Maintaining Your Performance Art Artifacts for an Archival Collection


by Tiffany Bailey W


hether you’re a dance company, theatre or performance art troupe or you have a personal collection of perform- ance artifacts, it’s important to know how to keep and maintain thesematerials and ephemera. The benefits


of having a well-maintained and organized archival collection are seemingly endless: it helps to preserve the history of an organization, can be used for research and scholarly use, edu- cates the public, strengthens the opportunity for an organiza- tion to receive private and federal funding and ensures the material can be easily accessed and enjoyed for years to come. What follows is a brief discussion on often found perform- ance-related artifacts that should bemaintained and basic techniques to get you on your way towards a well-kept and organized archival collection.


First things first, photographs. One of themost important things to do when you have photographs in your collection is tomanage the temperature and humidity where you have stored your photos. Heat accelerates deterioration so ideally you want to keep your storage space at 70°F or below. You’ll also want tomake sure your relative humidity levels are sta- ble, ranging from35%-50%. Toomuch humidity breeds chemical reactions that can result in fading and discoloration while too little humidity can cause flaking and embrittlement of the paper. What all thismeans is that you don’t want to store photographs in an attic which can become hot and muggy, or by a source of heat such as a fire place or radiator.


When storing photographs, you’ll want to stay away from placing themin plastic enclosure albums. Plastics, such as polyvinylchloride (PVC) are highly unstable and off-gas which damage and deteriorate photographs. This is especially true if the plastic enclosure is sealed on all four sides, the chemicals that are being released fromthe plastic enclosure have no way of escaping which exponentially speeds up pho- tograph deterioration. Also, try to refrain fromplacing photos


in scrapbooks if possible. The tape, glue or other adhesive that is used on the back of the photograph formounting purposes is usually acidic. Thismeans that the adhesivematerial will bond itself to the photographmaking it impossible to remove and in extreme cases, the adhesivematerial can eat through the photograph. Ideally, you’ll want to store photographs individually in an acid-free/lignin-free folder. Each photo should get its own folder so there is no contact between pho- tographs which can potentially damage the image. After pho- tos have been foldered, they can be placed in acid-free boxes either horizontally or vertically and organized by size. You can find acid-free and archival quality enclosures through any preservationmaterial supplier.


Another popular itemfound in a stored collection is newspa- per articles and clippings. Newspaper is extremely difficult to keep because it is essentially ephemera that is not intended to be kept for a long period of time. Thematerial used to pro- duce newspaper is of poor quality, the paper has a high con- tent of wood pulp and the inks easily transfer onto other objects or rub off. Aswith photographs, the best way to store newspaper is in a cool and dry location and away fromany heat source. Make sure newspaper is also stored away froma light source such as a window or lamp. Exposure to light will cause oxidation and turn newspaper yellow. The best way to store newspaper is in acid-free/lignin free folders and placing those folders in flat boxes stored horizontally. Clippings are usually oddly shaped and lend themselves to the vulnerability of being ripped or torn. When working with clippings, the best thing to do is tomount the clipping to an acid- free/lignin-free board and then place this in an individual folder.


Since newspaper is so fragile, it’s a good idea to consider reformatting articles and clippings such as photographing or scanning each item. Scanning or photographing newspaper articles and then storing themin a file on your computer USB will ensure long-termaccess and usability.While photocopy-


page 18 November-January 2017 www.thedancecouncil.org DANCE!NORTHTEXAS a publicationof the dance council ofnorthtexas vol. 19 •no. 4


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