Conservation institutions as agents of change

Abstract

Key messages to conservation institutions were drafted during the ICCROM Forum 2013 on Conservation Science so they could, in turn, influence the profession. The first message is a general statement of the fact that conservation science is an essential part of conservation. The other messages provide guidance to conservation institutions so that they can achieve maximum impact. Conservation institutions should engage in research and development that anticipate issues, provide sustainable solutions and guidelines, and are conducted in a transdisciplinary way; share resources and expertise to be more efficient, increase access and reduce inequalities; and assume a leadership role, promote conservation, and ensure knowledge is made available. The key messages, five altogether, are reproduced in their entirety in this article, which provides further elaboration and development of each message as well as avenues for making positive changes in strategic areas.

Keywords:

• Conservation science
• Conservation institutions
• Conservation science community
• Transdisciplinarity
• Participative research
• Leadership
• Sustainable solutions
• Research
• Knowledge dissemination

Introduction

During the ICCROM Forum 2013 on Conservation Science, a discussion group was given the mandate to draft key recommendations to conservation institutions. For the purpose of the exercise, conservation institutions were defined as independent institutions (governmental and non-governmental) that were created to ensure the proper care and long-term conservation of national or regional heritage. While conservation is conducted in other types of institutions (e.g. conservation departments in museums, universities, etc.), the particular focus of the discussion group was on conservation institutions because they are in a key position to influence decisions and policies that will have an impact on the conservation of cultural heritage. This is because their mandate is focused solely on conservation, and many of them are government agencies. The group was composed primarily of people having experience of working in such institutions, and was moderated by the author.

Conservation institutions are found in many countries; many employ conservators and conservation scientists, while some also employ other heritage professionals such as art historians, architects, archivists, etc. The institutions are typically engaged in a broad range of activities such as research, expert services to national or regional heritage communities, and knowledge dissemination that often includes training and publishing.

As key players at the national or regional level, it was only natural that many conservation institutions such as the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI), the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France, and the Republic of Korea's National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, to name just a few, joined with ICCROM to organize the Forum on Conservation Science and that other conservation institutions later participated in the event. Their objective was not only to contribute to the discussion, but also to become agents of change, bringing back recommendations made at the Forum and working towards implementing them in their communities.

Key messages to conservation institutions were drafted during the Forum so they could, in turn, influence the profession. The group responsible for this work took into account the results of the deliberations of the Forum to develop messages that contain important principles and capture what the group saw as the most important roles conservation institutions should play. This involved intense discussions and, at times, lively debates, as well as carefully choosing and weighing of each word. The results, five key messages altogether, are reproduced below.

• Conservation science is an essential part of conservation. We need a conservation science community with critical mass, credibility, relevance, and influence, that is well connected both within the science field and with other disciplines (transdisciplinarity).

• Research and development projects must include all concerned (i.e. scientists, conservators, and other heritage experts) who together will define the issues and objectives.

• Conservation institutions should engage in research and development that anticipate issues and provide sustainable solutions and guidelines.

• Conservation institutions should share resources and expertise to be more efficient, increase access and reduce inequalities.

• Conservation institutions must assume a leadership role, promote conservation, and ensure knowledge (including knowledge produced by others) is made available at all levels.

This article provides further elaboration and development of each message, drawing from the author's professional experience in the context of the CCI and her knowledge of the profession, as well as outlines avenues for making positive changes in strategic areas. It must be noted that whereas the first recommendation makes direct reference to conservation science, the others do not; having been prepared in the context of the Forum on Conservation Science, they must be understood as referring to conservation science, as is this article in general.

Conservation science as a discipline and a community

Conservation science is an integral and essential part of conservation. It provides a sound basis for informing conservation activities, and contributes to the development of the profession. In some conservation institutions, conservation scientists have reached a critical mass, i.e. the number needed for a specific result or action to occur, which translates into impact and influence. On a global scale, however, progress has yet to be made, principally on two related key issues: cohesion and recognition.

Critical mass, cohesion, and recognition

There are no precise data available on the increase in the number of conservation scientists over the years. One difficulty in compiling data on this is that the title itself, ‘conservation scientist’, is not uniformly adopted; nevertheless, the growth in the number of conservation facilities, especially in recent years in Asia and the Middle East, all of which employ conservation scientists,¹ implies that the number of conservation scientists has also grown. The specialty has reached a number large enough to justify having special groups in many national and international conservation associations as well as user groups (for example, IRUG and MaSC)² composed primarily of conservation scientists.

