Covid-19 has taken a toll on museum collections. During lockdown, limited access to collections and restrictions on staff and volunteer capacity (owing to furloughing and shielding) made maintaining even a basic house-keeping regime a challenge. With many museums and historic houses now temporarily closed, or running reduced public hours, this is a good time for museums to tackle a ‘deep clean’ of their displays, stores and collections.
Sophia Oelman, conservation specialist with Spencer and Fry, held a friendly Zoom training session that focused on deep cleaning and safe cleaning of historic surfaces in the context of Covid-19.
The session covered the benefits of deep cleaning including: managing the agents of deterioration, clearing methods, materials, techniques, record keeping and benchmarking.
We also talked about cleaning historic surfaces, managing risks, how to avoid contamination and cleaning methods for specific materials.
This was a Zoom event.
Deep Cleaning during Covid - Handout Document