Prints and Drawings Preservation Assessment at the Phoenix Art Museum

FAIN: PG-51937-13

Phoenix Art Museum Endowment Fund (Phoenix, AZ 85004-1685)
Alexis Gould (Project Director: May 2012 to October 2014)

The assessment of the storage vault of the Phoenix Art Museum's works on paper, which span the periods of American Impressionism, German Expressionism, Cubism, and the French avant-garde and include prints and drawings by artists such as Mary Cassatt, Milton Avery, Arshile Gorky, Maynard Dixon, Otto Dix, Pablo Picasso, and pieces from the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection. The project will result in a five-year plan to improve the storage conditions of the current collection as well as allow for future acquisitions.

The NEH Preservation Assistance Grant will support the hiring of a paper conservator to conduct a collection-specific preservation needs assessment of the Prints and Drawings Storage Vault at Phoenix Art Museum. The Vault houses almost all of its approximately 4000 works on paper including American, European, Contemporary, Latin American, and Western departments but suffers from severe overcrowding, inadequate interleaving, and lack of organized housing due to the large number of works donated in the past decade. This is detrimental to the Museum's ability to fulfill its function to provide public access to its collection. The assessment will enable the Museum to fulfill its collections stewardship responsibilities by evaluating the Vault in terms of its organization, housing, and environmental conditions. The assessment's recommended improvements will allow the Museum to maintain the public trust with increased preservation of, and accessibility to, its works on paper.