AIC's 47th Annual Meeting

While gels are now a significant part of the museum conservation toolkit, until recently they were not regularly used by conservators at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum), who primarily work on archaeological and ethnographic objects. Studies on the use of gels, particularly for cleaning, have been largely focused on applications for paper-based works of art, and painted surfaces with varnishes or other coatings. Because of this, Penn Museum conservators did not often consider using gels in their treatments. This all changed when the lab was faced with several complex and challenging treatment projects that required thinking outside the box. Thanks to team members who had learned about the use of gels from Richard Wolbers at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, the conservators working on these large projects eventually found solutions with gel cleaning. Their use has expanded the Penn Museum lab’s knowledge about gels and led to the development of a short workshop for the Conservation Department, taught by Professor Wolbers and tailored to the Museum’s collections. Because of this workshop, Penn Museum conservators are now using gels on a regular basis. This paper will highlight the use of gels at the Penn Museum through several case studies, including the deinstallation of two large-scale mud plaster Buddhist murals, the treatment of an ancient Egyptian painted wooden Ptah-Sokar-Osiris figure, and the treatment of ancient archaeological stone and ceramic artifacts for the opening of new galleries at the Penn Museum. The unique and often challenging nature of cleaning archaeological materials, and the ethics around how and what to remove from these objects, will be discussed, along with protocols developed for successful treatments.