Although this community is large enough to support networks at the international level, its capacity at the national level varies greatly. While in some countries national networks of conservation scientists do exist through the existence of multiple conservation institutions and museums with scientific laboratories, in others there may be only a single conservation institution in which conservation scientists are employed. Consequently, in general, the community is rather scattered, which makes efficient linkages and communication difficult to establish and maintain. Another factor contributing to the scattering of the conservation science community is that conservation scientists are often highly specialized and as a result primarily communicate and operate within small sub-specialist groups. The disparate nature of conservation science is further heightened by the fact that in order to adequately fulfil their role in conservation, conservation scientists also need to participate in areas of specialization within mainstream science relevant to their work. This is necessary so they can grow and develop as scientists, transfer and adapt new concepts and technologies to conservation and establish partnerships to help with these transfers and adaptations. This is not a one-way street, however, as conservation scientists also develop solutions that can be transferred to or adopted in other fields of science.

In order for conservation science to contribute effectively to the profession, we need to find ways to strengthen this community and improve cohesion by recognizing conservation science as a discipline in its own right, by improving its visibility within conservation, and by improving linkages and communication between conservation scientists. This should be done with the goal of enhancing the visibility of cultural heritage in general and conservation in particular, so that these efforts contribute to the development and promotion of the larger sectors of which conservation science is a part.

Credibility, relevance, and influence

Conservation scientists often find themselves sitting between two worlds, the world of conservation and the world of science, trying to belong effectively to both.

Conservation as a discipline is still very much defined by the work of conservators, and conservation science is often perceived as an activity somewhat peripheral to conservation. To the question ‘what is conservation?’, the answer relates often rather to the question ‘what does a conservator do?’, a solution often adopted for the sake of simplicity, in an attempt to be understood by as wide an audience as possible. A clear definition of conservation should recognize the fact that not only conservators carry out conservation actions, which are not limited to interventions on objects. Conservation scientists, like conservators, participate in all aspects of conservation as defined by ICOM-CC (ICOM-CC, 2015): preventive conservation, remedial conservation, and restoration. Examples of their actions include, to name just a few: for preventive conservation, monitoring of pollutants, and research on packing methods; for remedial conservation, development of new treatment methods, and research on conservation products; for restoration, analysis of degradation products, and identification of non-original materials.

Conversely, within mainstream science, perceptions of conservation science vary from an interesting and valuable scientific discipline in its own right, a curiosity, or, to the other extreme, a sub-discipline with lower scientific standards. In the latter case, one factor that may contribute to such a negative impression is that very few conservation publications, in which conservation scientists need to publish to reach the conservation community, are indexed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). JCR provides information about academic journals in the sciences and social sciences, including impact factors, which are a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in the journals. Impact factors are frequently used to evaluate the relative importance of a journal within its field. Journals having higher impact factors are deemed to be more important than those with lower ones. The credibility of scientists (i.e. the quality of their work) can be measured by the number of articles they publish in journals with high impact factors. The impact and influence of their work can be measured, to some extent, by the number of times their articles are cited in articles written by others.

More conservation journals should be indexed in the JCR and have impact factors, so that important indicators such as impact factors and number of citations are accessible to measure the work of conservation scientists using the same standards applied to and by mainstream scientists.

However, a more important quality for conservation research is relevance, i.e. how well conservation research answers the needs of the community. While tools such as impact factors and citation reports can contribute to measuring impact and influence, we need to find ways to measure relevance, for example, by assessing how solutions, tools, and methods are effectively transferred into conservation practice.

Participation in conservation research

Although the term ‘transdisciplinarity’ was mentioned in the first key message in relation to conservation science being connected with the science field and other disciplines, it is in the context of the second key message that it is the most relevant.

The term ‘multidisciplinary’ is often used in conservation when referring to approaches, teams, and projects. The term, most of the time, is used to mean that participants from different disciplines are involved in an activity or in an approach to a topic or problem. This is in agreement with most definitions of the adjective that one can find in dictionaries.

In the popular online source Wikipedia, one can find the following statement about the multidisciplinary approach, which well describes what conservation is often about: ‘A multidisciplinary approach involves drawing appropriately from multiple disciplines to redefine problems outside of normal boundaries and reach solutions based on a new understanding of complex situations’ (Wikipedia, 2015a).

