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The Preparator’s Handbook: A Practical Guide for Preparing and Installing Collection Objects is an invaluable resource for emerging museum professionals or anyone working in galleries and collections with little-to-no previous preparatory experience or training.
This handbook explores, explains, and illustrates the basics for the preparation and installation professionals.
- practical, step-by-step guides that outline museum-standard procedures for most types of collection objects, including works on paper, archival volumes, and historic artefacts.
- templates and guides for presentation, preservation, and collection storage
- illustrated inventories of standard and specialized tools, materials and hardware
- the basics of lighting, audio, and video in installations.
- unique case studies from working professionals for a wide range of objects and installations including examples from the Field Museum, the Corning Museum of Glass, and the Folger Shakespeare Library.
- Over 50 illustrations and photographs that accompany the written text.
This practical book is the first of its kind: a guide for novice or amateur collection and gallery professionals as well as an academic textbook for museum studies and fine art students.
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Preface
Chapter 1. What is a Preparator?
Chapter 2. Object Handling: A Philosophical Approach
Chapter 3. Preparation in Action: Pack it, but don’t touch it: A case study of the trope
Meredith Weimer, Associate Collections Registrar, Portland Museum of Art
Chapter 4. Prep Management
Chapter 5. Preparation in Action: New Glass Now
Warren Bunn II, Collections and Exhibitions Manager, The Corning Museum of Glass
Chapter 6. Two-Dimensional Object Preparation
Chapter 7. Preparation in Action: Mounting Scrolls for Exhibition
Donia Conn, Assistant Professor of Practice, School of Library and Information Science, Simmons University
Chapter 8. Three-Dimensional Object Preparation
Chapter 9. Preparation in Action: Simple Fosshape Supports for Textiles
Kirsten Schoonmaker, Textile Conservator
Chapter 10. Preparation in Action: The Object Directs the Process: Creating Ethafoam Cradles for the Field Museum’s Vertebrate Paleontological Collection
Adrienne Stroup, Collections Assistant, The Field Museum
Chapter 11. Installation Of Objects
Chapter 12. Preparation in Action: The Preparator at the Stone Quarry Art Park
Emily Zaengle, Executive Director, Stone Quarry Art Park
Chapter 13. Practical Basics For Lighting, Audio, And Video
Chapter 14. Preparator’s Resources
About the Author
As a faculty member and the program coordinator for Museum Studies at Syracuse University, Andrew Saluti engages in consistent collaboration with the diverse community voices and cultural heritage-collecting institutions that populate both academic and professional sectors of the Central New York region. Together with his colleagues, faculty, and students Saluti considers equity, inclusivity, and accessibility core and vital aspects to museum practice and pedagogy. This commitment is reflected in the broad scope of teaching, mentoring, curricular design and professional practice that he facilitates, as well as through an ever-expanding network of emerging and established museum professionals from around the globe.
Before stepping into the role of Program Coordinator for Museum Studies at Syracuse University, Saluti was the chief curator of exhibitions, programs and education for the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Libraries and the assistant director of the Syracuse University Art Galleries and Collections. He continues to be an active member of numerous museum boards and advisory committees. Saluti's dedication to and experience with museum governance and leadership, in concert with almost 20 years of professional practice in both archival and object-based collecting institutions, informs ongoing research and pedagogy that comprises both curatorship and collections, with specific interest and focus on the practical installation and design, as well as the role of institutional responsibility, stewardship, and sustainability of academic collection building.
"Based on his own extensive experience and that of museum colleagues, Saluti's handbook should quickly take its place among best practice references for the museum field. Clear, concise, yet comprehensive, it offers both big picture contextuality and detailed instructions that preparators in any type of museum will find useful, if not essential."
– Jill Hartz, president emerita, Association of Academic Museums and Galleries
"This book provides detailed insight into the varied work of a museum preparator, work that everyone in the museum should be aware of. It is an excellent resource for both entry level and seasoned museum professionals, and it could certainly serve as a textbook in college- and graduate-level Museum Studies courses. Saluti draws on his vast experiences in the field, demonstrating a thorough and practical knowledge of materials, object preparation, and installation techniques throughout the text, all of which is heightened by the inclusion of actual case studies from colleagues at various institutions."
– Jennifer L. Streb, PhD, Professor of Art History, Juniata College
