AIC's 45th Annual Meeting

National Argentinian Flags, the Bicentennial and the change of criteria regarding conservation. Between the years 2010 and 2016 on the occasion of the Bicentennial of the American Revolutions and the Independence Wars in Argentina, projects regarding the conservation of the historical collections of our patrimony were carried out. Amongst them special attention was given to historical Flags and banners. They are distinctive of the identity of the new national revolutionary armies and represent an important historical document from the XIX century. Changes in the intervention and the exhibition of the vexilological textile patrimony of the country started. Historically, the Argentinian museums collected Spanish flags taken as war trophies and the flags created in the country by the local regiments. Their intervention was carried out until the late XX century by conservators of other materialities such as paper or paintings, the result being restorations with methodologies similar to the ones employed with these types of materials. This process meant a consolidation with organic adhesives on materials such as cardboard, paper or other textile support, turning them into flat rigid pieces. Although in many cases this procedure was effective compare to no intervention at all and numerous flags owe their survival to these sometimes irreversible interventions, we currently prefer less invasive, more reversible methods, with more compatible materials, based in the use of conservation stitches. The same concept was applied to their exhibition; they were exhibited as pictures, tautened vertically, sometimes nailed and framed, or folded inside small wooden and glass cases, thus generating several damages and with no regard for illumination or environmental controls. The present work describes the valuing through the intervention and changes in the display of the most emblematic flags of our history during these last 6 years, all made of silk, including the first flags of the national armies dated 1813, called “Banderas de Macha” (Macha is a place in Bolivia). These siblings textiles are currently located in Argentinian and Bolivian territory and gave birth to an international cooperation project between both nations for the restoration of the flags with the addition of a training course for Bolivian conservators in the city of Sucre, Bolivia. The interventions included a new approach on the restoration of the Argentinian textile patrimony: the complete documentation process of the textile, their analysis, consolidation with stitches and new exhibition systems based on the use of conservation materials on inclined surfaces in order to reduce the mechanical and physical damage on extremely fragile textiles, aiming to achieve an unify exhibition criteria.