Stemming the Tide

Climate change has become one of the most significant and fastest growing threats to cultural heritage around the globe. Yet cultural heritage sites and collections also serve as invaluable sources of resilience for communities to address climate change. In March 2020, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian’s National Collections Program convened the symposium “Stemming the Tide: Global Strategies for Sustaining Cultural Heritage through Climate Change” to empower cultural heritage authorities, managers, and advocates to pursue more ambitious engagement and collaborative approaches to climate change. Speakers explored six categories of cultural heritage identified by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS): Cultural Landscapes and Historic Urban Landscapes, Archaeological Sites, Built Heritage (Buildings and Structures), Cultural Communities, Intangible Cultural Heritage, and Museums and Collections.Publishe

Research into and analysis of the materials of easel paintings

This chapter covers instrumental methods of analysis used by conservation scientists and their research associates in universities and national conservation and research facilities. Many journals and conferences covering the conservation and analysis of the moveable heritage – which includes paintings – and professional bodies which acted as publishers and organisers, were instituted from the early 1950s onwards. The electrons in the beam have different interactions with the paint sample: different detectors can provide information about the surface topography, paint morphology and stratigraphy, or else the elemental composition of paint samples. There are great advantages to having one conservation scientist or conservator carry out all the X-ray analysis for the institution, to maximise the benefit of experience with different sample types. There is a wide range of organic constituents in paints ranging from single molecules like wax esters in beeswax or terpenoids in varnishes to large natural and synthetic polymers

Bull in a China Shop: Alternate Reality Games and Transgressive Fan Play in Social Media Franchises

In this article I examine the role of fan ARGs in Lonelygirl15 (LG15), a video blog that became one of the first social media franchises of YouTube. Eager to explore the narrative possibilities of Internet technologies, its creators set out to provide community-based storytelling that embodied the general spirit of coauthorship. To ensure viral distribution, the videos were shot to evoke the maximum amount of curiosity, teasing their viewers with a seemingly simple plot laden with clues that promised a deeper mystery. While fan creativity was encouraged, the concerns over creating a commercially viable story led to careful management of fan activities and strict definition of the boundaries of the LG15 canon. Intrigued by the mysterious beginnings of the show, some fans created ARG spin-offs to deliver a more engaging experience than the show initially offered. I argue that early fan ARGs became tactics through which fans engaged in transgressive play and negotiated a more meaningful role within the franchise