Postal Museum Paper Conservator Linda Edquist was unable to attend the conference, so Sarah Stauderman presented in her place. Sarah began by describing the practice of philately and placing it within the context of the recent 18,000 square foot expansion of the National Postal Museum. A collective cringe radiated through the audience like the “wave” in a football stadium, when Sarah revealed that a key component of the building program was the plan to expose a large bank of southwest-facing exterior windows over the new exhibit space. Fortunately, the museum was able to use a variety of active and passive approaches to control light in the galleries.
First, there were translucent window films printed with large images of famous stamps. These required approval by the local architectural review board, since they were not in keeping with the period of the historic building. The stamp windows added an interpretive element, while reducing the ambient light level in the sunlit galleries.
Motion detectors were used to activate LED lights in the “GEMS” gallery, which houses the “inverted Jenny” and other famous or infamous stamps. The ambient light levels were kept low, while “Why is this room so dark?” interpretive signage allowed the museum to provide preservation outreach within the gallery.
A variety of interactive cases and open storage designs used a somewhat low-tech approach to reducing the light exposure of these works on paper. There was a series of pull-out frames filling the walls of what appeared to be a print reading room with the somewhat grandiose title of “National Stamp Salon.” A similar type of open storage housing was used in the Smithsonian Arts and Industries building in the 19th century. An updated version was manufactured by Goppion to meet current museum conservation and security standards in the Stamp Salon.
There were also cases with interactive lift-up doors that created an intimate viewing experience for each visitor. Horizontal pull-out cases were essentially glazed drawers set into exhibit cases. Visitor engagement was enhanced by the act of lifting and pulling to reveal the collection, a side benefit of the museum’s light-protection system. Magnetic switches permitted case lights to turn off when drawers were closed. The light switches in the lift-up cases were not always reliable, so the museum may try to redesign the lighting for these cases.
Collections staff members have been meeting monthly to clean the cases and to assess the security and mechanical stability of all of these moving cases, yet they have continued to rely on some stationary case designs. To avoid the physical stress of constant movement, the museum sought a passive solution for reducing light levels in exhibits of the most fragile paper documents. In the months following 9-11, letters contaminated with anthrax had been treated with chlorine dioxide gas, making the paper more vulnerable to light. The museum selected VariGuard SmartGlass for the exhibit vitrine, blocking more than 99% of ambient light without moving parts. The glass is a laminate that can switch from opaque to transparent when an electrical current is applied. The National Postal Museum’s blog provides more information about the technology behind this interesting product, along with photos of the anthrax letters on exhibit.
Anyone who deals with works on paper or other light-sensitive collections would be likely to see some ideas to steal from this presentation. There were a wide variety of approaches, suitable for documents and works of art on paper in different formats and states of condition. Balancing the needs of the visitors to see the exhibits with the preservation of the collection can be very challenging. Linda Edquist and her colleagues at the National Postal Museum have provided a great set of models for the rest of us.
Month: May 2015
43rd Annual Meeting – Electronic Media Session, May 16, 2015, “Archiving the Brotherhood: Proposing a Technical Genealogy for Time-Based Works” by Joey Heinen
Warning! If you are a techy, you will have to wait for the published paper for the complete technical details; read on if you can stomach a more philosophical overview.
I recently heard a thought-provoking presentation by photograph cataloger Robert Burton who quoted his mentor, Sally Buchanan, and then explained how cataloging is preservation. Joey Heinen pushed that envelope further for me with his recent Electronic Materials Group presentation on his archival work focused on The Brotherhood, a technology-based, interactive, kinetic artwork (1990-1998) by Steina and Woody Vasulka that no longer exists. Since the artwork can no longer be experienced as an installation, preserving the archival record of the piece is the closest we can get to preserving the work.
The only way to understand or study the work now is to imagine it through immersion in its archival record, and Heinen argued further that understanding the technology is as important as understanding the visitor experience when representing the history of the artwork, much as a traditional conservator might integrate a technical study of manufacturing methods into a conservation treatment plan. As part of his graduate internship, Heinen spent the better part of a year analyzing, documenting and processing a disassembled collection of components and archives that form the corpus of The Brotherhood. And so I pose a question to you: is this preservation, or is it conservation, both, or neither?
Have you ever made a robot move to the rhythm of your voice when speaking into a microphone? Made from scavenged vintage warfare machinery from Los Alamos, the Vasulkas jury-rigged hardware, composed software, and used midi protocols to connect the gadgets to inputs like microphones and video cameras that took input or signal from the visitors (both inadvertent and purposeful), resulting in a stimulus/response sequence that integrated the visitor into the artwork and its experience.
