- Client
- Confidential — National Institution, Australia
- Location
- Canberra, Australia
- Period
- 14 months
The Challenge
The institution held a collection of national significance across three storage environments, none of which had been assessed comprehensively since the early 2010s. A change in senior leadership had surfaced long-standing concerns about collection condition and storage adequacy that the previous administration had not prioritised. The incoming director needed an independent assessment that could inform both an internal conservation program and a forthcoming capital works submission to government.
The collection included material in three distinct categories — paper and photographic archives, three-dimensional objects of varying size and complexity, and a small number of large technology items — each with different conservation requirements and different vulnerabilities to the existing storage conditions.
Our Approach
The assessment was designed in two phases. The first phase was a rapid triage of all three storage environments to establish the scale of the problem and identify any items requiring immediate intervention. The second phase was a systematic condition survey of the collection's highest-priority holdings — the material most at risk and most significant to the institution's collection mandate.
Andrew Pearce led the technical assessment, working directly with the institution's collections team. Victoria Pearce provided strategic advisory support, ensuring that the assessment outputs were structured to serve the capital works brief as well as the internal conservation program.
Technical Detail
The triage phase identified seven items requiring immediate conservation intervention and two storage areas requiring urgent environmental remediation. The systematic survey covered approximately 60% of the collection's highest-priority material within the project timeframe.
The capital works brief was developed in parallel with the assessment, drawing on the survey data to establish the collection's medium-term storage requirements and the conservation resourcing needed to maintain the collection at an acceptable standard.
Outcomes
The institution received a condition survey that established a clear baseline for the collection and a conservation priority schedule for the next five years. The capital works brief supported a successful submission for purpose-built storage infrastructure.
The director reported that the assessment provided the institution with its first comprehensive account of collection condition — a foundation for collection management decisions that had previously been made without systematic evidence.
“For the first time, we have a clear picture of what we hold and what it requires. The assessment gave us both the evidence we needed for the capital submission and a conservation program we can actually implement.”
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