Preservation Assessment of the Hermitage Museum & Gardens Archive & Objects

FAIN: PG-280710-21

Hermitage Museum and Gardens (Norfolk, VA 23505-1730)
Lindsay Neal (Project Director: January 2021 to September 2023)

A preservation assessment by the Northeast Document Conservation Center of the collections of the Hermitage Museum & Gardens, whose collection represents more than thirty global cultures and 5,000 years of world history, from the Neolithic era to the early 1950s. The materials include more than 100 artworks by late-nineteenth and twentieth-century artists, over 500 works on paper, over 200 sculptures and antique cultural objects, several hundred craft objects (including glass, ceramic, metal, wood, and fiber/textiles), the personal effects and works of museum founders William and Florence Sloane, and paper-based materials including photographs, letters, postcards, greeting cards, large-format maps, original architectural blueprint drawings of the Hermitage structure, and limited edition prints and publications by Raymond Duncan.

The Hermitage Museum & Gardens (Norfolk, VA) requests $7,574.25 from the NEH Preservation Assistance Grant to support a general preservation assessment of its collections, with a specific emphasis on its Archival contents. The purpose of the project is to provide guidance for the museum’s short and long-term preservation goals. The assessment will result in a detailed report that takes overall conditions and environmental aspects into account and will provide specialist-level expertise as the basis for museum staff to establish and formalize its own short and long-term preservation plans for the collection.