There is an article in the latest editon of View Camera (Nov/Dec 2000) entitled 'Advances in Archival Mounting and Storage: Ultimate Protection for your Photographs' that tells about an archival board called ArtCare that is said to be better than 100% rag museum board for photographic preservation. Has anyone used this product? Any comments?

Supposedly, this is hot stuff in the archival preservation industry, but it hasn't filtered down to photographers yet. I found an article about how it works at http://sul2.stanford.edu/waac/wn/wn18/wn18-1/wn18-106.html, and Nielsen-Bainbridge carries it at http://nielsen-bainbridge.com/Artcare/Specifier/Index.htm. It works by absorbing and trapping pollutants.

Another interesting tidbit from the article in View Camera: dry mounting preserves photographs much better than hinging. Apparently the dry-mount tissue provides a barrier to pollutants.

-- Ed Buffaloe (edbuffaloe@unblinkingeye.com), November 22, 2000

Answers

Hey Ed, sorry to respond so late here, I just stumbled across your question. I don't know if you've gotten any of the Artcare boards yet, but I may be able to pass along a suplier for you. I work in a museum and we have tons of archival supply catalogs around here. There's a place called "Conservation Resources International" that carries this mat board as well as Artcare's foamboard. You can request a catalog from them at their website: www.conservationresources.com. They also carry a huge variety of preservation/storage materials, including the nifty Microchamber papers. Their catalog is profusely illustrated too, almost like a textbook (their products of course), but still it's good to have around. Hollinger is another good place, not as fancy, but they've been around forever. I haven't used any of CRI's products, just have the catalog in my deskdrawer. Believe it or not, there are all sorts of archival products that "haven't filtered down" to photographers yet...hope this helps. P.S. If you get some of the mat boards, post a little review, I'm curious for another point of view. Oh, and was that url you had for Conservation On Line? That's a great web site for this sort of info. Again, hope this helps.

-- D.K. Thompson (kthompson@moh.dcr.state.nc.us), February 09, 2001.