Author: Rebecca Rushfield

The section of the Berlin Wall that sat in the plaza behind 520 Madison Avenue in New York City for more than twenty years has been undergoing conservation treatment before it is reinstalled in the building’s lobby. This is a major effort as 70% of the surface required some type of attention. What struck me the most in the article about this project published in the April 9, 2015 issue of The New York Times (“A Section of the Berlin Wall Will Again Stand in Manhattan”, by David W. Dunlap) was that part of the conservation treatment was the removal of graffiti added to the wall during its New York sojourn. Is there not some irony in the fact that if this were still a part of the Berlin Wall instead of the expensive work of art it has become, there would have been no cause to remove the new graffiti.

From 1989-1994, I was a member of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation Auschwitz Preservation Advisory Committee. When we met, we had agonizing philosophical discussions about what should be done to the site and its contents. Should it be allowed to collapse or decay on its own? Would it be an insult to the victims’ memory if objects or buildings were conserved and then looked better? Would there be people with the emotional strength to work in such a place for months or even years? Twenty-one years later in Rachel Donadio’s article “Preserving the Ghastly Inventory of Auschwitz” published in today’s (April 16, 2015) New York Times, I found out the answers to the questions of what is being done, who is doing it, and how they approach their work.

While he does not say that furniture restoration is so rarified a discipline that it is beyond contemplation by regular people, in  his profile of furniture restorer Miguel Saco (“Humbled by a Master’s Refinishing Touch”, The Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2015), trying to be clever, Ralph Gardner Jr. unfortunately implies that. With phrases like “I realized I was entering an alternate universe” and “because I know I’m unworthy”, Gardner negates whatever positive conservation outreach his essay could have had.

In the March 21, 2015 issue of The New York Times, Elisabetta Povoledo reports (“Restoring the Ruins Once Wrought by Vesuvius”) that major restorations at the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii completed earlier this year and presented to the public on March 20^th  have brought the colors of the frescoes and the mosaics back to their original brilliance. After so many reports of poor administration of the site, collapsing walls, and other problems, finally we hear some good news from Pompeii

Eight and a half years ago,  I spent four days at Villa La Pietra (NYU’s conference and study center in Florence), never leaving the grounds that entire period after I passed through the gates.  I felt as if I had stepped away from the present into some other time . The surreal images of early 20^th century garments by Callot Souers discovered in a trunk in one of the rooms of the Villa not too long ago which accompany Jessamyn Hatcher’s essay, “Twenty-One Dresses” in the March 23, 2015 issue of The New Yorker brought back that feeling to me. However, it is the photos of damages to the garments caused by use,  inherent vice,  and poor storage conditions and the discussion of the garments’ conservation issues which thrill me. Right there in The New Yorker there is a sensitive, well thought out discussion of condition and conservation. What a boon for public outreach and education! And what wonderful images, too.

On February 21 2015, Randy Kennedy reported in The New York Times ( “Two Unfinished Cezannes Discovered at the Barnes”) that, at the Barnes Collection, during the removal of acidic backings from watercolors by Paul Cezanne, previously unknown works were discovered on the backs of two of them. This occurred at the start of what will be a year long conservation program for the collection. Such spectacular discoveries might well lead one to fantasize about other treasures that might be uncovered by  Barnes conservators  in the months to come

In his February 10, 2015 article on the dying art of kimono production on the island of Amami Oshima, Japan (“Old Ways Prove Hard to Shed, Even as Crisis Hits Kimono Trade”, The New York Times),  Martin Fackler describes in detail the labor intensive steps of that  craft. This is very helpful in explaining to the public why such garments sell for more than $3,000 apiece.  He notes that the people who create them make less money than fishermen, farmers and loggers and that few young people now choose to study the techniques.
As salaries for conservators fail to keep up with the increasing cost of living, how soon might we read in the general press about a  situation where there are few people who wish to put in the time, effort and expense to become conservators when there are better paying careers which require much less in the way of preparation?

On February 4, 2015, The New York Times reported (“A Crashing End to a Work of Ice a City Had Warmed Up To”, by Mitch Smith) that on February 3rd a sixty-six foot tall ice sculpture in Superior, Wisconsin which had been in construction for three months collapsed a month before its scheduled completion. During construction, the sculpture was monitored regularly for environmental problems such as wind and seismic activity and regularly maintained (using a robotic hose regulated by computer monitors that sprayed water on problem spots). Is there an object lesson here for conservators about the limits of our work as even with environmental monitoring and regular maintenance, this art work fell apart.

According to Michael Kimmelman in his Critic’s Notebook piece in the January 28, 2015 issue of The New York Times (“A Chance to Salvage A Master’s Creation”), because of dislike for its style, Orange County government officials allowed Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York to fall into disrepair and the building be scheduled for partial demolition. Although architect Gene Kaufman has made an offer to buy and restore the building and also design a new government center, County Executive Steven M. Neuhas insists that the demolition will go on. It would appear that Neuhas’ decision is based on pure aesthetic dislike. Should taste be the factor which decides whether a work of art or architecture is destroyed or restored?

In the January 21, 2015 issue of The New York Times, Nicholas Wade writes about the use of x-ray computed tomography by researchers at the Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems (Naples, Italy) to visualize the letters inside of the lumps of carbonized plant material that were, before the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, papyrus scrolls in the library of the grand villa at Herculaneum (“Unlocking Scrolls Preserved in Eruption of Vesuvius, Using X-Ray Beams”). Although being able to see free floating letters is a far cry from viewing full texts, it is hard not to fantasize about reading lost works and original texts of Latin and Greek literature.