Now disassembled and on the verge of being donated to the Brakhage Center at the University of Colorado – Boulder University Library, the work was originally installed in several venues including the InterCommunications Center in Tokyo. The artists do not intend for the artwork to be reinstalled. However, as the work integrated cutting-edge technology of the time and pushed limits of technical and aesthetic experience, they would like the collection (consisting of the work’s physical components as well as their personal archival materials) to be able to be studied. While ample video documentation of visitors experiencing with the work exists alongside a paper-based archival collection, there was no handbook to guide Heinen in how to document and therefore preserve the elements of the work that are possible to preserve.
How did Heinen accomplish this? He went way beyond normal archival processing, and instead imposed order on what I overheard one audience member describe as “chaos on so many levels.” He examined not only the physical objects, but the archival documents (e.g. notes, drawings and instructions) that were part of the artists’ design process, and videos of visitors experiencing the artwork. The analysis yielded complex mappings of the various components and their relationships to each other. He delved into the software code, creating what he calls a technical genealogy, and traced the various types and connections between inputs and outputs.
What is left to do to facilitate researchers successfully accessing the collection? One could develop curriculum to guide exploration of this kind of media, perhaps in the fields of history of computer science, or media archaeology, or enrich the archival record with artist interviews. While it may seem like a unique, one-off type of preservation project, in fact, in digital experience realms, the skills and tools Joey developed to document this project could have broader applications in documenting web-based experiences as well. I’ll be honest, some of this talk was over my head, but the rest of the audience feedback was incredibly positive, and confirmed my reaction: Wow, what a massive amount of work, and thank goodness Joey Heinen did it, or it would all be lost!
Joey Heinen’s internship was funded through the IMLS as part of requirements for the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation MA program at NYU.
Job Posting: Kress Fellowship in Photographs Conservation – The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
Kress Fellowship in Photographs Conservation
The Art Institute of Chicago
2015-2016
The Art Institute of Chicago is a world-renowned art museum housing one of the largest permanent collections in the United States. It is encyclopedic in nature with strong holdings across all media, all traditions and all ages. The Art Institute is particularly recognized for its extraordinary Impressionist, Modern, Contemporary and American collections, among other aspects of its holdings. In addition to housing its permanent collection, it typically stages 35-40 special exhibitions a year. In 2014, it was named by Trip Advisor travelers as the number one museum in the world, a remarkable recognition that speaks not only to the quality of the collection but to the entirety of the visitor experience. The Art Institute welcomes between 1,400,000 and 1,800,000 visitors a year and has a membership of 100,000. The museum has an annual operating budget of approximately $110 million. Founded in 1879, the Art Institute grew with the success of Chicago and quickly attained world class stature given the strength of its collection. The Art Institute has expanded several times in its history, most recently and notably with the opening in 2009 of the 264,000 square foot Modern Wing designed by internationally acclaimed architect Renzo Piano. The addition has been critically important to the museum as it not only provided much needed gallery space, but also allowed the Art Institute to reorganize its galleries to present the collection in a more logical and accessible fashion. The new addition also includes one of the largest education facilities at any museum and this center has allowed the Art Institute to expand its already impressive array of offerings.
The Art Institute of Chicago is accepting applications for a nine-month, full-time FAIC Samuel H. Kress Conservation Fellowship in the Conservation of Photographs, starting September 1, 2015. The focus of the Kress Fellowship will be on the conservation of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection in the Department of Photography, in preparation for an online publication that will follow the Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative (OSCI) model. This Fellowship has been supported by a grant from the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation, funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
The Fellowship will afford the successful candidate the opportunity to expand his or her knowledge of photographic materials. The Fellow will undertake an in-depth examination and analysis of the photographs as well as their conservation treatments when needed. Instrumental analysis will be available through the Conservation Science Department of the Art Institute of Chicago. In addition, the Fellow will participate in the day-to-day operations of the conservation lab in the Department of Photography and professional outreach activities, gaining the experience of working in a large museum with an encyclopedic collection.
The successful candidate will have a completed MA degree from a conservation program. Candidates with relevant training and experience in the conservation of photographs are preferred.
Application deadline: June 30, 2015
Fellowship start date: September 1, 2015
Full-time, 35 hours/week, 9-month position
The Fellow will be supervised by the Conservator, and will work closely with other staff in the Department of Photography.
