from getting fused or anything like that? So do you have an advice in that case? Like, because I know a lot of people I talk to, they'll have instruments within their collections, they just know they're never going to get played. Like, they're just part of the collection. So what would be your advice in that case? Well, I think that if they are not going to be played, it's not, I have to take a look sometimes if there's no corrosion, for example, in the case of the trumpet, because if the humidity and the temperature are in equilibrium, then we don't have special effects of decay that can interrupt the course of a key or the course of a valve. That happens when the instrument is being used sometimes because I don't clean them well because I don't have the patience to take the humidity off. And sometimes in pianos, for example, they say that it's good to play them. Well, if it might be possible, but the important thing is to always be aware of the humidity and temperature rates. Because if everything is stable, the rest is, as we said, natural aging. And maybe I can, you know, just for being curious I can play something, but it won't change a lot. And sometimes if nothing has been played or nothing has been moved and I go and I move it, and I change the place or something, I can be damaging because, I don't know, I am thinking about, I play the piano, I have a vertical piano in my apartment, and I haven't played in at least three months or something because I was with some things of my thesis. And the other day I heard, you know, the crack. And I said, oh my God, because here it's really rainy right now in Mexico City. And sometimes it's really rainy and right now it's really warm. And I cannot control my temperature and my humidity because my house is not that simple. If I am working in a storage of a museum or a collection, I think it's more simple. But I think that I will leave it as it is and I will call the person that tunes it to see what happened. But I don't want to move anything because if I move something, I'm afraid that I will move another thing and that everything is going to be a mess. But not necessary, that's my opinion. Yeah, I mean, I would think and correct me if I'm wrong, but if it's not gonna be played like a trumpet, I used to actually play trumpet back in high school. And so I have like my old student trumpet that I pulled out this last year because my son picked it up. And I remember thinking to myself, like in museum world when I pulled it out of its case, I was like, I probably like museum brain kind of took over and I was like, I probably shouldn't be hitting the valves right now, right? Cause everything should just kind of be like as it is. But then my son was kind of like, okay, well, no, I want to hear you play. Not that I could really well anymore. But I did was like, well, this is a playing instrument though. So it's okay for me to kind of move stuff around and to kind of look at, you know, open it up a little bit. So I think that going back to the original question, if you are just storing the objects, they are not going to be played. I wouldn't mess around with the movie. No, I wouldn't play them to prove anything. Because sometimes if we're talking about guitars, string instruments, pianos, for example, it's important not to tense the strings. And then I can peacefully dream about them because I won't be able to play them because they are not that tense. It will be out of tune and... Yeah, I would agree. Someone just said in the chat too that they had trombone cases and the foam all broke down. So they did end up having to remove their instruments from the cases. I think if you see an active issue like that, you should probably remove the object from the case, right? And come up with storage. Okay, good. Yeah, I think that was the case of it. It's just, if you see something active, it's like, no, I got to remove these. I can't live in there anymore. It's nice and like, yes, of course. Exactly. All right, so I'm looking through the rest of the questions. A lot of them are kind of people asking about the play question. Do you play these objects or do you leave them as they are? So that's kind of an interesting thing. I'm going to go ahead and... Oh, someone asked about insurance coverage on instrument collections. Do you have any experience with that at all? I don't know if Mexico has the same standards as the United States. I think that it's very important to look what is happening in other institutions in the States because here, for example, since San Yvim, where I worked, belongs to the National Institute of Fine Arts. Everything is with the same company of insurance. And that's cheaper for them. And the musical instruments belong to all the objects. I mean, all the objects are all the objects, a table, a lamp, a musical instrument, everything. So it's better if someone else gives you advice because it's a really important question. It's really important. And you can have a plan that accommodates to your needs and to your resources. Yeah, I think that's a question for our friendly neighborhood insurance agent too. I think it's going to be different with how... If you're storing and displaying the instrument as a piece of art, I think it's going to be different than if it's a plain instrument. If I had to guess at the basic level. But yeah, I think that's a question for... Like I always call them our friendly neighborhood insurance agents, which would be able to... Well, now that you bring it up, it's really important because in the way I worked, as I told you before, instruments where the inventory of the instruments belong to the inventory of everything else. There were not distinguished as art or as historic instruments. They were instruments as everything else. So if I want to pursue some kind of better budget for doing something, I cannot because they are not considered as historic instruments. And this is not the case everywhere, but there are some institutions that are really trying to make this better because if the government does not recognize something as valuable historical artistic, as I told you about values before, it is impossible that me as a conservator can give some advice for anything because it goes out of my hands, it is unmanageable for me. Yeah, exactly. Well, it is close to 2.30 Eastern. So I'm going to have to wrap it up for today. I put the links again to the presentations and the resources and the survey in the chat. So if you could please fill that out, it would be appreciated. Jimena, thank you so much. This is, people seem to really enjoy it. We had some really good questions from people. This is such a specialized topic. We really appreciate you taking some time today to talk to all of us about it. So thank you again. Thank you so much for you, Robin, for the foundation for everyone that was here and so patient and with so many interesting questions. Please, I will give you my email address. I guess that Robin did it, of course, before. But in case you want to talk more or to give me advice or to share with me the cases that you have, where you're from, how can we make a group to work together with our instruments collections? Anything I will be really pleased to receive your emails or whatever you consider. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. We just shared that in the chat. So again, huge thanks to Jimena, our speaker. Thank you to FAIC, for connecting to Collections Care. Of course, thank you to IMLS who are our grant funding agency. And thank you to Learning Times for producing this program today. We will be back in July on Museum Security Fundamentals and then in August, again, for Extreme Weather, Fire and Hurricane. So if you'd like to register for either of those webinars, please go to our website, connectingtocollections.org. Thanks again, have a safe summer and we'll see you all in July. Thank you.