Preserving A Heritage

By Craig Collins

From architects to curators to restorers, the National Museum of the Marine Corps wages war against a museum’s cruelest enemies: light, temperature, dust, moisture – and the passage of time

Memorial Day weekend 2004 was stressful for Neil Abelsma, uniform and heraldry curator for the National Museum of the Marine Corps. He had helped arrange the temporary loan of the “second” Iwo Jima flag, the bigger and more famous of the two raised on Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945, to the Smithsonian Institution for its four-day National World War II Reunion.

“They had their light levels adjusted,” says Abelsma. “They had a little barrier set up. And they had signs everywhere: ‘No Photography.’ And there was even a guard.” But for some reason, the urge to take flash photographs was irrepressible among the hundreds who viewed the flag that weekend. “I went in there, and this poor guard,” Abelsma remembers – “by the end of the day, he was hoarse.”

A widely held view among museum visitors is that the “no flash photography” rule is a way to force them to buy more postcards at the gift shop. But it’s a much more serious matter. Anyone who has ever peeked behind old window curtains will see the jaundiced look of fabric that has been exposed to the sun for too long. The flash of a camera, though brief, emits light that is many times brighter and hotter than direct sunlight. “And the light doesn’t just change the color,” says Abelsma. “It breaks down the fabric’s structure.”

Of the items in the museum’s collection, the ones Abelsma is charged with overseeing – including flags, uniforms, documents, and medals and their ribbons – are among the most fragile, because many are made, either wholly or partly, of natural fibers that contain cellulose. When light strikes a cellulose molecule, it causes a chemical reaction in which the molecule literally ruptures – which not only results in physical damage but also releases, as a byproduct, a molecule of sulfuric acid. For just about anything you can imagine a museum might wish to collect, sulfuric acid is, to put it mildly, not a good thing.

Abelsma compares the long-term effects of light – even controlled low-level light such as that found in the most hospitable museum environments – to the collective effect of thousands of footsteps on an old staircase. “Everybody contributes something,” he says, “but nobody realizes it. In a way, it’s almost like we’re determining how many more generations are going to look at that flag.”

Of course, the best way to preserve artifacts as beloved as the Iwo Jima flag would be to seal them all away in a darkened, climate-controlled room, away from human contact. Abelsma is one of many at the museum who, realizing the absurdity of the alternative, has devoted his career to an intricate balancing act: struggling to preserve these artifacts while releasing them into an environment where they can be viewed and appreciated by the public.

The roughly 30,000 objects in the Marine Corps’ historical collection of artifacts are divided into four broad categories: Abelsma’s uniforms and heraldry; aviation (aircraft flown by Marine aviators, aviation ordnance, aeronautica); ordnance (firearms, edged weapons, wheeled and tracked vehicles, artillery, and associated equipment); and the Marine Corps Combat Art Collection, comprised of more than 8,000 works of art. The job of documenting and caring for these objects is divided among the collections management, curatorial, and restorations staffs.

In a museum, standards are established for limiting certain factors known to cause damage: light, moisture, and even dust, which is, according to museum specialist Mike Starn, a bigger problem than most people realize. “When bugs chew on material,” he says, “it’s not that they’re literally chewing the material. They’re eating the dust. The material just happens to get in the way. And so dust is just as big an enemy as sunlight, actually any bright light.”

One of the first lines of defense against such enemies is a carefully designed museum environment. Fentress Bradburn, the architectural firm that designed the museum’s physical structure, went to great lengths to limit the potential for damage. The ventilation system includes both humidity control and filtration devices to remove as much dust as possible from the air. The vast central Leatherneck Gallery, in which several large artifacts are displayed beneath a soaring glass vault, was designed to protect objects from exposure. Ken Smith-Christmas, the former curator of material history for the Marine Corps’ History and Museums Division, served as an adviser during the design phase and says the skylight initially raised eyebrows. “Fentress Bradburn was very responsive to all of our concerns about the artifacts,” he says. “A lot of people look at that (skylight) and say, ‘Oh my god, what are you doing … having all these things out there in the direct sunlight?’ Well, the fritted glass … has got an integral arrangement, in the way the glass is made, that breaks up the direct sunlight.”

The skylight’s construction, says Smith-Christmas, is also designed to reduce the amount of moisture in the Leatherneck Gallery, a space intended for the hosting of special events. “They [Fentress Bradburn] really did a lot of great studies. In one, we were figuring how many warming trays would be out if you were giving a banquet. Say they’re all going on the coldest night imaginable, and you’ve got condensation forming on the inside of the glass – they even put little channels in there, so that if condensation ever got on the inside of the glass, it would run down and out a scupper.”

Of course, even the most carefully controlled museum environment is subject to fluctuations in temperature and humidity that are beyond anyone’s control, which is why collections management – which includes rotating objects into exhibits while returning others to rest and recuperate in a more strictly controlled storage location – is a key factor in preservation. It is estimated that only about 5 to 10 percent of the 30,000 items in the collection will be displayed at one time.

