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This article presents an interview with Martha Wilson, director and founder of Franklin Furnace, an institution that provides gallery for art exhibitions and installations in the U.S., regarding her decision to sell the artist book collection of Franklin Furnace to the Museum of Modern Art and the decision's implication to the institution. According to Wilson, the decision was the right thing for the collection since she believes that the largest collection in the U.S. of artist books published internationally after 1960, made of paper, should not be stored in a loft made of wood, with no climate-control, no museum conditions. In addition, the institution was unsuccessful at raising money for conservation of individual artists' books. As discussed further, Wilson said that though artist books are now recognized by the art world as a whole category in its own right, there was no term artist books in 1976 and just of evolved out of the mud, as the term performance art also evolved during this same period, to describe whatever it was the artists were doing.

The article presents an overview number of the key conservation issues and challenges that ephemeral media have presented at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. A discussion of the impact that light, temperature, humidity, oxygen, and the unpredictablity of materials and media that are used in ephemeral art have on the ability of museum conservators to protect ephemeral art from deterioration or adverse chemical reactions, is presented. The role that museum conservators play in the documentation of artists' materials and techniques is discussed.