A safe museum collection isn’t a lucky accident. It’s planned for

With the California wildfires coming close to the Getty Center, in the December 14, 2017 edition of The New York Times, John Schwartz looked at how the Getty was fairing (“Getty Stands Up to Flames” ). What he found was a complex built of fire-resistant materials, decorated with fire-resistant vegetation that is kept carefully pruned, as well as a system of irrigation pipes and sprinklers. A safe museum collection isn’t a lucky accident. It’s planned for.

Do we give the public a wrong message when we call ourselves “dry cleaners”?

Alexandra S. Levine’s article about the conservation of maps in the New York City Municipal Archives (“Delicate Job for ‘Dry Cleaners’: Revitalizing the Maps that Bind the City to its Past” , The New York Times, September 12, 2017) is very informative about the processes and procedures that the conservators use to treat fragile maps which have been rolled up and stored in less than ideal conditions for decades. However, she chose to use the conservators’ in-joke that they are “dry cleaners” in her opening paragraph and the headline writer followed suit. Should we be more careful about how we describe ourselves and our work to non-conservators? Do we give the public a wrong message when we call ourselves “dry cleaners”?

The Possibility of an Afterlife for a Disgraced Artwork

According to an article by Zephira Davis in the August 13, 2017 issue of The New York Times (“An Icon of Communism is Restored in England” ), due to the efforts of artist Phil Collins who is using it in a project, a statue of Friedrich Engels has been erected in Manchester, England where Engels conducted his research on the working class. The statue, originally erected in the eastern Ukraine, had been torn down and cut in half after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Now it is restored and sitting in front of the HOME Theater. What does this say about the possibility of an afterlife for a disgraced artwork?

A glimpse into conservation for people who probably knew nothing about the subject

In New York City every day, free newspapers are given away by the hundreds of thousands in subway stations and in free- standing newspaper boxes on the street. Small (no more than 20 pages with many advertisements), their contents can be (and are) read from cover to cover on a short commute to work. An article in any one issue reaches a large and varied audience. I was therefore very pleased to read Lisa Colangelo’s “Monumental Mission” about the Citywide Monuments Conservation program overseen by the NYC Parks Department in the July 31, 2017 issue of amNewYork. Discussing kinds of damages to and treatments for outdoor monuments, it provided a glimpse into conservation for many people who probably knew nothing about the subject .

All it takes is sixteen riggers, machinists, carpenters and technicians; multiple scissor lifts; 16,000 pounds of sand;dress rehearsals; and five days of work

Does the casual museum visitor seeing an enormous, heavy work of art think about how it got to where it is and how it stays in place? And if he or she does, who can provide the answers to those questions? Brenda Cronin, writing in the July 25. 2017 issue of The Wall Street Journal about the installation of a 28 foot tall painting by Cristobal de Villalpando in a show at the Metropolitan Museum (“ The Met’s 28-Foot-Tall Visitor”) provides the answers for this one work. All it takes is sixteen riggers, machinists, carpenters and technicians; multiple scissor lifts; 16,000 pounds of sand;dress rehearsals; and five days of work.

Now if the Mona Lisa had been damaged…

Each morning I search The New York Times and Wall Street Journal for conservation related news. However, it was not until this morning when I read the July 18, 2017 issue of Hyperallergic that I learned of the damaging flooding in the Louvre, the National Library of France, and the French Ministry of Culture’s main storage facilities caused by extremely heavy rains on July 9th (“ Flooding Damages Three Paintings and Multiple Rooms at the Louvre”). Just over a year ago, the Louvre and Musee d’Orsay suffered damage when heavy rains caused the Seine to overflow. The second flood damaging Parisian museums in two years would seem worthy of a mention in the Times or WSJ. Perhaps with all of the damage to the cultural heritage that has been caused by human action over the past two years, a second ( but limited) natural disaster doesn’t seem that newsworthy. Now if the Mona Lisa had been damaged…

People will take selfies. Why not be prepared?

In the July 14, 2017 issue of The New York Times, Sopan Deb reported (“Oops! A Gallery Selfie Gone Wrong Causes $200,000 in Damage” ) that a visitor taking a selfie caused considerable damage to a number of pieces in a show at 14th Factory in Los Angeles when, striving for a better photo, she got too close to a pedestal, lost her balance, and set a row of pedestals with art works on top crashing down domino style. There have been a number of prior art museum and gallery selfie mishaps. Short of confiscating cell phones (and cameras) from visitors, an institution would be hard pressed to eliminate the practice of taking selfies Pedestals and art works can be secured. Barriers and do not cross floor markings can be installed. People will take selfies. Why not be prepared?

Could a novel ever feature a serious, underpaid middle-aged conservator?

Having just finished reading “The Hound in the Left-hand Corner”, by Giles Waterfield (Washington Square Press, 2002), a satire about an important day in the life of a British museum, I’m coming to the conclusion that museum novels are essentially the same book. They have odious museum directors, members of Boards of Trustees, and heads of security, as well as scheming curatorial and conservation staffs– none of whom resemble any museum employees I know. Could there ever be a museum novel featuring a conservator who is a serious, underpaid (for her level of knowledge and skills) middle-aged woman rather than an eccentric dandy or very young and glamorous girl?

The reader may finish them not only entertained, but with an appreciation for the difficulties and complexities of conservation and conservation science

Recently, I read two novels which feature conservators—“Triple Take. A Museum Story”, by Robert Barclay, former senior conservator at the Canadian Conservation Institute and “The Last Painting of Sara De Vos”, by Dominic Smith, a novelist who looked to Stephen Gritt, Director of Conservation at the National Gallery of Canada for “insights into the technical aspects of conservation and restoration”. In each novel, the technical descriptions are the most accurate and believable aspects of the story.
Just two examples. In “Museum Story”, the senior conservator at the Canadian Museum of Personkind uses vacuum impregnation to treat a wooden rattle that had been badly damaged by insects. “For objects in this condition, soaking with resins in solution under laboratory conditions is essential. But it takes a good deal of courage. Stephanie (the conservator) was only too aware that she was about to alter permanently a museum object and do something to it that was potentially dangerous to its future wellbeing. There would be no going back.” In “The Last Painting of Sara De Vos”, Dr. Helen Birch, the conservation scientist at the Art Gallery of New South Wales has studied and analyzed three paintings, one of which the reader knows to be a forgery. Birch instructs the curator (who was the forger of the painting forty years earlier) about the manufacture and use of lead tin yellow and then says, “When I run the elemental analysis on the one on the left, study the gritty yellows, it show a fair amount of silica dioxide—the main ingredient in sand. Whoever made this one used sand to try to get the same textured feel, but the metal soaps give it away. There are no lead soaps in the fake from Leiden.”
The reader who begins these books looking for light entertainment may finish them not only entertained but with an appreciation for the difficulties and complexities of conservation and conservation science.