Bryn Cooley

You do so many things—and you do a lot of them behind the scenes. How would you describe your job?

The way I usually describe my job to people is as when a lot of people think of museums, they think of a curator's job in putting together exhibitions, coming up with ideas, big themes, the way that things fit together. And I love that. I'm just not very creative in that way, so I usually describe my job to people as I instead am the behind the scenes functionality to make that a reality. I'm the person behind the scenes making sure that the object is stable enough to go on display. I'm making mount-making decisions. I'm preserving things long term in a way that is very quiet, but to me feels very impactful long term.

I think it's really important that we have an eye on the long game when it comes to object preservation. I want people to learn now too, but in a museum, at least the way I was trained, it's important to see all of your objects as being held in the public trust. And in order for the public to trust us, we have to be really careful with how we handle things. I also think that maybe this is just me being biased, but I do think that my job is the coolest. I get to be in all the behind the scenes rooms. I get to touch all the stuff. I get to know the weird secrets of all the weird pieces of furniture and all the little architectural models I have and all which pieces move.

I'm really lucky in the sense that my job requires me to be a jack of all trades. I have a lot of friends in the museum field who are really interested in specializing and I think that's a great thing to do. I have a friend who just does textiles. She does historic costumes and that's all she does. I have a friend who just works on old coins and that's all she does. And I really admire that focus and passion, but I like to know a lot about a lot of stuff. So the collections that I've worked on have been multidisciplinary. They've been multi-generational. They've been multi-material. I like having to know whether the silver buttons are going to eat the fabric. I like having to know if the plastic can touch the paper. I also think that it means that I get to learn every day from my own collection, which is really fun.

How do you see the health of conservation right now and what is needed?

You hear people say all the time, “Well, things just aren't built like they used to be,” or, “things don't really hold up the way they used to.” Some things I think that's true, other things that's not. And one of the most important things I think about maintaining collections and the conservation work has to do with being able to understand the way things were put together and why. And I mean this for any type of material you're looking at. You can talk about this with furniture, you can talk about this with textiles, you can talk about this with buildings.

There are reasons for why things were put together the way they were and being able to understand that reasoning I think can save a lot of mistakes. One of the things we talk about at my museum is the ways that we have improved like life standards for trades workers over time—we don't let people build with asbestos tiles anymore, we don't let people use saws that don't have an emergency stop on them. And we have a record of all of that in our collection. 

And it's important to learn that lesson and realize that a lot of the ways we do things are for a reason, not because no one thought of a way to do it differently. It's because we found a safer way to do it or because we found a better way for plaster to be put together or because we learned that if you teach kids using erector sets when they're young about engineering and the way that structures should be built and physics, then they grow up to want to be engineers and physicists and architects. And I think maintaining that through line of knowledge is really key in keeping those physical reminders of why we did it that way. 

There’s embodied labor that goes into making things and then there's operational labor that is required to maintain them, to conserve them, and to preserve them. So, what’s the hardest part of your job then in doing all that and performing that kind of operational labor?

Part of it has to do with knowing that people don't understand what goes into preserving something long term, not through any fault of their own, just that it's hard to comprehend the steps required to make sure that something can stay the way it is for as long as possible. And the thing about collections management and conservation that is hard to explain to people is that we know that all of us who do this job know that all of the things we are trying to preserve will eventually break down. You can't fight time forever. We've been playing a game for hundreds of years. What I want is for my photograph collection to last 500 years instead of 50. I know it's never going to last forever, but I do want it to last longer than it would without me. And I think that thinking that long into the future, which is weird because a lot of what we're doing is thinking that long into the past also is that explaining to people that know you using flash photography right now will not have a market difference on this print today, but it will have a difference in 25 or 50 years.

I have a different purpose in why I'm using the technology I'm using than to scan a PDF. It is that type of long-term thinking, that time of preservation, the type of data hierarchy required to make sure that what I'm saying makes sense to someone in 25, 50, 100 years is not I think the norm and wanting to anticipate those questions and making sure that we can be as clear as possible to the people of the future is probably the biggest hurdle. It's not easy to explain the purpose of that in simple terms.

How has the Jernette Foundation been part of your journey, and to what extent?

What's exciting about the Jenrette Foundation for me as a person is it has helped not only me in my career but also has helped my institution over time. And so it's been a growing partnership that I feel very grateful for. I was able to participate in the inaugural Thompson Fellowship with and I was able to learn about Edgewater and about Dick Jenrette and about the history of his work in preservation and contribute to the preservation of one of the homes, which is always something us museum people love to do. We love to contribute. But with the ongoing partnership and relationship that I've had with Jenrette, the Building Museum will bring two additional interns this summer after we had two interns last summer to focus on several aspects of our collections management strategy and needs that would not be addressed otherwise.

Last semester both or last summer, both of our Jenrette interns were instrumental in cataloging new acquisitions to the collection and they focused, each of them focused on something slightly different, but they were able to work with an architect's drawings that detail a number of buildings in Washington, D.C., and the other one worked on pieces from the Korean and Vietnam war memorials in Washington D.C. So, the documentation, the knowledge, the cataloging—it all improves people's ability to access our collection and use it for what we hope they can use it for.

One of the things the Jenrette Foundation really emphasizes is the importance of convening and connection. How has that opened up possibilities for you?

One of the things that I have found to be true about the National Building Museum and I think is becoming more true across the field is that museums must exist in community. And I mean that in community with each other, in community with like-minded organizations and I mean that in community, like with our literal community, the surrounding neighborhoods and local people with which we interact with every day. I think that what's unique about the Jenrette Foundation in my experience anyway, has been not only the long term networking, being able to stay in touch for quite some time and have a long lasting impact on each other, but also the way that we're able to come together.