For fullest consideration, apply on-line at https://hrweb.artic.edu/recruit/applyjob.html.
Please submit CV, letter of intent, and 3 references (all as one attachment).
The Art Institute of Chicago is an equal opportunity, equal access employer fully committed to achieving a diverse workforce.
43rd Annual Meeting – Joint Painting Specialty Group and Research and Technical Studies Session, May 14, “Franz Kline’s Paintings: Black and White?“ by Zahira Veliz Bomford, Corina Rogge, and Maite Leal
Three works by Franz Kline in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston were discussed with regard to their condition and construction: Wotan (1950), Orange and Black Wall (1959), and Corinthian II (1961). While the first two paintings exhibit alarming craquelure and flaking, the latter is in good condition. Rogge details the Museum’s investigation into the circumstances which lead to such differing states of preservation, presenting a clear, thoughtful look at Kline’s working methods and legacy.
Prior to this study, it was suspected that condition issues stemmed at least in part from the presence of zinc white, which Kline is known to have used; however, the causes of instability were not quite so “black and white.” The three aforementioned paintings were examined using a range of analytical methods, and an array of inherent vices were identified, including underbound paint, zinc/lead soaps, interaction with the gelatin sizing in the canvas, the thickness of paint layers, and the use of poor quality canvas. Kline also seems to have modified commercial paints.
It was found that Kline’s methods of layering paint and use of various materials was crucial to each painting’s relative (in)stability. It was suggested additionally that Woton’s integrity was compromised due at least in part to transportation. In the presentation, an animated map charted the painting’s transit, making the point of how excessively well traveled the work has been during its somewhat brief lifetime.
While treatment options for the paintings discussed were and are limited by inherent vice, the work undertaken to specify the various forces at play was remarkable: this talk above all highlighted the incredible ability we have today to begin to unravel the complexity of intertwined degradation mechanisms.
43rd Annual Meeting – Electronic Media + Objects, May 15th: “Conserving Anthony McCall’s Solid Light Films” by Jeff Martin
Jeff Martin, archivist and conservator, gave a talk about the conservation project of Anthony McCall’s Solid Light Films. It started in 2012, when Pamela and Richard Kramlich gave 6 film installations made by the English artist Anthony McCall in the 1970’s, to the New Art Trust (NAT) which has worked on the preservation and showing of time-based media works, since its creation by the Kramlichs in the 1990’s.
Martin started by presenting the artworks’ history. The 6 solid light films, made between 1973 and 1975, are 16 mm silver films, where “a white dot traces a circle on a black background; and when projected, it creates a volume cone.” The films were projected in different directions, and the viewer has to move around in the light. Then, in the early 2000’s, the digital files allowed an easier installation and projection (in particular, vertically). McCall took this opportunity to revisit his work of the 1970’s and created new installations on a digital support using digital projection.
Subsequently Jeff Martin introduced the conservation, presentation, and digitalization work done by the conservator and the NAT for the solid light films. These were first considered as traditional silver films, and consequently the choice has been to make exhibition copies. Though, creating 16mm films appeared to cause specific technical problems, the main one being the need to get a double perforated film, which is only available today by special order to Kodak, and is expensive. The obstacles led the conservator to think about making a digital remake of the films. In order to know if this option would fit with the artist’s intention, Martin interviewed McCall and collected pieces of information about the history and the technique of the solid light films. Martin précised he had been “very careful not to apply his own proposition but to respect the original installation.” Finally, the choice was made to project the original installation on 16mm films, and to create new masters for all of the films, but for the future, the question of the digitalization remains open, especially because McCall says that he changes his mind all the time!
To a photography conservator, this talk was interesting, as it was bringing a different point of view on photographic material preservation and presentation. Indeed, even if the McCall artworks’ physical materiality is photographic, its existence is the result of the light passing through the film and extending into space. In this case, what has to be preserved and shown is not as much the film in itself (which has to be preserved too), but the light manifestation that results of it, and the sensation produced to the visitor who can penetrate it, which could indeed be reproduced by a digital copy… especially as the artist switched to digital projection in his 2000’s creations.
