Training in the Conservation of Paintings - Calouste Gulbenkian ...

TRAINING IN THE CONSERVATION OF PAINTINGS
of basic training by setting up one or more similar courses in
technical colleges elsewhere. In such a development, the college
should be closely associated, as at Gateshead, with a good local
gallery and within reach of the specialist facilities of a University.
Advanced Course
71. The national museums and galleries, and some of those in the
regions, provide advanced training by accepting trainees for their
own succession and expansion needs. Apart from the Government
Temporary Training Scheme (paragraph 24), however, these institutions
do not undertake to train for other than their own service
(although inevitably some trainees leave to work elsewhere); and
since the museums and galleries participating in the temporary
scheme cannot continue to take even the four or five extra trainees
each to which it commits them without curtailing their own activities,
this scheme must be replaced by some permanent alternative. Such
an alternative we have set out to find.
Possible extension of the Government Temporary Training Scheme
72. Since, however, we have been very conscious of the need for
economy not only in expenditure but also in the use of the few fully
trained restorers who would have to carry out whatever additional
training we recommended; since, moreover, the training in the
museum and gallery conservation departments was represented to
us as being attended by advantages unobtainable in any other existing
institution (paragraph 35); and since the numbers involved, as
shown above (paragraph 66) are not large; we have felt bound to
consider whether a simple extension of the temporary scheme on a
permanent basis might not meet the need.
73. The scheme might be extended by bringing other institutions
into the scheme and arranging for the acceptance of trainees on the
same terms, at the National Maritime Museum, the National Galleries
of Scotland, the Prints and Drawings Department of the
British Museum, Bristol City Art Gallery and some others, if these
institutions were willing; alternatively it might be extended by increasing
the numbers accepted at the three national institutions now
involved; or by some combination of the two.
74. We saw objections to this solution, however, in whichever way it
was carried out. To increase the number of institutions taking part
in the scheme would only perpetuate the present situation in which
several separate autonomous and unconnected places give their own
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