Swierenga: We still have the model where there’s a curatorial concept, that may or may not be community driven. But we have quite a few initiatives completely driven by community requests that don’t necessarily relate to exhibits. An example is the preservation of wet site materials. We hold in trust some perishable, waterlogged organic materials from a number of communities. These items often require stabilization, and this can sometimes mean sending them across the country for treatment. Communities don’t necessarily want to see their belongings travel so far, so MOA has undertaken some research and learning at the request of these communities so that some of this work can happen closer to home.
Jeffrey Levin: I’d like to drill down more on collaboration and the degree to which a real exchange offers both sides ideas that enrich the conservation process and an understanding of the materials.
Gover: Typically, we get lots of visits from tribe delegations—and not just US tribes, but also Canadian and Central and South American tribes. They’ll request time in the collections, and we have two or three staff working with them. Visits usually last a couple of days, sometimes longer, and we’ll bring the objects into a room where they can examine them together. They go over the catalog entries for the items, and quite often the entry is just wrong, either about what it is or that it’s even from that particular tribe. Sometimes they can even name the specific artist who created it 90 years ago. And then they get into a discussion about what it is and its significance in the culture. Our staff gathers that information, which becomes part of that object’s record. Sometimes the tribe may want to use the object in some ceremonial fashion. So there’s an ongoing conversation between our collections people and the tribes. They do talk about conservation, but they don’t think about preserving objects the way a museum does. They weren’t created to exist forever, so it’s slightly strange for the tribes that our objective is to preserve an item indefinitely.
Te Kanawa: My PhD research originally was going to focus on elemental analysis of the iron-rich mud that dyes fibers black in Māori textiles because it’s a huge problem—they’re fragmenting. But my supervisor set me in the direction of looking at dye recipes and processes. I collected the muds and made a whole lot of dye recipes, which I shared with the community, and they would take me to their historical site to collect mud and tell me stories of their family using this site. They’d also talk about the site’s relation to the stream, and the stream’s relation to the landforms, which are, in turn, connected to these people. The connectivity to the processes and engaging with communities is a restoration of the knowledge that makes up the artifact.
Swierenga: One of my favorite examples of how collaboration can enrich the conservation process grew out of the research needs of the Salish weaving community here on the West Coast. A few years ago, the Musqueam Nation, on whose traditional territory MOA sits, asked MOA to bring home for study and exhibit ten ancestral weavings from the 1800s that are held in institutions in Europe and the United States. It was an incredible process of discovery for our institution, as well as for the weavers, and it left many of them with inspiration to fold into their current practices. But to get these weavings back home, we had to help the lending institutions understand why this project was so important, and that following standard loan guidelines and procedures would make costs prohibitive. We said, “Maybe we can reframe what we’re doing here and think of these as community loans, not institutional loans.” Some institutions completely dropped the courier requirement because we made the case that we had resources to care for the weaving from point of pickup at the airport. Only one institution would not change their practice and in the end sent a courier to oversee the handling sessions at enormous expense. It was the only institution that didn’t have a conservator on staff. This highlighted the fact that conservators can help administrations understand what the risks actually are relative to the value of reconnecting communities with these significant pieces.
Levin: Kevin, what’s the current practice with regard to providing objects from the NMAI collection to other institutions?
Gover: The challenges Heidi talks about are the same ones we face. We’re anxious to see the collections out in the rest of the country, but we focus on the tribal museums. We do make loans to major regional museums, sometimes very large loans. But in every case, we ask the museum to get consent of the tribe whose material they’re seeking, and we want assurances that they’re consulting with the tribe about the interpretation of the material. We’ve turned down a fair number of loans because they didn’t seem to want to do that. When they say, “Why would we talk to them?” We know that’s not a museum we want to share with. We do have a lively program of returning objects to tribal museums. They’re long-term loans, usually fairly large—several dozen items, sometimes even hundreds. The fact is, once we make a loan like that, those items are unlikely to return to Washington. Once you embrace the philosophy that you want these things back where they belong, and that we really hold them in trust for these communities, you find ways to overcome the obstacles that arise from any major loan of material from the museum.