In the field of cultural heritage and conservation, the adjective ‘multidisciplinary’ or ‘interdisciplinary’ is used to describe many different things. A search in the Art and Archaeological Technical Abstracts (AATA Online) at the time of writing this article found 425 results when looking for ‘multidisciplinary’ in the abstract and 700 when looking for ‘interdisciplinary’ (Getty Conservation Institute, 2015). Based on these figures, it seems that multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary is what conservation has been aiming for, and succeeding in achieving. A closer look at what the concept entails shows that purely scientific studies of cultural heritage using different techniques (e.g. imaging and spectroscopy) are labelled multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary. A group composed of an art historian (or curator), a conservator and a conservation scientist working together to gain knowledge about an artwork will be identified as a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary team because the disciplines involved are art history, conservation, and science. As mentioned in the previous section, in this case it seems that conservation is the discipline of the conservator, not of the conservation scientist, who remains firmly associated with the scientific discipline they specialized in (e.g. chemistry, engineering, etc.).

So is multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary good enough? Is it really what we should strive for?

Lidia Brito, Director of the Division of Science Policy and Capacity Building at UNESCO and keynote speaker at the Forum on Conservation Science, mentioned two important points during her keynote lecture: science is moving from curiosity and creation of new knowledge to problem-solving addressing development issues; and in order to foster and provide solutions for sustainable development, we need to adopt a ‘transdisciplinary’ approach.

Looking again at Wikipedia, one finds the following entry under ‘transdisciplinarity’ (Wikipedia, 2015b):

As the prefix ‘trans’ indicates, transdisciplinarity concerns that which is at once between the disciplines, across the different disciplines, and beyond each individual discipline. Its goal is the understanding of the present world, of which one of the imperatives is the overarching unity of knowledge.

Another critical defining characteristic of transdisciplinary research is the inclusion of stakeholders in defining research objectives and strategies in order to better incorporate the diffusion of learning produced by the research. Collaboration between stakeholders is deemed essential – not merely at an academic or disciplinary collaboration level, but through active collaboration with people affected by the research and community-based stakeholders. In such a way, transdisciplinary collaboration becomes uniquely capable of engaging with different ways of knowing the world, generating new knowledge, and helping stakeholders understand and incorporate the results or lessons learned by the research.

This last part of the text is actually very relevant to conservation research as defined in the second key message to conservation institutions. Too many times conservation is perceived as imposing rigid solutions that go against the will of other heritage professionals and that prevent them from accomplishing their projects. A good example is the recent debate about the museum environment and the need to reduce operating costs of expensive air-conditioning systems required to maintain temperature and relative humidity at specific levels.³ Clearly, it is necessary to provide solid data on which to base decisions. However, involving stakeholders in defining research objectives and strategies, and also in a discussion of the impact of changes in environmental guidelines on collections, would ensure a common understanding of the results of the research and contribute to practical solutions.

Proactive research leading to sustainable solutions

Currently, in many countries, resources (both human and financial) are scarce and problems, numerous. Therefore, research plans are usually established through some type of consultation with the community to determine which problems need to be addressed as a priority. Owing to the time required for these consultations and for confirming that there is a consensus on which topics or problems deserve research, the actual research work may in the end focus on issues that the community has been facing for many years. Also, while research is being conducted, new issues keep emerging. For example, recent objects made of polymeric materials now require attention, and the preservation of digital heritage pose new challenges to institutions. At the same time, traditional materials still require research. In painting conservation, a large body of research is now devoted to the more recently created acrylic paintings while there are still unanswered questions related to traditional oil paintings, such as how to prevent the formation of disfiguring metal soap protrusions, and how to treat paintings affected by this problem. Research requires time and it is not an activity that can accommodate shifting priorities very well. As a result, research, as good as it can be, is often out of phase with the reality the community is facing. Most importantly, some excellent research may end up providing solutions that are only accessible to a few because of the complexity or cost involved. Powerful technologies such as multi-spectral imaging and investigations using national facilities for synchrotron radiation studies, to name just a few, are not currently commonly available. However, the tendency for sophisticated technologies is to become more affordable and user-friendly as usage becomes more widespread – a good example being Raman spectroscopy instrumentation, which used to be complex and, for that reason, confined to research facilities. In the area of treatment, the same ‘democratization’ phenomenon applies: laser cleaning is much more commonly done, and nanoparticles (some types being available commercially)⁴ are now used in a variety of applications. Nevertheless, we need to ensure that conservation research results will be useful to as many people as possible. One way to make results more widely applicable is to embrace transdisciplinarity.

