Old State House Museum Collections Blog

   

I'd like to send a special thanks to the Minnesota Historical Society for permitting us to use a brief clip from one of their great podcasts concerning flag conservation.  You learn more about MNS here.

In addition to soliciting aid from the public, we are currently in the process of writing a grant proposal to the National Park Service's Save America's Treasures program. The following is an excerpt from our narrative concerning the severity of the threat to flags. (We have also decided to include a third flag in the grant proposal that is not covered in the video, but rest assured, it is fantastic!)

    Each of the three flags submitted in this proposal are in desperate need of professional stabilization. All textiles undergo a natural aging process based upon slowly occurring chemical reactions in the cloth’s fibers. Years of exposure to ultra-violet distorts pigment and speeds up this process, threatening the physical integrity of the fabric itself. The cloth becomes brittle and eventually breaks. This has already occurred to one of the three flags covered in this proposal, the 1868 Centerpoint battle flag. The Centerpoint flag is broken into numerous fragments and extremely fragile. Pieces of the flag are missing including portions that once contained embroidered text. Much of the color has faded from the red and blue fields, resulting in a thirteen bars of a grayish tinge alternating with soiled and oxidized off-white. In short, the flag has degraded to the point that it would require professional textile conservators to even safely unfurl the flag from its rolled storage.
    The other two flags, both Arkansas Civil War battle flags, are scarcely in better condition. In 2009, the Old State House Museum participated in a flag exchange with the Missouri State Museum, repatriating Civil War battle flags to each respective state. Through this exchange, the Old State House received two flags associated with Arkansas regiments – the consolidated 6th and 7th Arkansas Infantry and Hart’s Battery. At some point in the early 20th century, efforts had been made to preserve these two flags to the best of the period’s knowledge and ability. This involved placing each flag under protective black netting which was sewn, quite thoroughly, to a white cloth support. The reverse of each flag is obscured due this cloth backing and may be covering significant details or even further harming the flag beyond what is already apparent. While the netting and cloth backing may have provided some measure of stability, it also has confined dangerous contaminants. These contaminants have undoubtedly exacerbated the degradation of the flags’ pigment and fibers. Both flags have missing fragments. Both have large spots of discolored oxidization which likely resulted from moisture and other dirt and grime collected over time.
    If left in their current state, rolled and covered with possibly acidic materials, the flags will hardly survive another hundred and fifty years, much less be available for exhibition for the upcoming sesquicentennial. These extremely rare and significant artifacts of material culture, Arkansas history, and American military history, will continue to physically dissolve without treatment. With immediate action, we can conserve these objects, their stories, and the invaluable symbolic and historical valuable which is inextricably linked to the physical preservation.