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Past Projects

Over the past few years, our staff have initiated various research projects to strengthen their knowledge on conservation and collections management, get better acquainted with the collections in their care, as well as seek new and better ways to execute their work. Some of these projects have been presented and published in international conferences. The following are some recent projects.  
 

Undoing a Failed Restoration Work - Conservation of a Jingle

The science of conservation is constantly evolving and improving. Not only do conservators work against the effects of time and environmental factors of deterioration, they also on occasion have to battle the effects of poorly-made or poorly-informed conservation decisions from collectors, curators or even other conservators in the past. They also have to contend with the effects of the degeneration of aging conservation materials.

In our latest report, objects conservator Ishak Ahamad shares with us the conservation treatment he had to carry out on a bronze jingle which had been broken in two. The damage was not recent and in fact had been previously repaired but the attempt at restoration had not been entirely successful as the repaired crack eventually gave way.

Download and read the full report here. (PDF - 654kb)

A Conservation Treatment: Preserving the "Mao Books"

The Asian Civilisations Museum put together artefacts of the 10 revolutionary years in China in the exhibition Seeing Red: Propaganda and Material Culture in China (1966-1976).

Our paper conservator Paula Leon shares with us the process of preserving two of books selected for this exhibition, both of which contain quotes or writing attributed to Mao Zedong. One of the selected books is "Poetry of Chairman Mao", printing in China in December 1967. The second and smaller book is the famous "Little Red Book" which is actually titled "Quotations from Chairman Mao".

To read more about this, please download the full article here. (PDF file - 174kb)

 

"Makeover" for an army helmet - Weapons of Mass Desire

 Weapons of Mass Desire is a free-entry exhibition currently on at the National Musuem of Singapore. It deals with the impact of World War II on design and consumption in the immediate postwar years, as well as influences in fashion and living up to the present time.

Among the artefacts on display is an army helmet which was in a very distressed condition. It appeared to have gone through much trial and tribulation in its lifetime as a working object, but what that meant was that our conservators would have just as challenging a time trying to give it a new lease on life as an exhibited artefact!

Assistant Conservator (Textiles) Michelle Oh worked on preparing this artefact for display. She shares with us what went into treating the helmet in this paper. (Adobe Acrobat Reader required)

Army Helmet for Weapons of Mass Desire (PDF - 216kb)

Conservation Treatment of the “Portrait of Tan Kim Seng”

 Before & After Treatment