Purchase of Storage Furniture and Preservation Materials to Preserve Historic and Textile Collections

FAIN: PG-51538-12

Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages (Stony Brook, NY 11790-1931)
William Ayres (Project Director: May 2011 to September 2013)
Joshua Ruff (Project Director: September 2013 to September 2013)

The purchase of shelving and storage supplies for the rehousing of selected artifacts from the museum's history and carriage collections. These material culture holdings document the history of Long Island from the 19th through the late 20th centuries. Storage conditions would be improved for textiles, ceramics and glass, and carriage and harness-making tools.

The objects that are the focus of this project - rare harnesses and non-vehicular carriage artifacts, fragile nineteenth-century textiles, and some 700 specimens of fine ceramics and glass - are important examples from both Long Island regional and national history. Relocating and properly storing these 3,650 artifacts represents a crucial first step in a long-range effort to raise all storage areas to the same level of consistently excellent care. As recommended by a 2010 NEH Preservation Assistance-funded conservation survey, this project will take key steps to improve collection storage by moving and rehousing artifacts currently stored in non-climatized spaces. The conservation survey advised a series of short- and long-term steps to improving collection care, but the steps represented in this project to gain physical control over problematic collection spaces were recognized as the most urgent and critical.