Natural and Cultural Heritage Theme Report
Australia State of the Environment Report 2001 (Theme Report)
Lead Author: Jane Lennon, Jane Lennon and Associates Pty Ltd, Authors
Published by CSIRO on behalf of the Department of the Environment and Heritage, 2001
ISBN 0 643 06752 3
Current condition of heritage places and objects and pressures affecting them (continued)
Condition of heritage objects
Assessing the condition of objects is a necessary part of assessing their continuing role in providing information on the state of the environment from which they came.
In the previous section it was seen that we cannot currently distinguish a national collection of 'heritage objects', as opposed to general collections, because either the associated information or the retrieval systems in place are inadequate to aggregate this information, even at a single collection scale in most cases. As a consequence, the overall condition of collections was investigated, on the assumption that the findings would apply equally to the component comprising heritage objects.
Trans-Australian Railway booklet.
On 14 September 1912, Australia's Governor-General, Lord Denman, turned the first sod for the Trans-Australian Railway. This commemorative booklet, on show in the Nation exhibition, is an attractive reminder of the vast engineering achievement that spanned 1690 km of the Australian continent.
Source: National Museum of Australia
The Artlab Australia survey (see Pearson et al. 2001) examined the proportion of collections surveyed for preservation treatment, the amount of such treatment carried out, and the proportion of collections stored in appropriate environmental conditions. This analysis is based on a sample, and on self-reporting by institutions, but it is believed to give a reliable overview of large and medium-sized heritage collections.
Conservation surveys
Only 37% of Commonwealth, State and Territory collecting institutions quantified the proportion of their collections that had been surveyed for treatment in some way, and overall this information is not well recorded. Only 15% of the larger collecting organisations had surveyed three-quarters or more of their collections (see Table 12 below).
| Percentage of collection surveyed | Number of institutions |
|---|---|
| <25 | 9 |
| 26-50 | 5 |
| 51-75 | 1 |
| 75-100 | 10 |
| Not quantified | 16 |
| Not reported | 27 |
| Total surveyed | 68 |
Source: Artlab analysis in Pearson et al. (2001).
Surprisingly, in the aggregated small museum and gallery sector (see Table 13) 50% of organisations have had a conservation survey of some sort. There appears to be three basic groupings in the sample population:
- the two larger states (New South Wales and Victoria), where approximately 70% of organisations have undertaken survey work,
- a middle group comprising the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, where about half of the respective sample populations have undertaken one or more surveys, and
- Tasmania and the ACT, where only a quarter of organisations or less have undertaken such activity.
| State/Territory | Had a survey | Sample size | Percentage of sample |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACT | 0 | 6 | 0 |
| NSW | 14 | 19 | 74 |
| NT | 6 | 11 | 55 |
| Qld | 10 | 25 | 40 |
| SA | 7 | 14 | 50 |
| Tas. | 3 | 12 | 25 |
| Vic. | 12 | 17 | 71 |
| WA | 7 | 14 | 50 |
| Total | 59 | 118 | 50 |
Source: Artlab analysis in Pearson et al. (2001).
Stanthorpe and District Historical Museum's exhibition of local bush crafts.
Source: Jane Lennon (1995)
The result for the ACT, where no organisations (out of a population sample of 6) reported having had a conservation survey, is difficult to reconcile with the fact that Australia's major materials conservation training centre, at the University of Canberra, is located among this group of organisations.
Among the University collections nationally, only 12% have had a conservation survey (Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee 1998).
Treatment
Information about the actual treatment activity in the larger collecting organisations is so variable that it has not been possible to present a consistent overview of the sector. Most of the larger libraries, archives, museums and galleries have conservation staff and operate treatment programs covering both preventive activity and remedial treatments. Botanic gardens and herbariums also undertake conservation work but this is most often with an emphasis on preventive conservation. While such activities are important in terms of their impact on the longevity of collections, they are not comparable with many specific treatment activities in other organisations.
The level of conservation treatment activity in the aggregated small museum sector is outlined in Table 14. Again, there was lack of quantitative data available on levels of treatment, and the poor consistency of responses to questions about treatment activity has led to summary information of limited value. Only about one-quarter of the museums interviewed have had some of their collections treated, and the majority had few or no items treated. Again, the galleries were more likely to have undertaken treatment, with only 20% of galleries not doing any treatment, as compared with 43% of museums. In comparison, 46% of the 132 responses to the 1996 survey of university collections (from a total population of 276 collections held by universities), indicated that they had never had an item treated by a conservator.
| Number of items treated | Number of art galleries | Percentage of art galleries | Number of museums | Percentage of museums | Total number | Percentage of total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | 6 | 20 | 38 | 43 | 44 | 37 |
| Few | 7 | 23 | 28 | 32 | 35 | 30 |
| Some | 16 | 53 | 22 | 25 | 38 | 32 |
| Most | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| All | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 30 | 100 | 88 | 100 | 118 | 100 |
Source: Artlab analysis in Pearson et al. (2001).
