AIC's 44th Annual Meeting

The loss of cultural property in the Middle East has received intense news coverage over the past few years. Publications that address the complexities of protecting heritage in the face of armed conflict or examine previous failures and successes from World War II through to the 2003 Iraq war are increasing. However, in the summer of 2014 in the midst of a military offensive named "Operation Protective Edge" by the Israeli government, the current literature failed to usefully address the issues experienced by conservators in Israeli museums. Since 2000 Israel has been involved in, or the site of, five armed conflicts. These short wars or "operations" have occurred every two to three years and result in the puncturing of the rhythms of what is normally a Western-style culture and lifestyle with intermittent bombings and missile attacks. Unlike the long-running armed conflicts that have consumed Israel's Middle Eastern neighbors where museums and sites suffer from targeted and sustained damage, within Israel, cultural institutions have not been specifically targeted for attack. However, the weapons and tactics in use are not precise enough for institutions to feel that they need not prepare for a catastrophic event. While some Israeli museums have emergency and disaster plans that consider terrorism and war events, the intense push seen in North America in developing emergency protocols has not reached Israel despite the obvious need. Many institutions have lists of their most important or valuable artifacts and a few have plans for what to do in the event of a war. But deciding when to implement these protocols in the face of sporadic attacks is often a difficult judgement call resulting in delays that make them ineffective considering the fast-moving nature of the conflicts. In fact, most nations have not been proactive in developing emergency protocols for situations of armed conflict and acts of terrorism, in spite of recent current events. This paper will outline the challenges noted during a conservator-led initiative for developing stronger emergency protocols for Israeli museums with moveable cultural heritage. Recommendations for linking implementation of emergency preparation steps to local security alert levels will be discussed, as well as other recommendations for exhibition and renovation that facilitate speedy action and long-term protection of art and artifacts in a volatile area.

The Centre de conservation du Québec (CCQ) is a leader in the field of art conservation in Canada. It has long been involved in emergency response procedures meant to be applied throughout the province of Quebec. Over the years, it has developed materials specific to disaster prevention and, most importantly, it has elaborated an intervention plan. The CCQ has formed an emergency response committee consisting of several conservators from different fields of expertise in the interest of providing the best possible assessment of the problems at hand. The committee members are also part of an quick response team which can be deployed at anytime to disaster sites anywhere in the province. The team has organized a quick- response tool kit for its purposes. The materials, which are solely destined for use by the emergency team, are kept in well-marked boxes in a specific location, always ready for use. The specific materials will be discussed in greater detail during the presentation. Significantly, several major institutions in the province of Quebec possess emergency plans and have entered into specific agreements with the CCQ for the latter to act in the event of an emergency situation. Moreover, all the conservators employed by the CCQ must be ready to be deployed if needed, and may be contacted through the use of an emergency telephone pyramid. Several disasters have occured over the years in Quebec province. The CCQ has been involved in some of these, including, most recently, a fire that took place in 2014 at the Musée de la Civilisation de Québec. Prior to that, there was a huge fire in 2008 at the Voltigeurs de Québec Armoury. The ice storm of 1998 had a major impact, affecting, in particular, the Lachine Museum in Montreal. Each of these cases will be presented in greater detail. Every one of these events was instrumental in helping the CCQ to improve its emergency response procedures ; following each emergency, post-mortem meetings were carried out to fully assess the exercise : what went right and what could use improvement.

