According to David W. Dunlap, writing in The New York Times on November 6, 2014 (“The First Step In Restoring Rare Murals: Finding Them”), the conservators who went searching for two painted over murals in the Goldwater Memorial Hospital complex on Roosevelt Island and then removed them before the building was torn down, worked in the most difficult of conditions. There was no power in the building when they had to carry heavy mural sections down a pitch dark staircase. The facility where they worked for two months in the late spring removing lead based paste from the backs of the murals often reached temperatures of 100 degrees and they had to work in full body protective suits. Many on-site conservation projects present physically challenging circumstances. Were these circumstances so extraordinary that the conservators should have received hardship pay?
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AIC Blog Archives: Conservators Converse
Former Blog of the American Institute for Conservation