During the biennium the Conservation Department handled over 750 paintings, 712 sculptures and time-based media works, and 3,056 works on paper. Of this number, 386 paintings, 138 sculptures and time-based media works and 257 works on paper were inspected and prepared for loans out. Technical examinations were carried out for the Tudor and Stuart, and Camden Town cataloguing projects. Numerous works from the Collection, and works loaned to Tate, were prepared for exhibition or display across the Tate sites. Major frame treatments took place in support of exhibitions and a replica frame was created for one of Tate's paintings by Henry Fuseli.
Within the Sculpture, Time-based Media, and Paper specialist sections, an active programme of largely preventive conservation initiatives were undertaken, along with treatments to preserve not only the material aspects of the Collection, but also the meaning intended by the artist. For example, Tomoko Takahashi's complex piece, Drawing Room 1998, which includes many hundreds of paper-based ephemera, was successfully dismantled, stored and then reinstalled for Tate Modern's rehang thanks to meticulous documentation by paper conservators to ensure all pieces were mounted in their new environment precisely as they appeared in the artist's original installation.
Conservation also launched two exciting web-based sites: Media Matters, a collaborative project for the care of time-based media works of art, and an e-learning package exploring the preservation and presentation of Bruce Nauman's Mapping the Studio.
The last two years have seen a period of detailed work relating to the future of the Collection Store at Southwark. Additional funding was granted from DCMS to reenergise thinking about how the Store might be developed to fulfil a greater number of Tate's Collection care needs. Tate also used this opportunity to explore whether the development of the site might also benefit a group of partners. To this end, a project co-ordinator was appointed to carry out extensive consultation with Collection services and potential partners to develop further the project brief and Tate's appointed architects carried out an initial design proposal.