The Marine Corps Combat Art Collection, because of the high organic content of most of the materials used to compose its works – canvas, paper, wood frames and stretcher bars, and even the paints and inks – includes some of the most sensitive objects in the museum. Joan Thomas, the museum’s assistant curator of art, says that the act of creating a painting involves several different steps, each performed with a different material. “First … you’re stretching a canvas or linen, or whatever, over the stretcher bars. Then you’re probably putting a primer base on. And then you’re starting to put the paint layers on. And then you’re putting it in a frame,” she says. “All of those things are reacting differently to changes in climate, changes in light, changes in temperature. So you might have the wood moving one way, the paint moving another way, and the frame holding it all to where it can’t move.” The result, in many older paintings, can be a crackling effect, where paint and canvas are moving in different directions or at different rates, or a bubbling, where humidity has swelled paint above the surface of the canvas.

The museum environment, explains Thomas, is simply more variable than the place where paintings are stored. “The more people you get in a gallery, the more that’s going to change the climate. And that’s going to cause minor stresses. … So you’re going to want to limit the time that they’re on display, and then keep them away for a few years. And then you might exhibit them again.”

That may sound harsh to those who are unacquainted with the richness and variety of the Marine Corps’ Combat Art Collection, but according to Charles Grow, its curator, good collections management will actually, over time, help to broaden and deepen the experience of visitors, rather than limit it. The permanent gallery space planned for later construction, says Grow, will provide a unique showcase for the collection: two gallery sections will be rotated on a six-month basis. “So every three months,” he says, “you’ll get to see a new art exhibit.”

There are two kinds of artifacts in the National Museum of the Marine Corps, however, which are impractical to rotate in and out of display space: first, the “macro” artifacts, or those so large and bulky – such as the nearly 45-ton M26 Pershing tank in the Korean War gallery – that moving them would prove nearly impossible. Second, some items are so iconic – such as the Iwo Jima flag, Dan Daly’s two Medals of Honor, or Smedley Butler’s swagger stick – that they are assigned their own

Above: The museum’s FG-1 Corsair rests on its landing gear in Leatherneck Gallery before being hoisted up toward the ceiling. The Goodyear-manufactured Corsair was repainted in an accurate World War II camouflage scheme by present-day Marine aviation maintenance personnel. Right: Detail of the HVAR air-to-ground rockets carried beneath the Corsair’s wings. exhibit space. For many of these iconic artifacts, more exacting measures may be taken to stabilize them or, in extreme cases, to treat active deterioration. These kinds of activities, such as cleaning, preserving, or remounting, are rarely necessary, but when they are, it becomes time for the museum to call on a private conservator. copious notes. Years later, when you say, ‘Oh, we’ve got to reconserve the flag, what did we do last time?’ well, you pull out the images. You pull out the notes that the conservator had, and you find out exactly what chemicals and what process and what was done, so that you’re not going to damage it [while] thinking you’re improving the process.”

The Iwo Jima flag – along with its predecessor, the smaller boat flag flown earlier in the day – was reconserved in 1999, after the curatorial staff became concerned about the way the flags had been mounted. The larger flag, in particular, looked dirty and had begun to sag; an earlier treatment had involved some light stitching of the flag’s upper border onto a cloth background. At the Keedysville, Md., laboratory of textile conservator Fonda Thomsen, both flags were taken out of their old cases, lightly cleaned, and then remounted in the European style: on an acid-free cotton fabric, over a welded aluminum backing, and pressure-mounted beneath a sheet of acrylic glass specially treated with ultraviolet light filters. This technique ensured no further damage to the flags from stitching, and provided full support. Additionally, every frayed thread from the tattered, wind-whipped “second” flag was carefully laid out before the acrylic covering was fastened under the frame.

The cleaning performed on the flags is about as intrusive as most conservators want to get with an historical object; today’s conservators are much more reluctant to apply chemical cleaners or preservatives that might alter an artifact’s physical composition. Other times, especially with metal objects, a protective wax coating may be applied – sometimes to protect from the damage associated with handling. “By simply picking up a rifle without a pair of gloves on,” explains Starn, “you could potentially leave your fingerprints behind on that piece for a long time, because the oils and moisture from your hand will leave a fingerprint behind, well, like it does on anything.”

In the art collection, a protective coating is sometimes used on paintings that experience extreme crackling or loss of paint, says Thomas. “You never do anything that can’t be reversed,” she says, “because you want to be able always to get back to the original intent of the artist and what they were doing. And so what will happen is, once [the paint] is stabilized, something will be put over it, like maybe a clear varnish. And then the pigments will then be reapplied with a water-based paint. So then if we ever needed to get back to the original state of the painting, this all can be removed with no impact to the painting.”

