Assessment and proposals for improving care of the Whitehorne House Museum Collections

FAIN: PF-271930-20

Newport Restoration Foundation (Newport, RI 02840-2932)
Erik Marc Greenberg (Project Director: January 2020 to December 2022)

A planning project to improve climate control, security, and collections storage at Whitehorne House Museum, a Federal-period building on the National Register of Historical Places dedicated to the history and artistry of eighteenth-century Newport furniture. Pairing existing data regularly gathered through current systems and staff observations with an extensive onsite review from a team of expert consultants in a variety of fields, the applicant would develop a plan to recommend more efficient and sustainable preservation practices in order to balance the needs of the collection with more sustainable energy use.

Newport Restoration Foundation requests a $50,000 Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections planning grant to research and develop a plan that will serve as a road map to improve the climate control, security, and collections storage systems at its Whitehorne House Museum in Newport, Rhode Island. Working with an integrated team of outside consultants, we will create a planning document that will make suggestions about the best systems for addressing the museum’s current challenges in climate control, security, and collections storage in an historic building that faces its own preservation needs. The creation of this plan must also help us develop and articulate our preservation plan for the Samuel Whitehorne House itself, a Federal Period building on lower Thames Street that is, simultaneously, a significant historical artifact in its own right (listed on the National Register of Historical Places), and houses our museum and its historically significant collection.