re:visioningmuseums

Board bypasses Ocean Wise

By matthew burrows

Publish Date: 28-Sep-2006

Park board commissioner Ian Robertson has denied a charge of filibustering following a four-hour board meeting on September 25.

COPE’s Spencer Herbert (left) was disappointed that NPA’s Ian Robertson didn’t support his motion for parks to sign up for the Ocean Wise conservation program.

Robertson, the first-term commissioner and Non-Partisan Association board vice chair, is sustainable-development director at Rocky Mountaineer Vacations by day. But on Monday night, he voted with NPA commissioners Korina Houghton and Marty Zlotnik to soften COPE commissioner Spencer Herbert’s motion to partner with the Vancouver aquarium.

“I don’t think that [filibustering] was the case at all,” Robertson told the Georgia Straight by phone. “I said at the meeting that we had part of an idea, but that I was not happy with what was in the original motion.”

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Feds slash museum funding

By pieta woolley

Publish Date: 28-Sep-2006

MOA’s Cathy Bond tests for pesticides: the pilot project’s funding is threatened.

A poisonous coating of lead, mercury, and arsenic covers many of the Museum of Anthropology’s wooden West Coast art pieces. The toxic treatment—professionally abandoned 30 years ago—protects objects on display from rodents and bugs. That pesticide preservative is less desirable, however, when those pieces come back to life, according to Museum of Anthropology conservator Heidi Swierenga.

“The dancing objects are the most dangerous,” Swierenga told the Georgia Straight. “Say it’s a mask, and you’re wearing it and moving around, sweating, it’s making abrasions on the skin….We want to know what’s been affected [when we lend or repatriate the 2,500 tested objects back to First Nations]. .Our next hope is to work with industrial hygienists and find out what the risks are.”

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