How conservators at the George Eastman House preserve their Southworth and Hawes Daguerreotypes.
Southworth & Hawes, Unidentify Man and Woman, ca. 1850, Whole plate daguerrotype. George Eastman House, Gift of Alden Scott Boyer.
The George Eastman House put on a Google + art talk in which they discussed what they were doing to preserve their Southworth and Hawes Daguerreotypes.
Thursday, 12th June, we hosted a live ArtTalk with George Eastman House about the daguerreotype, the first successful photographic process.
George Eastman House holds a vast, historically important and aesthetically unparalleled collection of daguerreotypes by America's acknowledged masters of the medium, Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes. The collection of over 1,200 daguerreotypes constitutes the largest repository of work by Southworth & Hawes. In 2008, Eastman House received a multi-year National Endowment for the Arts--Save America's Treasures grant that enabled the stabilization and re-housing of these unique and culturally significant objects. This grant allowed Eastman House staff to improve the physical preservation of these daguerreotypes and increase access to the collection.
This Art Talk features George Eastman House conservators Taina Meller and Ralph Wiegandt as well as Lisa Hostetler and Jamie M. Allen from the Department of Photography. They discuss Southworth & Hawes, the daguerreotype process, the findings leading up to the grant application, and the process of implementing an oxygen-free housing environment for these objects.