The location of the new Whitney Museum of American Art, the 220,000 square foot new museum adjacent to the Hudson River that opened earlier this year, is particularly sensitive to water level rise and storm surge. The design of the building by Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Cooper Robertson anticipates the effects of climate change and protects the Museum’s staff and collection from water level rise. In the original design for the building, under construction before Superstorm Sandy, the team elevated the lobby above the FEMA recommendation of nine feet to ten-plus feet. All galleries begin on the fifth floor and extend upward with no permanent gallery or art storage below level five. When Superstorm Sandy hit New York City in October 2012, the museum was well under construction and basic elements of the building’s design were already in place to protect the structure in the case of flood. The timing of the storm enabled the team to see how the building could withstand a serious flooding event. The structure withstood the storm well, but unprecedented water levels brought over six million gallons of river water into the building’s 30’ deep basement. The devastating effects of the storm on New York City’s infrastructure inspired a transformation in the practice of flood mitigation, and the timing of the Whitney Museum project has put the project team at the forefront of addressing future resilience. Following the storm, FEMA revised its flood zone maps, recommending a 13.5 foot elevation for building on the Whitney site. With the sense that that elevation still seemed too conservative, the Whitney team conducted an international search for an advisor to assist in developing a revised flood elevation recommendation. They selected WTM Engineers of Hamburg, Germany, and their partner, the Franzius Institute for Hydraulic, Waterways, and Coastal Engineering of the Leibniz University of Hanover, two organizations well versed in protecting an urban environment from floods. The Franzius Institute undertook extensive study of New York Harbor and its environmental history and advised that the building should be protected up to a 16.5-foot elevation. Based on these studies, the design team worked with WTM to devise modifications, both temporary and permanent, for the Whitney’s structure that will protect it against future storm events. In the case of flooding, the main goal is to preserve the ground floor as effectively as possible, which will ensure that the entire building is safe guarded. To do this, Cooper Robertson and the consultant team examined all possible water infiltration points within and above the 16.5 foot protected elevation. Reinforced concrete walls surround the basement and protect the building on four sides, but the truck and staff entry points on the west side of the building are at street grade, a six-foot elevation. To protect this possible entry point, the team enlisted Walz and Krenzer, manufacturers of watertight doors for navy vessels, to manufacture floodgates that would prevent water from entering through these portals. The floodgates consist of a 10-inch thick aluminum plate with a hinged door, operated by a turning wheel that seals water out against steel plates embedded into reinforced liner walls. Two Whitney facilities staff members can together close the gates in case of emergency. To incorporate the floodgates into the design of the building, the Cooper Robertson team redesigned the surrounding structure to accommodate them. The reconstruction on the west side of the building required the removal of pre-cast concrete from the already-constructed stair tower. During this removal, the pre-cast concrete on the levels above it had to be temporarily secured in place while the new section incorporating the floodgate could be installed. A crucial element in the Whitney’s flood mitigation strategy is continuity; the floodgates only work if the rest of the building is continuously sealed. Waterproof membranes behind the secondary reinforced concrete walls shield the structure from flooding. Aqua-seal is used to seal 3D concrete penetrations created for electrical conduits, gas, electrical service, and piping, maintaining the structure’s integrity due to a storm surge. The team also devised temporary protective elements to be deployed in anticipation of flooding. In the hours before a weather event, a contractor will bring the Whitney’s temporary barriers from a nearby warehouse and assemble them on site. A continuous concrete curb on the building’s plaza bolsters aluminum posts that are bolted into the ground to them hold stacked aluminum logs. The temporary barriers will protect the lobby’s large expanses of glass wall that could be vulnerable to pressurized water. To this end, extensive additional structure was added to the plaza design to accommodate the additional weight. The plaza’s drainage system was also reconceptualized by engineers Jaros Baum & Bolles so that any leakage or splashover drains away from the dry area. An additional change to the original building design included the rethinking of the building’s emergency energy sources. Instead of the 1,000-gallon fuel oil tank originally planned for the museum, the Whitney’s insurance advisors suggested accommodating the largest tank possible. Therefore, the building has a 4,000 gallon tank in order to provide with as much energy as possible in an emergency in order to keep the building’s systems, particularly the pump system, running. The team did precise calculations to account for all possible flood scenarios, including the failure of these or other functions. For example, if the pumps should fail, it was determined that 14 inches of water would then flood the basement. Therefore, all placement of electrical equipment was adjusted to sit above a 14-inch elevation. In cases where this was not possible, a concrete barrier provides protection. In the worst case scenario of water level rise above 16.5 feet, the structure is designed to survive flooding of the lobby level, to deflect the force of any debris impact load, and to prevent any stray building materials from blowing off the structure and causing damage or injury. The severe impact of a flood of this magnitude on the city trumps the concern for resuming building operations as quickly as possible. Instead, the design gives the Whitney staff peace of mind that the building will not cause harm to its community during any future unprecedented weather events. Although the new Whitney Museum represents an unprecedented addition to New York City’s cultural landscape, the building’s strategies demonstrate a successful precedent for any institution planning to build on the world’s changing waterfronts.

The Museum of London is one of the Arts Council England's (ACE) lead partner museums in the UK and as such plays a significant role in the co-ordination of emergency planning resources across London's Regional Museums. This paper will outline the strategies and tools which the Museum of London's collection care team have put in place to assist smaller organisations to plan for an emergency as well as raising awareness of collections emergency planning amongst its own management and staff. In 2009-2010 the Museum of London commissioned a needs analysis of collections emergency provision and resources across 250 London museums. This study helped us to understand our capacity to respond to an incident in the capital and prompted further work to better equip London's museums through training provision and improved communication. A series of network groups across London have been established in order to share geographical skills and resources and members of the groups receive training, equipment and assistance to write their own emergency and salvage plans. As part of this work the Museum of London developed and launched an innovative Collections Emergency Planning E-Learning Tool, a free web based illustrated guide to emergency planning which sits on the Museum of London's website for anybody to use. The tool facilitates the delivery of cost effective desk based learning, takes twenty minutes to complete and is used to underpin practical training courses. It allows us to communicate the principles of collections emergency planning to a whole organisation and raise awareness across broad groups of staff and volunteers. This combination of approaches is working to better prepare London's museums for an incident that we all hope will never happen.

