The life of an art handler is always intense, to paraphrase a quote from Repo Man (the 1984 film, not to be confused with Repo Men). Just back from Amsterdam and the exciting first ever PACCIN (Preparation, Art Handling, Collections Care Information Network) symposium in Europe, and from the sold out seats and the enthusiasm of the crowd, this could become a habit. 2021 in the USA, maybe 2023 in Europe again…It was great to connect with fellow ICEFAT members from Italy (Apice), UK (Martinspeed), Germany (Tandem), Switzerland (Harsch), USA (Cooke’s Crating, SRI), and I was joined by a colleague from Atelier 4. The sessions were informative as usual, and the networking was inspiring.  All this capped an eventful trip as earlier that week, the ICEFAT Steering Committee convened a mid-year summit to go over programming for our next annual meeting and with the assistance of our sub-committees, will continue to bring education and innovation to our industry.

After settling back into my routine, I was startled by the horrific scenes broadcast from the Île de la Cité. It is further evidence of the importance of the preservation of culture and why organizations like PACCIN and ICEFAT are so relevant. Notre-Dame will be restored, but at great cost. We can never stop improving on even the most stringent methods of care and prevention. Methods of preventing accidents and upholding Standards is the ICEFAT way.

Jonathan Schwartz, ICEFAT Steering Committee Chairman