Not Your Average Ax

Armory collection inspires new institute on metals conservation

What goes into the conservation of metal arms and armory? Quite a lot, actually.

"It's half humanities, half science," says Kent dur Russell, executive director of the Higgins Armory Museum. "You've got to understand what you're looking at, what its context is, and what the purpose of it was. You can't just repair it as you would a car."

And that's one of the driving forces behind a new collaboration between the Higgins and WPI's Metal Processing Institute: the Metals Conservation Summer Institute. Created to provide conservators and students from around the world with in-depth expertise on metal conservation and hands-on access to the Higgins' extensive collection, the institute kicked off this summer with a two-week session, the first of a series of meetings to be held over three summers.

Funded with a $314,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the summer institute is the first of its kind in the nation and features experts from many institutions, among them WPI, Harvard, UCLA, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as participants from some of the world's most prestigious museums.

Russell says the goal is for the institute to evolve eventually into a degree program at WPI, complete with conservation laboratories in which the Higgins can work on its collection.

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Last modified: Sep 13, 2004, 16:17 EDT