Martin ended the talk by saying that all the work done to preserve the installations started from the original films and materials, and he emphasized on the collaboration with the artist, which has been essential to achieve this project.
http://www.anthonymccall.com/index.html
43rd Annual Meeting – Photographic Materials, May 14th: “Organizing a Photograph Preservation Workshop in West Africa” by Debra Norris
Debra S. Norris, Chair of the Art Conservation Department and Professor of Photograph Conservation at the University of Delaware, is enthusiastic about fund raising for art conservation. Along with her coauthors, Nora W. Kennedy and Bertrand Lavédrine, she encourages conservation education and the expansion of international networks for all conservators. These two major contributions for the conservation profession were the bases for the project presented during this talk: Organizing a Photograph Preservation Workshop in West Africa.
Norris started by evoking the need for photographic conservation in West Africa, and the previous projects organized in Sub-Saharan Africa by the Getty, ICCROM, the Ford Foundation, SIDA (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) and UNESCO. Then she presented the “3PA”: Préservation du Patrimoine Photographique Africain (Preservation of Photographic Heritage in Sub Saharan Africa), a collaborative project developed with Nora W. Kennedy, photograph conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, and Bertrand Lavédrine, director of the Conservation Research Center (CRC) of Paris. Their goal is to work on the improvement of the preservation practice in this particular area of the continent, where the photographic collections are highly valuable but vulnerable because of the environment.
Last year, from the 22nd to the 25th of April, a workshop has been held at the Ecole du Patrimoine Africain (EPA), in Porto-Novo (Benin). It was called “Préservation du Patrimoine Photographique Africain: West African Image Lab“. 21 participants (80% of them were artists or photographers, the others were museum and archive professionals and curators) attended the workshop, and discussed the preservation of local photographic collections of West Africa; adapted solutions were proposed. Organizers were Jennifer Bajorek and Erin Haney, co-creator of the Resolution organization. Founded in 1998 with the help of UNESCO and ICCROM, and based in Porto Novo in Benin, the EPA school offers a professional training for 26 sub Saharan countries. It is a non-profit institution, dedicated to photographic collections in Africa, with a focus on preservation, collection management, and exhibitions.
Norris then evoked Nigerian photographers and collectors met by Nora W. Kennedy and Peter Mustardo, photograph conservator and director of the Better Image in New York, who went to Nigeria. She shortly presented the work of three of them: Andrew Esiebo, Abraham Oghobase, and J.D. Okhai Ojeikere, whose artist book, containing 200 photographs, was published a few months after he passed away, in 2014. Kennedy and Mustardo met his son who owns the collection.
As Norris aims to connect different conservation initiatives, she promoted the project “History in progress Uganda”, created in 2011 by a Dutch photographer and an advertiser. Their goal is to acquire and to diffuse images about Uganda history. According to Norris, this action, like 3PA’s, must proceed in connection with education and community organization.
She promoted the Center for Contemporary Art in Lagos (Nigeria), “an independent non-profit making visual art organization set up in December 2007 to provide a platform for the development, presentation, and discussion of contemporary visual art and culture” (see their website). Bisi Silvia, the founder, curator, and director of CCA was a participant of the 2014 workshop at the EPA.
For the future, 3PA’s goals will consist in organizing more workshops to teach the fundamentals in photo preservation in sub-Saharan countries. The conservation professionals will explain “the keys concepts in preventive conservation and materials”, spend some time on both hands-on and lecture, visit collections, and share some tools kits and published resources. Brainstorming sessions about techniques will follow. She emphasized on the fact that the 2014 workshop was the first talk about conservation in French and English in Africa. As photographers are an important part of the participants, development of conservation strategies for photographers in West Africa will be discussed. Funding for the workshop in photograph preservation was made possible thanks to many sponsors that Norris listed – AIC/PMG was one of them.
Some observations were done. First, to Norris, “community engagement and connections are clear” in Africa, which is a wonderful advantage. Then, the specific challenges: “lack of electricity”, and “dealing with material and digital collections simultaneously”. For the EPA, in Benin, where the workshop happened, the next steps will consist in “renewing commitment to preservation of photo collections”. Thanks to the “saving photo heritage” website, they began to rise money to create “a major center for photographic preservation, archiving, and digitization on the African continent”. Every one can help them!
The next 3PA workshop will be held in 2017 in Zimbabwe.
She finished the talk with a quick look on beautiful African textiles!
