Arizona State Museum has been collecting and curating artifacts for 109 years. In earlier decades health and museum standards nationawide did not address the use of toxic chemicals. As a result, contamination has been found and some of its holdings are indeed contaminated with toxic chemicals. However, conservation at ASM has been at the forefront of this issue and since 1985 it has been museum policy not to use residual chemicals or pesticides on museum holdings. The workshops are another example of the Arizona State Museum taking a leadership role in this critical arena.

Pesticide residues and chemicals from preservation efforts on American Indian artifacts were a silent health hazard to museum workers and members of American Indian tribes until an Arizona State Museum researcher took on the problem.

Nancy Odegaard, a professional objects conservator at Arizona State Museum began to focus on materials characterization tests related to museum collections in 1994 with funding from the University of Arizona Office of the Vice President for Research and the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training. In 1998 Odegaard was awarded the prestigious Samuel H. Kress Publication Fellowship to publish her research findings.

By 1998, a concern for the health hazards of objects being legally transferred from museums to tribes under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) prompted Odegaard to expand her research to the issue of pesticide residues (arsenic, mercury, etc.) using materials characterization techniques. Odegaard’s collaboration with researchers from the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center, the UA chemistry department and the Hopi Tribe expanded the research.

Funded by the National Park Service, the workshop ultimately led to a March 2000 meeting, the first of its kind in the nation, to educate Arizona’s tribal communities and their cultural preservation officers about potential health hazards of repatriated museum artifacts. National workshops followed, as well as numerous professional presentations and publications, reports on National Public Radio, a national-level symposium, and testimony to the U.S. Department of Interior NAGPRA Review Committee.

Nancy Odegaard, Professional Objects Conservator, Arizona State Museum

Odegaard, a graduate of George Washington University, the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Canberra, is one of only a few object conservators in the nation specializing in anthropological materials. Her expertise is sought worldwide and she has been called to consult on such projects as Beethoven’s hair, Kennewick man and others. Odegaard has developed a leading research program at ASM where she addresses national conservation and international concerns, teaches conservation practices and ethics, and conducts research that is seminal in the field. ASM was the first, and is the only museum in the state, to have a professional objects conservator.

Odegaard says that a combination of need for analytical information and limited resources has led to “spot tests.” “The museum conservator is confronted daily with questions about conservation treatments that are dependent on characterizing the constituent materials found in artifacts and works of art as well as any deposits or accretions,” she says.

“It is incumbent on the conservator to identify and record as much of this information as possible but testing requires expensive instruments or examination by a specialist. It is not feasible to carry out such treatment in most small and usually under-funded museum conservation labs such as mine,” she says.

Spot tests are a less expensive method and an approach that can reliably provide the needed information in most cases. After 6 years of research and writing, Odegaard with former graduate intern Scott Carroll and research associate Werner Zimmt, published a manual for standardized spot test procedures for museum objects titled “Material Characterization Tests for Objects of Art and Archaeology” (Odegaard, Carroll and Zimmt, Archetype Publications, 2000).

While conducting spot test studies on ASM’s artifacts, Odegaard found that some objects had high levels of pesticide residues signaling a danger to museum staff and tribal members. Not only did Odegaard’s staff of students, interns, and volunteers research pesticides used at ASM over its century-long history, they also tracked chemical trade names, identified times of use, and compiled the related safety regulations.

Other museums in the United States possess objects similarly laced with pesticides and pose a health risk. Odegaard and her team learned that most of the older and larger museums in the United States used more kinds and greater quantities of pesticides than Arizona State Museum. This multi-faceted research on pesticide contamination promises to be a valuable resource for museum workers and tribal representatives as well.

ASM records show that this Eskimo mitten of fox was treated with a moth-proofing chemical in the 1950s and 60s.

ASM and the UA have taken the lead in providing information to Arizona’s American Indian communities about health issues related to pesticide use on repatriated objects. “Not all repatriated objects go back into cultural use,” Odegaard says, “but it is still important that tribal communities, and in particular their cultural preservation officers, are aware of the potential risks in handling materials that may be contaminated from pesticides. She said the education effort came about “after some tribes received repatriated articles from museums and put them back into ceremonial use without understanding the level of potential toxicity.”

After receiving its own NPS-NAGPRA grant, the Hopi Tribe contacted the UA in 1998 to begin a study of the toxic materials and health hazards associated with several Hopi articles. The collaborative work done by the Hopi Tribe with the UA has inspired similar efforts in other parts of the country, Odegaard says.

“As the state’s official museum and repository for indigenous culture objects, we must serve as responsible stewards of these holdings. It is our responsibility to share this information, our research findings and our expertise, with all the native communities around the state,” says Alyce Sadongei, ASM’s coordinator of American Indian Relations and workshop co-principle investigator.

“Demand for this information has grown exponentially since the first workshop and we have taken this information to a national level.” Odegaard and Sadongei have spoken at meetings of the American Association of Museums, the American Association for State and Local History, the Western Association for Art Conservators, Keepers of the Treasure, and the National Symposium held at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife National Conservation Training Center.