Student Blog: Wagner Free Institute of Philadelphia

In the summer of 2019, I worked at The Wagner Free Institute of Philadelphia as a natural history conservation intern focusing on a set of Camarasaurus fossils. Donated by Edward Drinker Cope in 1891, the assembled segments of thigh, hip, and spinal fossils are displayed at floor level towards the back of the museum hall and are a staple of the museum for many gallery viewers. On the second floor, off limits to guests, a table of partially identified fragments of the Camarasaurus had remained largely untouched since their donation. The goals of this project were to document the fossils’ condition, lightly surface clean, and devise housing that would allow the set to be disassembled for portability and prevent future dissociation. 

My first steps in attacking this project were to assess the condition of each fossil fragment and document my findings in a condition report. I began by unofficially assigning each fragment a number 1 through 24 and taking before-treatment photographs with corresponding labels. From this point, I took notes next to each photo on the condition report detailing the size, structural integrity, and level of surface grime of the fragments. An interesting factor of this process was that this set of fossils remained in their matrix and held evidence of the original excavation including preliminary adhesives and a painted marking. One example of this was a segment marked with a black painted "35" and lines to indicate where to carve away the matrix. 

​After documentation, I lightly surfaced cleaned the fossils with a soft brush and handheld vacuum and began planning for housing. There were two main concerns raised by Lynn Dorwaldt, Special Collections Librarian, and Susan Glassman, Director: one being the long-term protection of the specimen and, two, being able to move the segments safely down the stairs of the museum without damage or disassociation. For the course Care and Preservation of Material Culture II under the instruction of Madeline Hagerman, the honor’s section created a bento-box inspired housing for a 1920’s wedding dress with accompanying shoes, gloves, and letters. Within a large Blueboard box, each piece of the ensemble was given a smaller box which could be removed from a top opening and placed back together like a jigsaw puzzle. I based my construction off this housing plan, but lifting the heavy fossils from the top of the box to access lower fossils was not ideal. To address this, I altered the design to resemble a four-tier dresser with shelves consisting of removable boxes for each of the 24 segments. This design allowed for the table of fossils to be converted into a compact box which could then be disassembled to examine or move individual segments. This was accomplished by sketching the size needed on graph paper to plan each layer followed by cutting, creasing, and assembling the boxes with Blueboard and acrylic hot glue. 

Each of the 24 boxes needed a bed of Ethafoam to prevent the amorphous fossils from moving, and potentially breaking, inside of their new home. This was done by cutting slabs of four-inch-thick Ethafoam into the dimensions of each box with an X-Acto knife and then tracing a rough outline of the corresponding fossil. To carve the Ethafoam, I used my X-Acto knife to crosshatch the area and dug out the areas I wanted to remove using sculpting tools, periodically referring to the specimen to ensure a perfect fit. To finish each bed off, I carved key holes to allow easy removal of the segments and used a hairdryer to soften any rough edges that may scratch the fossils. The last step in this project was to label the housing segments with archival ink and, after two months of cutting and carving, it was finally time to assemble my design.

The completed housing functioned as I had envisioned; each tier can slide out to allow access to the removable, individual housing of each specimen as the weight of the fossils remained on the Blueboard. As the first museum project I had accomplished outside of the University of Delaware, I was extremely proud to see everything come together. 

On days that we waited for supplies to arrive and after the Camarasaurus housing was finished, I gained experience making clam-shell boxes in the Special Collections' library, creating mylar-encapsulations for original labels, and maintaining display cases. I could not be more grateful to The Wagner Free Institute staff for being so welcoming and for trusting me with this iconic specimen in their collection. It would also be remiss if I did not thank Mariana Di Giacomo for not only putting me in contact with The Wagner Free Institute, but also for her advisement every step of the way.

— Anna-Colette Haynes, UD Class of 2022, Honor's Art Conservation Major with Minors in Chemistry, Anthropology, and Art History