Planning for a Sustainable Preservation Environment for Collections

FAIN: PF-50034-10

Abbe Museum (Bar Harbor, ME 04609-1782)
Julia Clark (Project Director: December 2009 to March 2013)

Planning for sustainable environmental conditions to protect the museum's ethnographic and archaeological collections, which focus on the history of Native Americans in Maine.

As a collecting institution, the Abbe Museum focuses on Maine's four Native American tribes: the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Micmac, and Maliseet, collectively known as the Wabanaki. Operating from two public facilities, the Abbe Museum's mission is to inspire new learning about the Wabanaki Nations with every visit. The Museum's collections, exhibitions, and programs focus on Native American traditions in Maine and explore the broader Native American experience, past and present. The Abbe Museum requests a one-year grant award in support of its "Planning for the Sustainability of the Abbe Museum's Collections Environment" project. The goals of the project are to review the current climate control systems, review and re-identify appropriate standards for exhibition and storage environments, and determine if the system can be re-engineered or altered to meet the new environmental preservation standards, as well as implement "green" approaches to the building environment.