🇬🇧 Meet a CCI Senior Conservation Scientist: Jean Tétreault
In 1989 Jean TĂ©treault graduated from the University of Montreal with an M.Sc. in analytical chemistry. The same year he joined the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) where he serves as an advisor and researcher on environmental guidelines for the care of collections as well as on the display and storage products.
Hello Jean, tell us more about you. How did you become a conservation scientist?
It was not planned but, at the end, it was a good fit. At the age of 15 years, I was working at the wood shop of my grandfather during the summer, doing wood preparation, sanding, varnishing and other little things. When I was 16 to 20 years old, I was a summer tour guide in the historic house in my small town. By the meantime, since I was drawing everywhere even during exams, I applied for the graphic design program, but they did not accept me. So, I drowned my sorrows in chemistry up to a Master degree. One day, during my master thesis, I heard about a job at CCI with GC-MS experience required, I applied and got it. Instead of creating art, I develop new knowledge and give advice to help others to take care of it. One of my early research at CCI was a study on emissions of volatile compounds from painted wood. I had, at least, one summer experience in this topic!
You have particularly worked on pollutants, products used for display and storage as well as on passive environmental controls in collections. What motivated you to specify in these areas?
When I joined CCI, I was working on VOC analysis from adhesives and paints. Acetic acid was found as a major harmful volatile compound. Soon, I was asked to quantify the risk of corrosion of lead by acetic acid. Then, I kept going assessing further material — pollutant interactions and reviewing what was published on this topic.
In the beginning, the expertise on products used in conservation came as a need for delivering workshops on products, especially on plastics in French. Then, as you get known to give advice on the topic, you receive more requests. The requests force you to stay updated.
In terms of passive environmental control, you refer certainly to the CCI technical bulletin on silica gel. Information on this topic was either outdated, incomplete or even incorrect. I found it was time to update it. This information is used in the CCI workshop on display cases.
With regard to your impressive frequency of seminars on preventive conservation and your literary success with “Airborne Pollutants in Museums, Galleries and Archives: Risk Assessment, Control Strategies and Preservation Management”, what was most important to you and what kind of reaction did you get?
The purpose of seminars and documents such as the CCI Technical Bulletins and the 2003 pollutants book is a sort of synopsis. It gives a global picture of the situation, but it is never complete and force for some generalization, which is a risk. With peer review publication, technical bulletins, and workshops, I hope to reach a large audience with different levels of complexity. After all, we need to give advice for small and big museums. About the 2003 pollutants book, I was hoping for an awareness on some risk concepts. In term of reaction I got, it is hard to tell. I take the occasion to invite the readers to consult the new CCI Technical Bulletin on Control of Pollutants in Museums and Archives which is an extension of the 2003 book.
What are you working on at the moment?
A CCI Technical Bulletin on the airtightness measurement of display cases should be released in 2022. That should help to normalize the protocol. A very airtight case may not always be the safest solution. The reader will have to decide if their cases should be more airtight or leakier. I also try to complete by 2022 a very long project on the prediction of paper degradation.
What advice can you give to control and preserve heritage collections?
We must save the ecosystem that shelters our human heritage. Major changes are needed sooner rather than later. That doesn’t seem to answer the question, but it’s the best thing for long term preservation.
For those interested to read about my work, most of my publication can be found at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jean-Tetreault/research
I wish I could have done more.
Thank you, Jean! All the best for all your future projects.