For collection items that aren’t iconic – in other words, that are historical, but not particular to a specific person or event – authenticity is considered more important than hair-splitting devotion to every original stitch and eyebolt. The uniforms worn by the cast figures throughout the museum are representative of a time and place, and even, in some cases, of the individual who once wore them, but nearly all are replicas, rather than originals. The macro artifacts in the Leatherneck Gallery, also, are not preserved in their original state – three of them include parts covered in a fabric that deteriorated long ago. Rather than the original Irish linen that once covered the fuselage and wings of the gallery’s Curtiss JN-4D “Jenny” biplane, for example, the museum opted for longer-lived Dacron, which could be doped and painted just as linen was in years past.

Planes, tanks, and helicopters were built to be durable, and some of the objects in the museum were used by the Marine Corps for decades, over which they were modified, updated, damaged, and repaired numerous times. When such an object is adopted as an exhibit by the museum, the key issue is no longer how to simply preserve it, but also how to restore it to a state that represents the event or circumstances the museum is trying to convey. Restoration – procedures intended to return an object to a particular state, often through the addition of non-original materials – is an inherently invasive activity, and the ethics of its costs and benefits are the stuff of graduatelevel study in the field of museum science. But for the purpose of educating the public about an object’s service in a certain time and place, there is often no alternative.

Many of the restorations performed on museum artifacts have, like the museum’s conservation work, been done by outside contractors. Hovering just above the museum’s Legacy Walk is the UH-1E “Huey” helicopter piloted by Capt. Stephen W. Pless on Aug. 19, 1967, when he exhibited exceptional airmanship by attacking an enemy force of an estimated 30 to 50 Vietcong and rescuing four U.S. Army soldiers stranded on a beach near Quang Nai, Vietnam – an action for which he became the first and only Marine aviator to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor in Vietnam.

Pless’s Huey remained in service for more than a decade after he left Vietnam in 1967, explains Sullivan. “We wanted it to be restored from a 1980s configuration back to its Vietnam configuration, which means you have to take out certain things – the panels, newer equipment and communications that didn’t exist in 1967 or ’68. You’ve got to change the pattern of paint. There are different seats. That’s all historical research … So consequently we can now say: ‘That’s not an aircraft that is similar to the one he flew. No. That’s Pless’s Huey.’ And there’s a history behind it as well as the man, and the action that ended in him receiving the Medal of Honor.”

The consistent demands of such macro artifacts make it useful for the museum to have its own small restorations staff, which often performs its work in nearby Larson’s Gym at Marine Corps Base Quantico. In the months prior to the museum’s opening, its own aircraft restorers, with the help of Marine mechanics from a reserve squadron, conducted the repainting of the FG-1 Corsair that hangs in the Leatherneck Gallery. “They stripped it all down. And then they found the right color blue, and the right color light blue, and then the decals,” says Sullivan, “and measured the sides from research. And they got the Marines who do it for a living anyway on modern aircraft – they loved doing a historical aircraft that’s the same type that Pappy Boyington flew.”

Many of the museum’s macro artifacts are used to illustrate a unique-to-the-Marine Corps contribution to warfighting. Restoration specialist Alan Berry, whose focus on ground vehicles has earned him the nickname “Tank Boy,” spent much of the months leading up to the museum’s November 2006 opening on the restoration of a Jeep featured in the World War II-era gallery. “When it was first decided that they were going to have a Jeep in the World War II side, the curators decided that one of the things that they wanted to demonstrate was close air support that the Marines were at the forefront of developing,” says Berry. “So what we’re doing is taking a standard [Jeep] and converting it over to what they call a CAS Jeep, close air support.” The differences between the two – battery voltages, the radio system, rear seat size, antennas, even the cabling – are significant, and Berry has been aided in his work by European warehouses. “At the end of the war, the U.S. did not want to transport all the stuff home, so they gave it to the armies of Europe: the Dutch, the French, the Belgians. And so a lot of it was warehoused, almost never used.”

For many of these parts, such as the pristine insulated mounting assembly for the Jeep’s long radio antenna, it’s been a long journey – to the European front, into a Dutch warehouse, and years later, back to Quantico for display. But Berry considers himself lucky; for some exhibits, he is forced to manufacture parts by hand. The Korean War M26 Pershing tank, for example, came to the museum in fine shape except for one glaring detail: It was missing the steel fender skirts mounted above the tank’s tracks. Berry, after traveling to another museum, made careful measurements, built his own templates, and fabricated the skirts from scratch at his shop in Quantico.

To most people, spending one’s days rebuilding the fender skirts of a Pershing tank may seem a peculiarly specific career choice, but for Berry – and for everyone on the museum staff – it’s a true labor of love. “For these old veterans who used this gear,” he says, “you’ve got to get it right. I got into restoring military vehicles – well, one, because I like playing with them. But two, I got into it more when I would go to air shows and re-enactment events, and some of the older veterans, especially the World War II vets, came around. And you could look at the memories in their faces when they saw a particular vehicle. You could tell there were some very, very close-knit memories wrapped up in it. And what we’re doing by preserving them is saying: ‘Hey, we remember. What you did is not forgotten.’ And that’s kind of the driving force for why I do what I do.”