Preservation Grant to Support the Purchase of Archival Flat Files
FAIN: PG-271851-20
Lyman Allyn Art Museum (New London, CT 06320-4130)
Jane LeGrow (Project Director: January 2020 to January 2023)
The purchase of three archival-quality flat file units for the storage of works of art on paper in the Lyman Allyn Art Museum’s permanent collection. This furniture would accommodate an estimated 300-350 drawings, prints, photographs, and other works on paper, removing them from current inefficient and deleterious storage situations. Highlights of the collection include over 17,000 objects from antiquity to the present, including approximately 3,300 works on paper from American and European artists, with particular strengths in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In addition to alleviating overcrowding in collections storage, the project would allow staff to respond more effectively to requests for use of these collection items by students, scholars, and authors, for teaching, research, and publication purposes.
The Lyman Allyn Art Museum (New London, CT) requests $8986.62 to support the purchase of three archival-quality flat-drawer cabinet units for the long-term storage of photographs, prints, drawings and other works on paper in the permanent collection. A significant proportion of the Museum's approximately 3300 works on paper are currently stored in inefficient, potentially harmful plywood units, in acidic matting, or on rolling storage racks that could better be used to store oil paintings and oversized works. The collection includes works by 18th and 19th century American and European artists, as well as European Old Master drawings, works by American Modernists and WPA-artists, and a large collection of contemporary photography. These cabinets would rehouse between 300-350 works, stored flat in Melinex sleeves, archival folders or in acid-free mats. Support of this project would greatly assist the Museum's ongoing efforts to improve its collections care, capacity and accessibility.