Storage conditions
The analysis of the environmental conditions in which collections are stored proved to be a much more robust indicator of condition than did trying to quantify conservation treatment. The environmental conditions of the storage facilities of the nation's major collecting institutions, as reported by them, are of a high standard. Table 15 shows that 93% of institutions reported that their collections were stored in good to very good environments, with 50% being very good. Only 4% reported poor conditions and 1% very poor conditions. There was a close correlation between the adequacy of the environmental conditions and the overall suitability for storage purposes of the building being used. One reason for the environment for small museum collections being very poor is that the museum is often in a heritage building. Many small museums are not sufficiently resourced to deal with issues such as building conservation, maintaining adequate conditions for objects on display or in storage, and cataloguing. They also try to conserve everything from their town - an admirable objective, but unrealistic regarding the capacity to care for things adequately. On the other hand, they have actually conserved many things from the past that are only today beginning to be valued more broadly.
| Environmental condition of storage areas | Number of organisations | Percentage A |
|---|---|---|
| Very good | 34 | 50 |
| Good | 29 | 43 |
| Poor | 3 | 4 |
| Very poor | 1 | 1 |
| Not reported | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 68 | 100 |
A Some rounding of figures to whole numbers
Source: Artlab analysis in Pearson et al. (2001).
The most significant threat to the storage environments comes from the inadequacy of storage space. Table 16 shows that a significant proportion (37%) of institutions reported a serious to critical shortage of storage space, with 18% reporting critical shortages, while 40% reported no current shortage of storage space. When the above figures are broken down into type of institution, an important trend emerges: 68% of museums report a serious to critical shortage of storage space. Museums represented 55% of all institutions reporting a serious to critical storage problem and 58% of all institutions with a critical storage problem. Given that museums also hold 52% of collections in Commonwealth, State and Territory institutions, this represents a significant problem.
| Adequacy of Storage Space | Museums | Art Galleries | Archives | Botanic Gardens, Herbariums | Libraries | Zoos | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | % | No. | % | No. | % | No. | % | No. | % | No. | % | |
| No shortage | 6 | 27 | 4 | 44 | 6 | 67 | 8 | 57 | 2 | 22 | 1 | 20 |
| Slight shortage | 1 | 5 | 1 | 11 | 1 | 11 | 4 | 29 | 3 | 33 | 1 | 20 |
| Serious shortage | 8 | 36 | 4 | 44 | 1 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 22 | 0 | 0 |
| Critical shortage | 7 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 11 | 2 | 14 | 2 | 22 | 0 | 0 |
| Not reported | 3 | 60 | ||||||||||
| Total | 22 | 9 | 9 | 14 | 9 | 5 | ||||||
Source: Artlab analysis in Pearson et al. (2001).
A similar trend emerges from the analysis of environmental conditions in small museums and art galleries (see Table 17): 60% of all organisations reported environmental conditions in their display areas that were poor to very poor. However, this situation was dominated by museums which reported 73% with poor to very poor environmental conditions as opposed to only 23% of art galleries with poor to very conditions. Also, 50% of art galleries reported the environmental conditions in their display areas to be very good compared to only 14% of museums. The adequacy of storage conditions in small museums and galleries echoes these findings.
| Condition | Number of art galleries | Percentage of art galleries | Number of museums | Percentage of museums | Total | Percentage of total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Very good | 15 | 50 | 12 | 14 | 27 | 23 |
| Good | 8 | 27 | 12 | 14 | 20 | 17 |
| Poor | 7 | 23 | 59 | 67 | 66 | 56 |
| Very Poor | 0 | 0 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 4 |
| Total | 30 | 100 | 88 | 100 | 118 | 100 |
Source: Artlab analysis in Pearson et al. (2001).
Conclusions and implications for condition of heritage objects/collections
- In general, environmental conditions in the major collecting organisations appear to be reasonable across all sectors.
- Storage capacity is an issue highlighted by many organisations, however, and appears to be a priority issue for national attention. Environmental storage condition can also be used as a surrogate for condition of objects.
- Some further focus on the problem of heritage objects related to places is required. Whilst condition analysis of objects that are formally in museums and institutions as part of collections is important, a further focus may be objects that have been removed from heritage places into 'storage', or dispersed. Such objects might include items that were contained in historic buildings or sites that have been divested by the Commonwealth or a State or Territory. The extent to which conservation plans and registers of heritage places adequately identify significantly-associated objects is an important related issue.
- An important finding is that collection surveys as a management tool are not widely used in collecting organisations large and small. This may also be related to the shortage of conservator positions for undertaking this work. Conservation and preservation programs are driven by a wide range of organisational needs, and there appears to be limited resources available for the systematic treatment of collections. Following the survey of university collections in 1998, the services of the Conservation of Cultural Materials program at the University of Canberra were offered to carry out environmental/conservation surveys. From the 200 university museums/collections there was only one response.