Levin: One thing we’re circling around here is the role of collections care and conservation, not simply in the preservation of a material object but in the preservation of culture. It’s this notion of conservation that goes beyond technical decisions about materiality, and that it has a responsibility to help shape practices that emphasize the preservation of culture.
Gover: I think that’s absolutely true. And it’s the philosophy of museums not to put culture in a case. It’s to facilitate, to the extent you can, the ongoing practice of the culture and the evolution of these cultures. Once you see that as your job, the barriers become surmountable.
Levin: Heidi, how has this widening notion of a conservator’s role with respect to Indigenous material evolved for you personally?
Swierenga: I’ve experienced a couple of strong teaching moments that speak to how the role of the conservator is changing. One was with the former MOA director, Michael Ames, a very wise, yet often formidable man, to whom I was summoned when I started at MOA. He proclaimed to me, “You are not the advocate for the object.” I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about at the time, and I fled the room totally intimidated. It took me awhile to realize that what he was referring to was how the ethics of conservation could be used to get in the way of community needs. He wanted to be sure I understood that there was more of value than the physical object itself. On our incoming documentation for loans we no longer say, “note damage.” It now says, “note change.” Maybe a robe touched the ground while being danced in, so there might be some dirt on it, or maybe some ochre has rubbed off onto the collar from the dancer, but all this, as well as the modifications, are retained and are understood to be part of the ongoing life of that piece.
Levin: Kevin, it sounds like the conservators at your institution have already made that journey.
Gover: Yes, definitely. That was a wonderful description of the role of the conservator. Ours have certainly taken it to heart, and we spread the good word. We have a great conservation training program that the Mellon Foundation has funded for years, and that’s what we’re teaching.
Te Kanawa: Because I’m the elder of the team, when I go into the community I prepare myself to respond to certain cultural protocols. That makes me slightly anxious and takes me out of my conservation practice, but it does get me involved in the culture, and I think the people we’re visiting respect that. My next endeavor is to learn my native language because it is appropriate for working with communities. It would be good to start using that language, which would better prepare me when I go into the community.
Pearlstein: Why don’t we have many Indigenous folks entering conservation, and how can we engage more Indigenous voices directly into our field?
Gover: We thought about it a lot but couldn’t quite figure out how to do it. We’re really relying on the universities. We could’ve spent a great deal of money with limited success, and we knew it would evolve naturally as more tribes have museums. More kids are going to say, “Hey, I’d like to work here,” and will start learning different museum occupations. It will happen, and I’m just glad the universities are there for them to go to.
Swierenga: It takes a certain type of personality to be interested in the conservation profession. But as we see the role of the conservator evolve, I’m hoping we’ll increasingly attract different types of people. In terms of training, we have a few different programs at MOA, the most long-standing of which is the Native Youth Program, for high school students. We’ve just passed our 40th year for the program, and over 200 students have gone through it. It’s a summer job that gives them access to different professions and activities within the museum, so it’s not necessarily aimed at future conservators but rather at youth who might transfer what they learn to any number of professions—from cultural ambassadors for their communities to curators and educators.
Te Kanawa: I have a growing concern about succession. I remain the only Māori textile conservator, and we need somebody else. The thing is, even if we had more Māori in conservation, we don’t have the museum positions. We’re a small country, and our national museum, Te Papa, has ten conservator positions at best. I’d also say that our conservation and cultural practices don’t necessarily align. I can seek somebody in the Indigenous community to be a conservator, but I’m more likely to find someone who likes to create or be involved with materials as opposed to learning the chemistry of a material to stabilize it. When you talk about the sciences, it creates a bit of a distance. That said, I do like the idea of preservation both of materials within the communities and of the processes that make the artifacts. As my mother the weaver would say, “You just keep up with the practice, and that’s your means of preservation.”
