Monitor Center Lab to Close Due to Lack of Funding

[GburgSldr]

I saw this and thought it deserved some attention:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-museum-shuts-lab-with-uss-monitor-artifacts-citing-lack-of-federal-funds/2014/01/09/1bd0a7ca-78b7-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html

Apparently the Monitor Center is not doing as well as they hoped. The lower visitor count combined with a shrinking federal budget has resulted in the conservation lab being closed.

I hope this is just a wake up call and they can properly fund it. For anyone who has not gone, the Monitor Center in Newport News is a wonderful museum to visit.


Thomas Paone

[Trail Otter]

Re: Monitor Center Lab to Close Due to Lack of Funding

This is a shame. I've been to the Monitor Center and enjoyed the experience. To actually "walk" on her decks and through the ship adds to the understanding of the vessel. I hope things turn around so more folks can see and understand the ship and her role in history.

[Busterbuttonboy]

Re: Monitor Center Lab to Close Due to Lack of Funding

USS Monitor Conservation Lab to close from funding woes

By Mark St. John Erickson, merickson@dailypress.com

Daily Press

4:52 PM EST, January 9, 2014

NEWPORT NEWS

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Conservators at The Mariners' Museum were preparing to shut down a 5,000-square-foot treatment lab and stop work on the historic gun turret of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor Thursday following the expiration of an agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Sanctuary Program.

The lab employs five staff members and incurred operating costs of about $500,000 in 2013, of which only about $50,000 was provided by the Sanctuary Program's private foundation after years in which the federal agency itself supported the internationally known conservation project with regular funding totaling more than $2.2 million.

"We regret having to make this decision, which is a deeply emotional one for our Monitor conservators, who consider themselves the guardians of these artifacts, and of their power to bring to life this important episode of American history," Mariners' Museum President and CEO Elliot Gruber said in a statement released Thursday morning.

"These artifacts are owned by the federal government, protected under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act and managed by the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. The museum is proud to partner with NOAA to conserve these artifacts, but their preservation is ultimately the responsibility of the federal government."

Designated by the federal government as the official repository for Monitor artifacts in 1987, the Mariners' ramped up its conservation efforts dramatically in the late 1990s during a series of joint Navy and NOAA archaeological expeditions that culminated in the recovery of the Monitor's landmark gun turret in 2002.

Five years later, the museum opened the USS Monitor Center — a $31 million, 64,000-square-foot expansion that included an industrial-sized wet lab designed to care for the landmark 120-ton gun turret and some 50 tons of other artifacts recovered from the Cape Hatteras wreck.

NOAA contributed some $13 million to the building project during that time, then followed up with a multi-year allocation of about $2 million for what is believed to be the largest and most complex marine metals conservation project in the world, Monitor Center curator Anna Holloway says.

But when those funds ran out about 2010, the agency's financial support not only fell dramatically — totaling less than $180,000 in 2011 — but ultimately came to a stop.

"It's not because NOAA doesn't care about these landmark artifacts. Everything recovered from the Monitor is federally owned," Holloway says.

"The problem here is that Congress hasn't made the appropriations. We haven't a budget approved in years."

Since then, the Mariners' has used its own resources to make up for the shortfall in federal funding..

But it can't afford to pay the annual costs of the massive conservation project on its own, Holloway says.

Inside the sprawling warehouse-sized lab, the museum's conservators and technicians tend more than 20 huge, mostly custom-fabricated treatment tanks, with the largest preserving the 120-ton turret in a chemical bath totaling nearly 100,000 gallons.

Thousands of other containers ranging from a few hundred gallons to a few ounces in size hold the remainder of some 1,500 artifacts and their related components — ranging from objects as large as two 8-ton Dahlgren cannons to some as small as a sailor's coat button.

In addition to a 40-ton overhead bridge crane, the lab's equipment includes a $200,000 reverse-osmosis water filtering system as well as $200,000 in digital X-ray equipment and a giant walk-in conservation freezer.

Just this week alone the conservators — who will remain employed for other museum duties — opened and mixed several tons of sodium hydroxide as they prepared thousands of gallons of solution in their treatment tanks for this Friday's shutdown.

"The reality is that we're not allowed to let these things fall apart. They're national treasures — so we won't let that happen. We're making sure everything is stable and then holding the line," Monitor Center Director David Krop says.

"But we can't do everything that needs to be done in a project like this on a shoe-string budget. This is the largest marine metals conservation project in the world — and just keeping up with all the daily and weekly pH level, salinity and clarity checks we have to make with this number of treatment tanks and containers takes up 95 percent of our time."

According to the museum, NOAA is still waiting on Congressional approval of a budget to determine what funding to make available to the project this year.

Several attempts to address the issue by phone with David Alberg, superintendent of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary office housed on the museum's grounds, were still waiting for a response late Thursday.

Friday's planned shutdown comes about six weeks after a Virginia Congressional delegation made up of Senators John Warner (D) and Tim Kaine (D) as well as Representatives Robert C. "Bobby" Scott, D-Newport News; Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland Country; Scott Rigell, R-Virginia Beach; and J. Randy Forbes, R-Chesapeake, sent a bipartisan letter to acting NOAA administrator Kathryn D. Sullivan asking the agency to develop a plan for "completing the preservation of these nationally significant artifacts."

"While we appreciate the funding constraints that NOAA and other agencies face in these tight budget times, these are federally owned National Marine Sanctuary resources," the letter states.