To discover the Nigerian photographers:
http://www.andrewesiebo.com/index.htm
http://www.abrahamoghobase.com
About the Center for Contemporary Art in Lagos: http://www.ccalagos.org
About the Ecole du Patrimoine Africain in Porto Novo: http://www.epa-prema.net
Resolution organization: https://www.resolutionphoto.org
History in Progress Uganda: http://www.hipuganda.org
To help Saving the Photographic Heritage: https://t160k.org/campaign/help-save-africas-photographic-heritage/
43rd Annual Meeting – Opening Session, May 14: "The Theory of Practice: Practical Philosophy, Cultures of Conservation and the Aesthetics of Change"
Hanna Höllig, the Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Professor at Bard Graduate Center, has been researching the ethical dilemmas in the preservation of contemporary art, focusing on the artwork of Nam June Paik. In tune with the conference’s theme of Practical Philosophy/Making Conservation Work, she highlighted the point that practice and experience build our theories, and through contemplating theory, we can enhance our practices. It is a co-dependent relationship that requires participation, communal self-reflection, and historical examination.
Nam June Paik
Single-channel video sculpture ; 6 monitors, 1 laserdisc, 1 laserdisc player
Collection of the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (ZKM | Center for Art and Media)
http://zkm.de/en/artwork/canopus
Her central case study discussed the treatment of Paik’s Canopus (1990) in the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (ZKM | Center for Art and Media) collection. Unfortunately, Canopus had fallen from the wall during exhibition, severely damaging the television screens and the central hubcap. Höllig was responsible for designing the treatment, which served as a pointed example of the controversy surrounding material replacement in conservation. The television screens that had shattered were generically commercial components, so this substitution was considered acceptable. On the other hand, there were calligraphic inscriptions and a signature by Paik on the original hubcap. Höllig proposed to replace the hubcap with an exact substitute under the condition that the damaged original would be exhibited alongside the recreation, but this was not deemed an acceptable option by the curator. In exhibiting both the recreated piece and the original hubcap, it would have allowed visitors to experience a likeness of the original, but also the physicality of Canopus’ history with the art object as done by Paik’s making.
In teasing apart the two differing responses to the same type of proposal, Höllig is not just proposing an examination of conservation approaches to contemporary art, but this is about highlighting what artists, curators, and conservators identify as the essence of the work. What–and more importantly, how–do we assign these values? In refusing the hubcap replacement and/or the exhibition of the damaged original- precisely where is the essence violated? In any type of art or artifact, what components of replacement, refurbishment, regeneration, repair, etc. are appropriate, and what makes these decisions appropriate? In making alterations to an original piece to “return it to the original state” (or perhaps it should read “acceptable state”), are we approaching the essence or only the aesthetic?
Höllig also points to the concept of conservation as a contextual cultural practice. How do we know we are right, or rather, how conscious are we of the principles that guide us? Conservation is not simply about the physical, but also our connections with the experiences, people, and the content surrounding the things. In our work as conservators, we are in the business of addressing unwanted changes of objects. But, since changes are inevitable, what is our tolerance for it? What kind of change is palatable to our collective modern-day taste? I did not find her philosophical points to be a reprimand of what we do or don’t do as conservators but a call for an honest self-reflection on the influences connected to our treatment decisions. These questions seem to expedited and scrutinized in contemporary art because of the ephemeral and technologically-dependent nature that cannot be addressed by “traditional” methods alone, but these questions are true for any specialty, for any collection.
43rd AIC Annual Meeting – Book and Paper Session, May 15, "Preserving the Spirit Within: Bringing Twenty-Five Tibetan Initiation Cards into the 21st Century by Angela Campbell"
opaque watercolor on 25 paper cards
16 cm x 14.5 cm (each card)
Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection: 2000.282.1-.25
Angela Campbell, Assistant Conservator in the Department of Paper Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, presented the research and treatment of a complete set of Himalayan initiation cards (tsakalis) in their collection. She focused on the condition, consolidation, and loss-compensation techniques done by herself, Rebecca Capua, and Yana van Dyke for this set. In conjunction with the treatments, there was a social media campaign to increase public outreach using this piece. For a great resource on the full treatment details, background, and purpose of these tsakalis, see the three posts available online through the Met blog:
- Eastern Religion Meets Western Science: Conserving Fifteenth-Century Tibetan Initiation Cards
by Angela Campbell, Assistant Conservator, Department of Paper Conservation - Filling In History: Conserving Fifteenth-Century Tibetan Initiation Cards, Continued
by Rebecca Capua, Assistant Conservator, Department of Paper Conservation - Evoking the Divine: Mental Purification Using a Tibetan Tsakali Mandala
by Kurt Behrendt, Associated Curator, Department of Asian Art
[includes translations and after treatment images of the rectos and versos of each of the cards]
I appreciated that Campbell addressed concerns of treatment consistency since the twenty-five cards were split among three conservators. Instead of having each conservator just do one treatment step for all the cards, each performed full treatments for 8 to 9 cards in the collection. Discussion was key, particularly in approaching the in-painting, and despite minor personal variations, a cohesive style was achieved.
