Author Archives: Lynn Grant

Conserving ENIAC (aka Project CLEANIAC)

By Lynn Grant | Published: August 24, 2011
One of the responsibilities of the conservation department is to provide advice and consultation on conservation matters for colleagues, the university community and the general public.  The University Community often produces some interesting queries, like the time the ICA wanted to know how to prevent pest problems when exhibiting artworks made of chocolate.  Most recently, [...]
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The ‘Glamorous’ job of a Museum courier

By Lynn Grant | Published: April 13, 2011
The Museum often loans artifacts from its collections to other museums for exhibit.  Under certain circumstances, the artifacts will be accompanied by a courier, a museum staff member who oversees the transport, unpacking or repacking, condition reporting, and installation or deinstallation of the artifact(s).  One of those circumstances is if the artifacts are traveling by [...]
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Networking

By Lynn Grant | Published: June 11, 2010
In the final week our Chinese colleagues were with us, we did give them a chance to do something other than work on the Horses.  Our colleagues at Historic Preservation on Penn’s campus gave them a tour of their architectural conservation labs and digital resources and very kindly arranged for them to have a special [...]
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The 3D craze

By Lynn Grant | Published: June 11, 2010
In the old days (which are still around sometimes), if you wanted to make a copy of something like the Tang Horses, you’d take an impression using silicone rubber or rubber latex or something like that.  It was/is a messy business that required a lot of preparation and even then sometimes damaged the artwork it [...]
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Catching up

By Lynn Grant | Published: June 11, 2010
Things have gotten especially interesting around here (see my Museum post “Exodus”, from May 28) and I haven’t had a chance to update you on the Tang Horses.  Our Chinese colleagues left us on May 28th, having accomplished great things in a very short time.  As I told them, they did in three weeks what [...]
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The exodus

By Lynn Grant | Published: May 28, 2010
In her introduction to the Museum Blog, Amy Ellsworth says, “Now you can follow us through the fourth wall, into our laboratories, storage areas, and offices to see how the Museum works.”  Well, this view isn’t always pretty.  Take the last week…. Late last Friday, a whole lot of the staff got emails saying that [...]
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Tackling the hard parts

By Lynn Grant | Published: May 25, 2010
Remember this image from our work plan way back when (two weeks ago)?  Well, we’ve now done the fills marked in green and decided that some of the ones marked in red should be green and did those.  So, what’s left: the big  fills colored yellow here, which we’ve been thinking hard about.  The fills [...]
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Filling the voids

By Lynn Grant | Published: May 25, 2010
Our Chinese colleagues and Julie have diligently filling the minor voids along the join lines in the main segments.  They use a mixture of an acrylic resin, glass microballoons,  stone powder from a quarry near Xi’an, and dry artists pigments.  The results are wonderful, as can be seen in the accompanying example.  The joins are [...]
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Media stars!

By Lynn Grant | Published: May 24, 2010
On Wednesday a team from China Central television came to do a story on the collaboration between Chinese conservators and American conservators, working together to preserve the Tang Horses.  They interviewed everyone but the horses!
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An exciting discovery

By Lynn Grant | Published: May 20, 2010
Among the many things our Chinese colleagues brought with them from Xi’an were two plaster fragments.  These were exact replicas of stone fragments that had been excavated from the Zhaoling Mausoleum site in 2003.  One of these was found to belong with C 396, forming the raised front part of the saddle.  This exciting find [...]
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