Can research be proactive in order to provide solutions to problems we do not yet recognise? The answer is yes. Researchers who are aware of global trends, in their specialty or at a broader level, can recognize that the conservation community will be impacted, and take on a leadership role to find solutions. A good example is the gradual ban on fumigants and pesticides that triggered research on treatments to combat pests that would not resort to the use of chemicals (Strang, 2012).

The current emphasis on sustainability and greening provides opportunities to find solutions that not only would be in line with these concepts but that could also ensure greater accessibility to research results, especially in developing countries. For example, it could be beneficial to replace a specific treatment involving dissolution in solvents, that works very well, with one that uses greener products, or to replace the method altogether with one that does not resort to dissolution but to another action. Similarly, traditional techniques, that were deemed less efficient than methods developed more recently, may be worth researching because, although less efficient, they would provide greener and more sustainable solutions.

Another area to which conservation science research is expected to contribute significantly over in coming years is the assessment of changes in environmental guidelines in order to allow museums to operate in a more sustainable way. This will require a transdisciplinary approach so that stakeholders take part in finding solutions, as stated previously.

Sharing of resources and expertise

As mentioned above, resources are scarce in many countries. Conservation institutions that are often the principal resource for the conservation community in a given country are often not in a better position than the community they are meant to serve, and struggle to maintain their capacity. Many have found ways to counteract diminishing resources by establishing partnerships and collaborations with other institutions, universities, or the private sector. However, this is not the case everywhere and much could be achieved if conservation institutions engaged in a more coordinated effort that would result in the sharing of resources and expertise. Increased sharing would have a beneficial impact on many aspects of the operations of conservation institutions, an obvious one being the training of scientific staff.

Educational programs in conservation science remain rare and graduates in conservation science (at the M.Sc. or Ph.D. level) number only a few. Often conservation institutions will hire scientists with no conservation experience, particularly if they are part of the government and have to follow government rules promoting employment of citizens of the country. Conservation scientists will often learn on the job. Depending on the particular speciality they were hired to work in, they may end up being the only one of their kind in the institution they work for. Beginners in the field, even though they have considerable experience in science, would benefit from working alongside experienced conservation scientists. This could be achieved through short, intensive training, such as attending workshops, or long-term solutions like internships or distance mentoring.

Scholarly exchanges could be another way to share resources in cases where an institution faces a particular problem that requires expertise on a short-term basis only. This could be expertise in a particular type of cultural object or material, or in instrumentation, methods, or techniques. The sharing of instrumentation is also a possibility.

There are of course obstacles to such sharing initiatives, not the least financial. It is not always possible for staff to travel to other institutions, because of logistical implications on both the professional and personal life of the individuals involved. Nevertheless, such initiatives should be encouraged and we should find ways to make them possible.

The profession would also benefit from scholarly exchanges that would go beyond exchange at conferences. Although conferences are extremely useful in making others aware of progresses and achievements, they may have more or less success in providing a forum where issues and ideas can be exchanged and debated in a climate of trust, with the aim of solving problems and achieving results. Researchers, quite legitimately, may want to protect the research that is often a key performance indicator for their institution, until it is published. Formal collaborative agreements between institutions would provide a means for a more trusting exchange of information between researchers while at the same time being recognized as an appropriate performance indicator in itself by the authorities responsible for the funding and management of the institutions.

Conservation institutions could also share resources and expertise for the purpose of benchmarking. This would promote efficiency and effectiveness.

Leadership

In countries, where there is a national, governmental conservation institute, the conservation community expects that institution to be the main provider of information and to play an advocacy and leadership role. This presents many challenges.

National conservation communities often expect that the national conservation institution should not only effectively disseminate information created by the institution itself, but also be a conduit for information produced elsewhere. Conservation experts at the institution are expected to have up-to-date knowledge in their area of specialization, which in itself is a challenge given the massive amount of information being produced in conservation nowadays. Because of diminishing resources, institutions tend to move away from one-on-one conversations to more efficient means of communication like web postings. This creates new sets of challenges related to the ongoing requirement for up-to-date information. This problem could be alleviated if conservation institutions were organized as a network to direct people to the relevant conservation resources. There is also a requirement for interactivity, so there could be two-way communication between institutions and the communities they work with. For example, a recent evaluation of the CCI demonstrated how much the Canadian conservation community appreciates and values direct contact with CCI specialists to discuss issues and obtain solutions.

