Author: Rebecca Rushfield

“Conservation fiction” as outreach?

Two novels published in the past two years which feature conservation, forgery and/or damaged works of art have garnered more attention than most novels. “The Restorer”, by Daniela Murphy Corella, in which a conservator-restorer uncovers a lost fresco in a remote Italian church, was awarded First prize in the 2012 International Rubery Book competition. “Duel”, by Joost Zwargerman, a novel in which a conservator is an important character and in which a valuable painting by Mark Rothko is copied, stolen, and accidentally damaged, was commissioned in 2011 as the “Book Week in the Netherlands” giveaway book and distributed to hundreds of thousands of people free of charge.

If even a small number of the readers of these books and other works of “conservation fiction” gain from them some understanding of conservation, then these novels will have served a valuable outreach function.

A good example of public outreach

Since 1942, University College London (UCL) has hosted forty minute long lunchtime lectures for the general public at which UCL academics present their research. For the past few years, the lectures have been broadcast live online and can be viewed on YouTube after the event.

This June, the UCL Lunch Hour Lectures went “on tour” to the British Museum where four lectures highlighting collaborative work between the two institutions were presented. Two of the lectures, “Discoveries and re-evaluations: painting practices under the microscope” (Libby Sheldon on her examination of English Renaissance paintings) and “A book by any other name would smell as sweet”(Dr Matija Strlic on how intensity of smell is used as a means of determining state of decay) were related to conservation and technical studies. As an average of 200 people view the lectures each week on YouTube (www.youtube.com/UCLLHL), this is the type of public outreach program that other institutions might wish to use as a model.

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Restoring color to the Arch of Titus

Those of us who are of a certain age were taught in school that classical Greek and Roman monuments and sculptures were pure white in color. Thus, despite the fact that we now know that they were painted with bright colors, it is difficult for some of us to change our mental picture of these monuments.

According to The New York Times (“Technology Identifies Lost Color at Roman Forum“, by Elisabetta Povoledo, June 25, 2012), it was recently discovered through the use of ultra-violet visual absorption spectrometry that the menorah on the Arch of Titus was originally painted a rich yellow color to simulate gold. Now, color will have to be restored to both our mental picture of the Arch and to its digital representation in “Rome Reborn, a three-dimensional digital model of the ancient city.

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An Artist and A Conservator

The June 28, 2012 issue of The Wall Street Journal featured a conversation/interview with Mark Leonard (“Conservator Restored” by Daniel Grant) who has accomplished the very difficult feat of achieving renown in two fields– painting and conservation. Leonard, who begins his new position as Chief Conservator at the Dallas Museum of Art next week can also look forward to the December 2012 opening of an exhibit of his paintings at the Yale Center for British Art.
Due to the responsibilities of his new job, Leonard says that he will “have to be a Saturday and Sunday painter”. It would be interesting to hear how other artist-conservators balance their duel careers.

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The product of a successful conservation outreach partnership

Today, most conservators have come to the understanding that public outreach and communication are essential components of their work and vital for the well-being of the cultural heritage. If they are wondering how this might be accomplished they might look to “Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts”, a joint project of the Virginia Association of Museums (VAM) and the marketing firm ToMarket which was recently honored by the Richmond Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. “Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts” allows each museum and other collecting institution in the state to present an art work or artifact in great need of conservation. As almost 100,000 votes were cast in the 2011 campaign, the word is getting out to the public.

Once prosaic, now rare and in need of conservation

The “bull boat” was used by Northern Plains tribes for ferrying people and goods across the upper Missouri River. Today, only four bull boars more than 100 years old remain. One of them is in the collection of the Lewis and Clark Foundation– a gift of the BNSF Railway. According to the Great Falls Tribune (“Conservators breaking ground with rare bull boat at Interpretive Center”, by David Murray, June 13, 2012), the boat is presently undergoing study and treatment and will eventually be put on public display.
Because they were so common and simple in design–a single skin stretched around a willow-branch frame–these boats were not treasured. One hundred years from now, how many of today’s commonplace, disposable objects will conservators be treating as rare and valuable artifacts?

The murals were conserved, but environmental problems remain

According to The New York Times (“Ancient Church in Rome, Restored and Imagined”, by Eve M. Kahn, June 15, 2012), after more than a decade of analysis and conservation of its early Christian murals, the church of Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome will open to the public on a limited basis in September 2012. The Times article notes that cobwebs are now growing on the freshly restored paintings due to the constant humidity within the building. If the environmental issues of the structure are not dealt with might all of the conservators’ painstaking work be for naught?

On the front page

The front pages of two recent issues of The New York Times have featured articles concerning the preservation or technical examination and dating of works of art. One, “Greek Antiquities, Long Fragile, Are Endangered by Austerity” (by Randy Kennedy, June 12, 2012), discusses the grim situation in Greece for the preservation of archaeological sites and for archaeological research that is a direct result of government austerity measures. The other, “With Science, New Portrait of the Cave Artist” (by John Noble Wilford, June 15, 2012) discusses how new refinements to the technique of uranium-thorium dating have led to revised earlier dates for Spanish cave paintings which have brought “current ideas about the prehistory of human art in Southern Europe into question”.
The question we might ask is whether the placement of these articles on the front page of the main section (and not on an interior page or in the Arts or Science sections) is an indication that conservation and technical analysis have finally attained a higher status.

A region not expecting an earthquake is devastated by two

The New York Times reported (“Quakes Deal Irreparable Blow to an Italian Region’s Cultural Heritage”, by Elisabetta Povoledo, June 3, 2012) that the two major earthquakes which struck the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy in May 2012 left most of its historic buildings and many modern structures in ruins. While teams of art historians, restorers, archaeologists, engineers and firefighters have been examining buildings and charting the extent of the damage, there are not enough experts to handle the work load. As the last major earthquake to strike the region occurred in 1570, for hundreds of years earthquake resistance was not a factor that was considered in building design. Not long after the 1570 quake, a treatise on how to build earthquake resistant buildings was written by Pietro Ligorio. How sad and costly for the monuments of Emilia-Romagna that Ligorio’s recommendations were not followed.

Gagosian and Prada to the rescue

According to The New York Times(“Inside Art: Campaign Aims to Restore Weather-Abused ‘Lightning Field'”, June 8, 2012), after thirty-five years of exposure to rough weather in the New Mexican desert, Walter De Maria’s “The Lightning Field” is in need of extensive and expensive conservation work. Fortunately, Larry Gagosian and Miuccia Prada have taken on the job of raising the necessary funds and work will begin in early 2013.