Sustaining the Heritage of the Corcoran Legacy Collection at American University

FAIN: PG-280718-21

American University (Washington, DC 20016-8200)
John Rasmussen (Project Director: January 2021 to April 2023)
Beth Bright (Project Director: April 2023 to November 2024)

A general preservation assessment of 9,000 works of art including paintings, prints, drawings, photography, sculpture, books, decorative arts, and ephemera from antiquity into the twenty-first century that were redistributed to the museum from the now-closed Corcoran Gallery of Art. Of particular note in the collection are paintings by artists from the Washington Color School, such as Sarah Baker, Manon Cleary, and Claudia DeMonte, and a combination of 640 photographs and prints by Washington, D.C. area resident, photojournalist, and World War II war correspondent Constance Stuart Larrabee. The collections are used for exhibition and research, with a focus on artists of the Washington, D.C., area. The project would also include the development of an emergency preparedness plan with assistance from the consultant, as well as training for staff in collections management, object storage, and emergency preparedness.

We are seeking a grant to support three complementary activities: 1) a General Preservation Assessment of the physical collections, to be conducted by a consultant. The resulting report will offer recommendations for collections care, policies and practices, storage and handling, and environmental conditions; 2) Focus on education and training of the collection’s management team. The consultant will spend time with the Acting Registrar and Preparator to administrator trainings in storage best practices, including cost-effective solutions for object rehousing. The grant will also support the purchase of trainings in preservation and care of collections by the American Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Works (AIC) and the Association of Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS); 3) Developing an Emergency Preparedness Plan with the consultant.