For conservation institutions to play an advocacy and leadership role, they need to reach beyond their main audience, which is the conservation community. To actively promote conservation in closely related circles (e.g. museum professionals, archaeologists, archivists, etc.) and among non-specialists (e.g. politicians, policy-makers, and the general public) means that information needs to be disseminated at various levels of complexity or that different information needs to be directed to different audiences. Conservation institutions should also be integrated into the professional life of the first group, and this happens naturally when transdisciplinarity is adopted. This ensures that other heritage professionals are not only aware of conservation activities but actively engage in them and, as a result, participate in advocacy efforts. To reach a broader audience, participation in events such as conferences of museums or archives associations, archaeological societies, etc. provides not only networking that is essential for conservation institutions to play their role effectively, but also a forum to demonstrate leadership and play an advocacy role. Engaging local media for high-profile stories or highlighting case studies to convey the results of research can be effective ways to engage non-specialists such as politicians, policy-makers, and the general public.

The conservation community itself can be further divided into two main groups when considering the dissemination of conservation science information: users and peers. Users are primarily conservation practitioners who want to use the information in their work without necessarily being interested in the intricate details of the science; peers are primarily other conservation scientists who, on the contrary, are deeply interested in all details of the science. This means that the same research results may end up being disseminated to the two groups in different forms: very detailed for peers and less detailed and more practical for users. If conservation science is to be recognized as an important scientific field, conservation science articles should not attempt such a degree of scientific popularization that would jeopardize their scientific profile. Instead, multiple communication inside and outside the conservation community using different levels of language and different vehicles is required.

Effectively communicating with such varied audiences may take many forms, such as publications, conferences, web platforms, interactive discussions, formal submissions to government authorities, press releases, etc. It requires different approaches and strategies depending on the goals one wants to achieve. This could be to increase conservation expertise among practitioners or to convince decision-makers to increase funding to conservation. Conservation institutions are often fortunate enough to have specialists outside the field (e.g. people specialized in training or communication) who contribute to make scientific information understood by a wider audience. Such expertise should be sought if not already available.

Communication to advocate and promote of conservation would also benefit from more coordination at the international level, so that a unified voice can be heard.

Conclusion

The Forum on Conservation Science recognized that conservation science is an essential part of conservation. We need a conservation science community that is well connected and has critical mass, credibility, relevance, and influence. Conservation institutions play a crucial role building this community because they employ a large number of conservation scientists and they must ensure that conservation science achieves maximum impact in activities such as research and knowledge dissemination.

In doing so, conservation institutions should engage in research and development that anticipate issues and provide sustainable solutions and guidelines and are conducted in a transdisciplinary way. They should share resources and expertise to be more efficient, increase access and reduce inequalities; and last but not least, assume a leadership role, promote conservation, and ensure knowledge is made available.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the essential contribution of colleagues (in alphabetical order) who worked together to draft the recommendations: Giacomo Chiari, Chief Scientist, Getty Conservation Institute, USA (retired); Yong Jae Chung, Head of Institute of Preventive Conservation for Cultural Property, Graduate School of Convergence Cultural Heritage, National University of Cultural Heritage, Korea; Marie Lavandier, Director, Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France, France; Maria João Melo, Associate Professor, Department of Conservation and Restoration, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, New University of Lisbon, Portugal; Sebastian Dobrusskin, Head of the Research Area Materiality of Art and Culture, Bern University of the Arts, Switzerland; and Yu Zheng, Chief Engineer of Vernacular Architecture Research Center, Tongheng Planning and Designing Institute of Tsinghua University, China. Thanks also to Alison Heritage, Charlie Costain and two anonymous reviewers for useful comments.

Notes

1 As an example, the Heritage Conservation Centre of the National Heritage Board in Singapore that opened in 2000 includes a laboratory designed to conduct scientific analysis, material testing, and research.

2 Infrared & Raman Users Group (IRUG); Users’ Group for Mass Spectroscopy and Chromatography (MaSC).

3 Since the ‘Dialogue for the New Century’ on this topic by IIC in 2008 (IIC, 2008), several workshops and conferences have taken place and a declaration was recently signed jointly by ICOM-CC and IIC (ICOM-CC & IIC, 2015). A review of the situation was published recently by Kirby Atkinson (2014).

4 One example is the product Nanorestore^© used for the consolidation of wall paintings and calcareous stone (Baglioni et al., 2014) distributed by CTS (http://www.ctseurope.com/en/scheda-prodotto.php?id=232 ).