"It is important that this tangible history not be left to decay due to lack of funds."

[Busterbuttonboy]

Re: Monitor Center Lab to Close Due to Lack of Funding

Because of insufficient federal funding, the publicly visible portion of the Mariners’ Museum USS Monitor conservation area is shutting down.

The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News has served as home to about 1,500 artifacts and pieces of the USS Monitor since their recovery from the wrecked Civil War ironclad discovered off the coast of Cape Hatteras in 1973. The ship’s 120-ton revolving gun turret — the first to be used on a ship of its time — was recovered in 2002 and put on display at the museum in a custom 90,000-gallon tank.

In the publicly visible wet lab, the tank housing the turret — as well as tanks that hold the Monitor’s steam engine, Dahlgren guns and carriages and condenser — is being covered with tarps, shielding it from public view. Active conservation efforts are halting, as well.

The U.S. government owns all Monitor artifacts at the museum, which is responsible for conserving the artifacts through an agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The museum and NOAA had two agreements: one requiring the museum to protect the artifacts and another requiring the museum to remove salt from the artifacts to eventually introduce them into regular exhibits. The agreement requiring the museum to remove salt from the artifacts to stabilize them — at a cost of about $500,000 per year — expired at the end of last year.

The agreement stipulated NOAA would help the museum with funding, but did not commit any set amount or percentage. In 2013, NOAA committed $50,000. In 2012, the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Hampton Roads, NOAA committed no funding. Prior to 2012, NOAA was committing “substantial funding,” said John Warren, the museum’s manager of public relations

Now, NOAA is waiting for Congress to approve a budget before committing any funding toward the Monitor’s conservation. Warren said the museum is hoping to hear some news from NOAA in about a week.

The museum will also seek a new agreement with NOAA that would provide funding for this year and would have NOAA commit long-term funding in the full annual amount, saving the museum from that expense.

While the wet lab, which is a 5,000-square-foot portion of the museum’s almost 10,000-square-foot conservation lab is closed, artifacts will still be conserved and the five-member lab staff will still be working. Closing the 5,000-square-foot public piece is an effort to save money, but the conservation effort will be ongoing so the museum will still be footing that bill. Warren said the museum does not break down conservation costs by area, so he was unsure how much money closing the wet lab would save.

Anna Holloway, curator for the Monitor Center, said leaving the tanks uncovered causes the solution conserving the artifacts to evaporate, which leads to additional costs to replace the solution. The tanks will be covered with tarps so the solution cannot evaporate as quickly.

“It was easier, in a way, to close down the wet lab because we don’t have to have lighting, there’s no offices in there, there’s nothing like that,” Holloway said. “It’s killing us, you know, but we have to do this.”

In an effort to provide aid to the museum, state Sen. John Miller (D-1st District) submitted a budget amendment requesting up to $500,000 in state funding for the museum’s conservation costs. Miller’s request allows for the possibility of federal funding but if none is provided, he requests the state provide the full amount.

“I just want to ensure that The Mariners’ Museum is just made whole in this process. You know, if the federal government comes up with all the money then that’s even better,” Miller said. “I think it is vitally important that these artifacts continue to be conserved and if the federal government won’t live up to its commitment, then Virginia should.”

In late November, U.S. Sens. Mark Warner (D) and Tim Kaine (D) and U.S. Reps. Bobby Scott (D-3rd District), Rob Wittman (R-1st District), Scott Rigell (R-2nd District) and Randy Forbes (R-4th District) sent a letter to NOAA requesting information about future plans to fund the Monitor conservation efforts.

“We would like to request a plan for completing the preservation of these nationally significant artifacts,” the representatives’ letter reads. “While we appreciate the funding constraints that NOAA and other agencies face in these tight budget times, these are federally-owned National Marine Sanctuary resources. It is important that this tangible history not be left to decay due to lack of funds. Our offices stand ready to assist in any way we can to facilitate an equitable path forward.”

A response to the letter has not yet been received.

If funding from NOAA, or another source, is not secured, the entire lab and conservation effort may have to shut down, Warren said. Closing the wet lab was the first visible step to take. If the lab closes, the five workers there may be reassigned to other jobs within the museum.

Though only five people work in the lab, Warren said the entire museum staff of nearly 100 people is responsible for some portion of the USS Monitor exhibit because it is such an integral part of the museum’s function. Artifacts that have already been conserved — about 60 percent of the total artifacts recovered from the shipwreck — are on display in the museum. Also, visitors can walk on the deck of the reproduced Monitor, stop in sailor living quarters and create a virtual ironclad.

Despite the Monitor being a trailblazer in its time, the first iron ship and the first with a turret that allowed the ship to fire at enemy forces no matter their position, the exhibit has fallen short of attracting the number of projected annual visitors. The $31 million, 64,000-square-foot USS Monitor Center opened in 2007 and was projected to increase the museum’s attendance to 200,000 annual visitors. Instead, the museum typically sees about 60,000 visitors annually, Warren said.

For more information about the museum and the Monitor exhibit, visit the museum’s website. The museum has started a petition seeking 10,000 signatures to garner funding for the wet lab. As of 6 p.m. Friday, the petition had nearly 700 signatures.

http://wydaily.com/2014/01/13/lack-of-funds-closes-mariners-museums-uss-monitor-lab-to-public/