A special presentation on a project to establish a photograph conservation department at the State Hermitage Museum will be given at the Library of Congress on Friday, April 11, 2014, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 in Dining Room A on the top floor of the Madison Building.  The program is free and open to the public.

The program, “Hermitage Photograph Conservation Initiative: A Model for Cross-Institutional Collaboration,” is the 69th “Topics in Preservation Series” lecture to be presented by the Preservation Directorate of the Library of Congress.  Five speakers will discuss this initiative of the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Hermitage Photograph Conservation Initiative was established in 2010 to help inaugurate the department of photograph conservation at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.  Administered by the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, the initiative is funded through a grant received from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Central to the project is training in conservation, documentation and cataloguing practice. This training has been conducted through an unprecedented collaboration involving numerous institutions in the United States and Europe, among them Harvard University and the Library of Congress, working toward the ultimate goal of preserving the Hermitage’s outstanding collections that number in excess of 470,000 photographs.  More information can be found on the project website: http://cool.conservation-us.org/photo-ru/

Speakers include:

Paul Messier, Co-Director, Hermitage Initiative in Photograph Conservation

Eric Pourchot, Institutional Advancement Director, Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works

Brenda Bernier, Head of Weissman Preservation Center and Paul M & Harriet L Weissman Senior Photograph Conservator, Harvard Library

Andrew Robb, Senior Conservator of Photographs, Library of Congress

Tatiana Sayatina, Head of the Scientific Conservation Laboratory of Photographic Materials, Conservation Department, State Hermitage Museum

The program coincides with a week of training at Harvard and Library of Congress on cataloging and describing photographic materials.  Seven participants from the State Hermitage Museum will be involved:

Tatiana Sayatina, Head of the Scientific Conservation Laboratory of Photographic Materials, Conservation Department
Natalia Laytar, conservator, Scientific Conservation Laboratory of Photographic Materials, Conservation Department
Natalia Avetyan, curator of photographs, Department of History of Russian Culture
Irina Terentyeva,  curator of photographs, Department of History of Russian Culture
Kirill Romanov, registrar, Registry department
Natalia Ternovaya, Head of Sector of Data Entry, Registry Department
Aleksandra Davydova, Interpreter, Hermitage Friends

For event information, including how to register to view by webcast, please go to http://www.loc.gov/preservation/outreach/tops/messier/messier_hermitage.html.