The Metropolitan Museum of Art hired a group of skilled Moroccan craftsmen who have experience in monument restoration to recreate a medieval Maghrebi-Andalusian style courtyard in its Islamic Art galleries. For two months, a reporter and a photographer from The New York Times observed and documented the craftsmen’s work. “History’s Hands”, a Times article raises two points for consideration:
–The great value for both art historians and conservators of such a thorough documentation of working methods.
— Why it is acceptable for a museum to recreate a piece of architecture, when it would be unacceptable for a museum to hire a painter to recreate a work from a certain school of painting that was not represented in its collection?
According to “Bellini Work at Frick is Seen in a New Light”, in late May, after a year of study and treatment of the painting which yielded new insights , the Frick Collection will reinstall Giovanni Bellini’s “St Francis in the Desert” in a special exhibit that will include computer kiosks at which visitors will be able to study the painting’s structure and Bellini’s working methods.
During the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila in the Abruzzo region of Italy, many works of art were damaged. According to the Wall Street Journal “Donor of the Day” feature, “Restored Italian Statue Visits Its Guardian Angels”, in the aftermath of the earthquake, the Italian American Museum in New York City collected $110,000 in small gifts from thousands of donors. That money was earmarked for the treatment of damaged works and one of those works, La Madonna di Pietranico, has been sent to the Museum on a two-month loan as a thank you gift.