Rouages: “At the interface between conservation and research”
Marie-Angeline Pinail and Caroline Loup work in the historical heritage department. The former is the university collections manager and is responsible for the collections at the Faculty of Medicine. The latter is the scientific manager of the herbarium. This month, as part of the video series " Rouages ," they tell us about their jobs.
On the first floor of the Institute of Botany, at the end of a long corridor decorated with nature photographs and old laboratory furniture, we meet Caroline Loup and Marie-Angeline Pinail. Together with their colleague Audrey Theron, they make up the historical heritage department under the direction of Véronique Bourgade. Their mission: to preserve, manage, and promote the collections of the University of Montpellier.
At the interface between conservation and research
A few meters away is the door tothe herbarium. One of the largest in France, "it ranks among the top three after Paris, which is one of the world's leading herbariums, and Lyon," says Caroline Loup. Spread over six floors, it contains between two and three million samples classified on more than five kilometers of shelving."I have to organize, inventory, and classify these samples to make them accessible to researchers, for whom the herbarium is a scientific tool. They can take samples from these specimens, analyze them, and compare them. I really work at the intersection of conservation and research."
[*listen to our podcast on the herbarium]
And indeed, before taking up this position, Caroline Loup worked in research: "I have a PhD in botany. I worked in a wood mechanics laboratory in Montpellier before coming to work at the herbarium. " She continues to build on her training by participating in conferences, contributing to publications, and being heavily involved in the national Recolnat network, a scientific interest group run by the natural history museum. "Recolnat is national, but we work in constant collaboration with collections around the world. Thanks to this network, we received funding between 2013 and 2019 to digitize all our samples."
Art transporter
As the university's collections manager, Marie-Angeline Pinail also interacts with many different professions. Scientists, of course, but also curators, art restorers, transporters, and scenographers, whom she meets during her travels. " As a manager, I coordinate the administrative, legal, and material logistics of moving collections, whether on loan to outside institutions or in situ , i.e., transfers prior to work or exhibition setups."
The work currently underway at the anatomy conservatory has kept Marie-Angeline busy for many months: "Removing the collections and putting them into storage is a huge task. We have to keep the items most regularly requested by researchers or for loans close at hand." To compensate for the closure of the conservatory, which will not reopen until the start of the 2022 academic year, Marie-Angeline Pinail, with the help of Caroline Loup, has also put together the "Corps à cœur"exhibition, which presents a selection of items from this anatomy collection.
In addition to these intra-mural movements , Marie-Angeline accompanies each work of art when it is loaned to museums. These loans are particularly important as they help to finance the restoration of the works. Among her fondest memories, she cites this "memorable transport in my career, to the MET in New York in 2018 to accompany Alphonse Lamy's spade, the conservatory's mascot." She knows the conservatory all the better because she is also responsible for it in her second role: collections manager at the Faculty of Medicine.
Learning "on the job"
Marie-Angeline Pinail was recruited by UM in 2015, after a stint at the fashion museum in Marseille. "I have a background in art history and heritage management and conservation, but I knew nothing about anatomy." And yet, with its 13,000 natural, wax, terracotta, and fluid specimens, the Montpellier Anatomy Conservatory has one of the largest collections in France. "I consider it a privilege to work there, because it is a prestigious place, but also because it has an almost sacred character due to the presence of these numerous human and animal remains."
*[listen to our podcast about the conservatory]
Caroline Loup also feels a sense of privilege among the shelves of her paper kingdom: "In the herbarium, I travel every day. I can spend the morning in North Africa and the afternoon on the islands. I can take a trip back tothe 18th century and return to 2020. " It's a multifaceted job that requires her to immerse herself in botany as well as history and geography, and to decipher writings ranging from Chinese to Latin to Russian. "Ultimately, it requires a high level of technical skill, which I've learned on the jobwith curiosity and pleasure. It's truly a job where I never get bored."
Caroline Loup's favorite sample
My favorite sample is a lotus leaf that was collected from the Montpellier Botanical Garden. The person who collected it injected ink into two of the six channels that run through the leaf to see if there was any exchange between the vessels. For me, this sample perfectly illustrates the link between conservation and research.
Marie-Angeline Pinail's favorite piece
My favorite piece is a papier-mâché lung from the Louis Auzoux collection, which dates back tothe 19th century. When I arrived at UM in 2015, I was asked to open some boxes, and in the first one I opened, I found a natural specimen: a human lung. It was the first time I had ever held real human lungs in my hands, and it made a big impression on me. When I saw Louis Auzoux's piece, I was so struck by the resemblance that it became my favorite.