Episode 20 | The Gratz Family Qur’an: Conserving an Artifact of Early America’s Global Connections.

A Conversation with Richard Homer of the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts.

The Rosenbach’s Collections Department is responsible for stewarding the physical wellbeing of collections objects, meaning that we regularly work with conservators, who perform repair treatments on our objects to guarantee their safety for years to come.  In this episode, join Associate Curator Dr. Alexander L. Ames and Senior Book Conservator Richard Homer at the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) in Philadelphia, for a conversation about the importance of collaboration between curators, librarians, and conservators to protect and preserve the physical integrity of cultural artifacts.  They will highlight a Rosenbach collections object currently undergoing conservation treatment at CCAHA: an eighteenth-century English translation of the Qur’an that had been owned by members of the Jewish-American Gratz family.  At the end of the episode, Richard will share helpful tips for how you can take good care of your own collections of books and historic documents.

Rosenbach Associate Curator Dr. Alexander L. Ames and Senior Book Conservator Richard Homer of the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts discover paper art in an eighteenth-century Qur’an from the collection of the Rosenbach.