Hormel Historic Home awarded CAP grant
Published 7:11 am Tuesday, June 26, 2018
- A CAP grant recently awarded to the Hormel Historic Home will go towards implementing preservation standards to help preserve the HHH’s collection. Photo by Michael Stoll/mike.stoll@austindailyherald.com
Money to be used to implement museum preservation standards
The Hormel Historic Home has been awarded a $7,400 Collections Assessment for Preservation (CAP) grant by the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.
The grant was made possible through a cooperative agreement with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal grant-making agency that supports museums and libraries.
The money will be used to implement professional museum preservation standards.
“The history with the Hormel Home is that it has been through so many phases and putting in place standards or best practices for collection storage hasn’t been focused on,” said HHH Director Holly Johnson. “We do have quite a wide array of collectible items, paper documents, things that are either from the family or the YWCA, so I felt like it was a good opportunity to get us into doing the right things to preserve our collections.”
The HHH was one of 80 institutions throughout the country to receive this grant. In order to get the grant, Johnson had to fill out a pre-grant application survey in order to give as much detail as possible.
“They indicated that because we’re a small organization, we’re a great fit because a lot of times small organizations don’t have the funding to hire professionals to do this,” she said. “We are the kind of organization they like to help.”
Hormel Historic Home Director Holly Johnson shows a glass, currently in storage, that belonged to the Hormel family. The HHH was awarded a CAP grant that will help with preservation of such items. Photo by Michael Stoll/mike.stoll@austindailyherald.com
Elisa Redman, director of preservation services at the Midwest Art Conservation Center in Minneapolis, will come to Austin to assess the HHH’s collection while Jeff Oertel, president of Oertel Architects, Ltd., in St. Paul, will be assessing the building. Both will be coming at the end of July.
Johnson said the standards will take time to implement.
“These are not practices they would say we have to implement tomorrow,” she said. “They are step-by-step things we need to do over a period of time, maybe even up to 20 years from now. It will depend upon our strategic plan and the direction the board wants to take because some things would be very invasive, like installing humidity controlled equipment. We have to decide how far we want to take their recommendations.”
“Professional standards are very rigid for traditional museums,” she added. “At this point, we don’t follow any of those standards and I think it’s crucial to know the damage that can occur to things if they’re not handled properly. We want to have the basis to understand what should be done because we want this place to be around forever.”
Johnson indicated she hopes to secure similar grants in the future.
“We’re grateful for the funding and we’re looking forward to seeing the results,” she said.