Other rich questions that came up during the Q&A session focused more on the pre-treatment component of these cards. There was a question regarding the sacred nature impacting treatment decisions, which had only been brought up with the decision to maintain surface residues affiliated with handling. In conjunction with the sacred aspect, another question was raised about outreach and consultation with the surrounding Tibetan community in New York regarding the handling and treatment. While it was unclear if there was any contact before these cards reached the treatment stage, this comes back to a bigger question of who we perceive to be the actual stakeholders of the collections, particularly with cultural properties of living cultures.
43rd Annual Meeting – Book & Paper Session, May 15, "To Do or Not To Do: Two Examples of Decision Making of Digital In-filling for Asian Works of Art" by Hsin-Chen Tsai
Japanese and Chinese artworks, such as hanging scrolls, hand scrolls, folding screens and panels, have two components: the primary artwork and the mount. This talk focused on the treatment of the mounts for a folding screen entitled The Deities of the Tanni-sho by Munakata Shiko, and a hanging scroll entitled Standing Courtesan, by Keisai Eisen.
The current condition and the information carried by the mounting are balanced in making treatment decisions. When both the condition and the retained information are poor; more extensive treatment is carried out. This was the case for the folding screen. The original mounting paper was decorated using a Japanese fold-dying technique that created a repeating pattern that would be difficult to reproduce by hand. The author decided to make digital infills for this for three reasons: there was enough remaining original material for reference, the fills would not change the context and character, and it would be less time-consuming.
Here is a step-by-step of the process:
1. She took a digital image of an intact section of the mount.
2. She opened the image in PhotoShop and made adjustments to distortion, brightness, contrast, and color balance.
3. She printed onto a lined sheet of sekishu paper with an Epsum stylus Pro 4900 printer.
4. She matched the pattern with the losses and traced them over a light box.
5. After filling, there was some minor toning required.
For the scroll, Japanese paste paper had been used as the mount. It was an uda (clay-containing) paper with alum-gelatin sizing. It was hand-stamped in an irregular pattern and an uneven tone. The damage was typical of this kind of object: the mechanical action of rolling and unrolling led to horizontal damage and losses. Since the author was not able to guess exactly what the lost areas had looked like, she decided to infill using hand-toned paper without a decorative pattern.
43rd Annual Meeting – Painting Specialty Group, May 15, “The Treatment of Dr. William Hartigan by Gilbert Stuart or the Treatment of Gilbert Stuart by Dr. William Hartigan,” by Joanna Dunn
Joanna Dunn presented an engaging paper centered on the treatment, history, and analysis of a painting by Gilbert Stuart at the National Gallery of Art. I was particularly interested in hearing about this treatment in detail, having seen the portrait in the late stages of inpainting in the fall of 2014.
The work’s label tentatively proposes the identity of the sitter as Dr. William Hartigan(?), a doctor who apocryphally saved Stuart’s dominant arm after the artist sustained an injury. According to the narrative, after his recovery, Stuart painted the doctor’s portrait out of gratitude. Thereafter follows an entertaining history of the painting’s subsequent owners, ending with the work entering the collection of the National Gallery of Art in 1942.
During varnish and overpaint removal, an object resembling a large apothecary jar was partially revealed behind the sitter: the presence of the jar supports the identification of the subject as a man of medicine. This discovery prompted cross sectional analysis of paint samples from the work and sparked Dunn’s investigation into the nature of multiple copies after the painting. The analysis showed that the artist had partially painted over the apothecary jar, but it was unclear to what extent he would have intended the object to be completely hidden and whether its visibility would have been affected by past treatments or the increased translucency of the paint over time. Additional questions centered on whether the original format of the composition was oval or rectangular. The clues offered by three extant copies towards answering these lines of inquiry were unfortunately largely circumstantial.
In the end, the treatment needed to be completed, and Dunn chose the most logical and likely path in light of the gathered evidence: the apothecary jar was left partially visible, and the composition remained in an oval format. Given the number of options deliberated during the treatment of the portrait, this presentation fit most aptly within the theme of “Making Conservation Work.” The wordplay in the title of this talk and Dunn’s humorous tone when reflecting about the sheer number of factors to consider in carrying out this treatment complimented her content and underscored the oftentimes futility of efforts to determine an ideal or concrete solution in conservation.