Harvard University’s seventy+ library system has an extensive network of emergency planning, preparedness, response, and recovery resources. The cumulative impact of an average of ten emergencies each year has necessitated maintaining a broad-based program with the Library Collections Emergency Team as the centerpiece, allowing us to confront new and unexpected challenges with confidence in our ability to make well-informed decisions on the fly. The Team is a dynamic program that evolves to meet changing needs of the University by building and maintaining strategic collaborations within and outside of our broad community. Our story can inspire regional networks with ways to increase their effectiveness by sharing responsibilities, developing and training around best practices, reducing stresses to improve response quality, and taking advantage of existing resources.

Harvard’s Library Collections Emergency Team consists of 20 conservators and preservation professionals with a variety of backgrounds and specialties (book, paper, photo, audiovisual). We have responded to 112 incidents in 15 years, including challenges such as burst storm drains, plumbing and HVAC failures, mold outbreaks, and pest infestations.The team provides 24/7 phone advice and in-person response support. As a large group, we distribute responsibility among team members and use a buddy approach to support thorough communication and decision-making. We have worked with Harvard’s environmental health and safety group to develop best practices for safe emergency response.

Through a critical and unusually robust training program, we have created a centralized response team that is highly effective, and a community of library staff who are comfortable with initial response procedures and emergency planning. Bi-annual intensive, hands-on training consists of a mock water emergency with a variety of deaccessioned collection materials in which participants learn first-hand how to be aware of their own safety, communicate to initiate response action, take preemptive action to prevent further damage, and set up a salvage operation. Other training components include material-specific salvage techniques (i.e. audiovisual identification and salvage), tabletop exercises, emergency planning workshops.

Lessons learned over the years include: how to write your plan so that it can actually be used during an emergency; how not to underestimate the impact of emotions and stress during an emergency; how to improve safety through training; how to evolve an emergency program with the needs and capabilities of the community; how to deploy a response team into an unfamiliar situation; how to organize effective debrief meetings. We hope other regional or other networked emergency teams could benefit from our mistakes and developments over time.

From 2010 – 2015, multi-disciplinary efforts have been progressing to build capacity to protect cultural heritage in Haiti after the major earthquake that struck the Port-au-Prince region in 2010. The Smithsonian Institution Haiti Cultural Recovery Project was formed in partnership with the government of Haiti to assist Haitian culture professionals in the recovery of their gravely damaged cultural heritage. This project evolved into a longer-term effort to formally establish cultural conservation in Haiti, culminating in this year’s inauguration of the Cultural Conservation Center at Quisqueya University. The authors collaborated in the recovery mission as chief conservator and cultural recovery center director respectively; our paper aims to present the transition from a cultural recovery project to the foundation of a national conservation center in Haiti. The 7.1 magnitude earthquake, yielded horrific humanitarian consequences, as well as widespread destruction of built heritage and dramatic damage to collections. An estimated 280,000 people perished and 1.5 million others left homeless. The response to the cultural devastation was secondary, although deemed of importance by international cultural organizations. In March 2010, the Haiti Cultural Recovery Project was proposed whereby the Smithsonian Institution would support the efforts of Haitian colleagues. The project faced such serious challenges that the success of our mission seemed elusive. We had to build a cultural recovery infrastructure to address a catastrophe of devastating proportions in a tropical climate, while simultaneously training a local base of preservation professionals. A combination of key variables turned our mission into a successful model of disaster recovery and building resilience. Successful heritage recovery involves a collaborative effort among different people and institutions sharing common values. Collaboration with various partners was crucial for this project to succeed: the Haitian Government; Haitian, U.S., and international institutions that could provide human resources and a knowledge base needed to solve technical and practical problems; Haitian cultural agencies and private organizations which own collections; training institutions and universities; and the media. By the means of a series of differentiated agreements, collaborative conservation strategies, and through constant communication, our project bridged these partners to achieve meaningful results. Approximately 30,000 artworks, books, documents, monuments and wall paintings from 20 institutions were recovered. AIC was an important partner, contributing significant logistics coordination of both volunteer deployments and critical supply procurement. Fifty conservators and collection managers from the United States, Canada and Europe participated in our project in various capacities. The June 2015 inauguration of the purpose-built Quisqueya University conservation center in Port-au-Prince demonstrates a serious commitment by Haitian culture professionals to heritage preservation. Moreover, this Center is the first francophone conservation center in the Caribbean and only the second center in the region. As Haiti sits on two seismic faults and is regularly subjected to other disasters, primarily tropical storms and hurricanes, future disaster recovery activities will likely occupy the Center. The aftermath of a major catastrophe requires years of dedication because damage is both severe and widespread. In Haiti, perhaps a quarter century of work remains. Going forward, we have new challenges and opportunities.