Biographical Information for Henry Wilhelm ö April 1998
 
Henry Wilhelm is one of the founding members of the American National
Standards Institute subcommittee established in 1978 to write the ANSI IT9.9
standard on test methods for measuring the stability of color photographs.
For the past ten years he has served as Secretary of that group. The ANSI
subcommittee is now working on a new test methods standard for digital print
materials. Wilhelm is also a member of the ANSI subcommittees on test methods
for evaluating the permanence of black-and-white films and prints, and he was
a founding member of the Photographic Materials Group of the American
Institute for Conservation.
 
In 1981 Wilhelm received a one-year Guggenheim Fellowship to begin a ten-year
study of color print fading and staining under low-level tungsten illumination
that simulates museum display conditions. Wilhelm served as a technical
adviser to film director Martin Scorsese in his successful effort to persuade
Eastman Kodak and Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. to increase the stability of their
motion picture color negative and color print films. In 1993 Preservation
Publishing Company published a landmark 744-page book by Wilhelm and
contributing author Carol Brower entitled, The Permanence and Care of Color
Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides,
and Motion Pictures. The book has received critical acclaim in more than 60
reviews and articles published around the world, and in 1994 the book was
awarded a special commendation by the Society of America Archivists for
"writing of superior excellence and usefulness, which advances the theory and
practice of preservation in archival institutions."
 
In 1995 Wilhelm and Brower established a new company, Wilhelm Imaging
Research, Inc., to expand their image stability research activities. Most of
the firmâs work now involves testing of inkjet materials and other types of
digital hardcopy. Wilhelm serves as an advisor on image permanence to the
recently-formed International Association of Fine Art Digital Printmakers. He
is a consultant to the Museum of Modern Art in New York on issues related to
the display and long-term preservation of both traditional photographic prints
and digital print media. Wilhelm also serves as a consultant on collections
preservation to Corbis Corporation in New York City. Corbis, which has
acquired the 20-million-plus image Bettmann Archive and other important
collections in the United States and Europe, is wholly-owned by Bill Gates.
 
Wilhelm currently writes for Photo-Electronic Imaging magazine and other
publications. He is a member of the Board of Editorial Advisors for Photo-
Electronic Imaging. Wilhelm was an invited speaker on traditional and digital
color print materials, exhibition, and preservation at the National Archives
Preservation Conference, which took place in Washington, DC in March 1998.