CCAHA

Photograph Conservator Rachel Wetzel was pleasantly surprised when a fragile American ivorytype, a rare photographic process first produced in the mid-1850s, recently arrived in the lab. Treatment would have had a limited success rate, but digital imaging provided a solution.

The Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Photograph Preservation Project aims to improve preservation of significant photographic collections held in HBCUs. Ten institutions were recently selected to receive $45,000 grants to fund in-depth preservation projects.

Four conservators from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia will visit CCAHA June 9-17 to learn the technicalities of photograph conservation—a field that does not yet exist in Russia.

A Mellon Foundation grant to LYRASIS will fund the second round of the HBCU photograph preservation project, a joint effort by CCAHA, LYRASIS, the HBCU Library Alliance, the University of Delaware Art Conservation Department, and the Image Permanence Institute.

The Civil War Museum of Philadelphia's Meade Album holds almost 1,400 carte-de-visite portraits of all the officers who served in the Union Army of the Potomac.