Susan Dwight Bliss Room/Collection Preservation Assessment

FAIN: PG-50256-08

Bowdoin College (Brunswick, ME 04011-8447)
Richard H.F. Lindemann (Project Director: May 2007 to September 2009)

A preservation assessment of the Susan Dwight Bliss Room and Rare Book Collection. The Bliss Room, designed by C. Grant LaFarge, has Italian Renaissance furnishings and a painted ceiling and houses 1,200 volumes of finely bound rare books dating from the mid-16th to the mid-20th centuries and relating to the fine and decorative arts, French and English history and literature, and European and Asian travel.

The Bowdoin College Library requests a Preservation Assistance Grant of $5,000 to support a preservation assessment of the Susan Dwight Bliss Room and Rare Book Collection. The Library will contract with Williamstown Art Conservation Center and with Harriman Associates (mechanical contractors) to perform an overall condition assessment of the facility and its contents, to provide recommendations for the improved immediate care and longer term conservation of the books and ceiling art work, and to prepare a detailed proposal for appropriate climate control systems for the room.