Treasures of Clay - page 2

These ceramics are fragile, though, and when she arrived, Odegaard was dismayed by the poor conditions under which they were stored.

“These are old buildings,” Odegaard says of the museum’s two brick structures, located in the UA historic district near Old Main. “They were state-of-the-art at one time.

But much of the pottery could not withstand the lack of adequate climate control. It was too dry in the winter, and too wet during the summer monsoons, when the humidity can hit 70 percent. That causes the salt in the clay to come to the surface—just like the pots on your patio.”

White salts that mar garden pots are a minor annoyance, but when they form on priceless antique pottery, they can wreak catastrophe. The salt “begins to knock off the beautiful design.”

Trained as a conservator in a joint program at George Washington University and the Smithsonian Institution (she later earned a doctorate from the University of Canberra in Australia), Odegaard set out to stabilize the pots as best she could.

“When I was first on board, I studied the pottery. I’d determine the problem in a pot, and figure out how and why it was happening. We made remedial improvements. For nearly 15 years, I’d say, ‘Here’s another box of Band-Aids.’ But we exhausted all the little fixes. We had a sense of urgency about what was happening to the collection.”

No more.

She and her staff—three full-time conservators, two part-time chemist volunteers, and a changing roster of 8 to 10 student interns—also have a new home. They now have the luxury of working on the pots—and other museum holdings, such as rugs and jewelry—in a lab that’s similarly state-of-the-art. At 2200 square feet, it’s a big step up from their tiny old workroom.