Society Receives Prestigious Conservation Grant

SOUTHOLD, NY.  The Society is pleased to announce that it has received a grant in the amount of $4,470 from  the Lower Hudson Conference to help conserve two early samplers that form part of its permanent collection.

The two samplers were created by sisters, Sarah and Nancy Glover, while attending public school No. 5. The Glovers are an ancient North Fork family that go back to Lieutenant Samuel Glover (1644-1715) who had arrived in Southold by 1676. Worked on at the same school, just two years apart (1830 and 1832), the samplers are remarkably similar as would be expected. What is unusual is that they both retain their original period frames and original glass. The Glovers were very prominent, and Nancy would become even more so with her marriage to wealthy Southold farmer and horse track owner Israel Peck. Both of these samplers were featured in the 1940 Town Tercentenary exhibit and are clearly shown in period photographs taken at the time. The samplers were presented to the Society in the 1960’s by Peck family descendants.

The Lower Hudson Conference of Historical Agencies & Museums (LHC) awarded over $111,000 in conservation treatment grants to 22 organizations, in association with the Museum Program of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), a state agency. These re-granted funds will provide treatment by professional conservators to aid in stabilizing, preserving and making accessible to the public an array of unique objects in collections of New York State's museums, historical and cultural organizations- from Mumford to Waterford, and from Franklin County to Flushing, Queens.

The 2007 grants will support conservation of American and European oil paintings of local subjects, historic scenes, and portraits from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries with their frames, and a painted theatre curtain. Works on paper include 19th c. pastel portraits, early 20th c. printed broadsides and 17th c. sepia ink drawings. Grant funds will conserve such diverse objects as turn-of-the-century children's wicker furniture, a schoolboy's leather travel trunk, and iron furriers' tools. Textile treatments will be carried out on 19th c. needlework samplers, a silk embroidered ship picture, a hand woven woolen shawl and needlepoint-covered Louis XV armchairs.

These grants are awarded for prioritized, urgently needed conservation of objects that, once treated, will impact public interpretive programs, exhibitions and education. Non-profit organizations with stewardship responsibility for cultural collections, (but without their own in-house conservation staff) were eligible applicants; state or federally owned collections are ineligible for support. Conservation Treatment Grant funding for paintings, works on paper, textiles, furniture, sculpture, ethnographic, historical and decorative objects, also supports accompanying professional treatment of frames, supports, stands and mounts that are integral to the final presentation of the object, after conservation.

Lower Hudson Conference strives to provide support for conservation treatments that are executed on the highest professional level. The field of conservation is continually changing, with pioneering research and dissemination of findings on innovative materials and techniques. Although there are many paths into the field of conservation, we acknowledge practitioners who have demonstrated high levels of proficiency and advanced knowledge, adherence to the ethics and standards of the American Institute of Conservation (AIC), and are recognized for their expertise in the museum field.

46 grant applications were received at LHC by June 1st from institutions in 26 counties of New York State, requesting an aggregate of more than $280,000 in grant support. 22 awards totaling over $111,000 were recommended by a peer panel of conservators, curators and museum professionals. Individual 2007 Conservation Treatment Grants range from $1650 to $7500. Of the 22 funded institutions, 60% have annual budgets under $350,000 and 40% have budgets over $350,000. Institutional operating budgets of 2007's grant recipients range from $17,000 to $17 million per year. The Lower Hudson Conference of Historical Agencies & Museums (LHC) sends its congratulations to all the 2007 Conservation Treatment Grant Recipients.