AIC's 45th Annual Meeting

The museums of the San Francisco Bay Area host strong conservation departments in a wide array of specialties; the area’s universities are home to preeminent scientists and to some of the world’s top research facilities. Despite these advantages, there are no conservation scientists on Bay Area museum staffs. The goal of the Bay Area Conservation Science Initiative (BACSI) is to consider how to create a conservation science consortium, leveraging the Bay Area’s strengths to serve the needs of both the museum and academic communities. Thanks to a grant from the Getty Foundation, in 2015, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Stanford University's Art + Science Lab at the Cantor Arts Center began a partnership to explore the development of a regional consortium. The project included regular meetings with various groups of stakeholders, investigative trips to comparable programs in the U.S., and other research. The poster will present the BACSI process, clearly outlining its major challenges and meaningful opportunities. It will include the principal activities and outcomes of the three major meetings, from the initial introductory meeting at the DeYoung Museum to the most recent meeting, which included tours of Stanford's science and engineering facilities with key participants. The poster will outline the trips undertaken to see the facilities and meet with conservation scientists and colleagues at the following institutions: • Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Yale University • Metropolitan Museum of Art • The Museum of Fine Arts Houston • The Menil Collection • Rice University • The Kimbell Museum • The Amon Carter Museum • The Dallas Museum of Art • The University of Texas, Dallas • Northwestern University (NU-ACCESS) • The Art Institute of Chicago • Getty Conservation Institute • California Institute of Technology Based on this work, the BACSI team has developed several possible models for a conservation science consortium that would be appropriate for the Bay Area context. These models, which will be subject to much future discussion and will form the basis for a white paper, will be summarized in the poster. Through this poster presentation, the BACSI team hopes to communicate with AIC's membership about the project. The goal is to generate discussion that will both help refine the project as it moves toward implementation,while developing good working relationships well beyond the San Francisco Bay Area.