Author: Rebecca Rushfield

A number of weeks ago, The New York Times published an article by Alexandra Jacobs in its Sunday Styles section (“ The Runway vs. Auntie’s Closet”; online title” America’s Great Divide — About How to Archive Its Fashion”, November 20, 2016) on the underlying premises of two very different costume exhibitions—“American Style and Spirit” at the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan and “Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion” at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Among those quoted about the Henry Ford exhibit is Edward Maeder who oversaw the conservation work and co-authored the book that accompanies the exhibition. It is always good for the public understanding of conservation when the involvement of the conservator in the making of an exhibition is noted.

In the Fall 2016 issue of “Distillations” (a publication of the Chemical Heritage Foundation), Roksana Filipowska writes about Richard Hamilton’s use of consumer synthetic materials in the art works he created during the later 1950s and the failings of those materials within a few years of the works’ creation. Over the decades, these works have undergone more and more sophisticated conservation treatments. But, as Filipowska reminds us, “Despite the gains made in art conservation, the variety of plastics incorporated into artwork over the past 50 years makes caring for contemporary art a constant and unpredictable challenge.”

In the November 6, 2016 issue of The New York Times, Paula Deitz recalls her experience in Florence on November 4, 1966 when the Arno River overflowed and flooded the heart of Florence and quotes Marco Grassi who was there at that time about the decisions that had to be made for the treatment of the many damaged panel paintings. (“After the Flood: Saving Vasari’s ‘Last Supper’”) Per Grassi, “The experience was so new and no one could stand up and say what should be done technically with the works that had been immersed for a few hours in water mixed with mud and black heating oil”. Fearing that the painted surfaces would buckle as the panels dried out and shrunk, the decision was made to face the panel paintings with paper and methacrylate resin, leading to many problems later on when the paper was to be removed and the paintings restored. Now , fifty years later, that the damages caused by those emergency decisions have been undone and paintings like Vasari’s “Last Supper” are finally on view again, the world can know what conservators have long known and accepted– that in the immediate aftermath of the Flood, facing a situation it had not faced before, the conservation community in Florence had no choice but to make it up as it went along.

Just after the The Wall Street Journal celebrated the success of conservation efforts after the Florence flood of November 1966 with Deborah Ball’s article on the forthcoming unveiling of Vasari’s at- long- last-restored “The Last Supper” (“Resurrecting Vasari’s ‘The Last Supper’”, October 29-30, 2016), came the word that on Sunday morning October 30th, Italy experienced its strongest earthquake in more than thirty years. The earthquake brought great destruction to Norcia and other towns in the Marche region. Years of conservation work will follow. The cycle of natural destruction and recovery never ends.

We’ve all heard about accidents or near accidents with works of art that have occurred in museums or art galleries during receptions. It was therefore not a surprise to read in the October 28, 2016 issue of The New York Times (“Venus Loses Thumb in Encounter with Caterer”) of a recent report that a statue in the British Museum which had been damaged by a visitor in 2012 was damaged again in December 2015 by a caterer’s worker setting up for a corporate event . When will museums learn that art and catering don’t necessarily mix well?

In the October 20, 2016 issue of The New York Times, Graham Bowley wrote about the Smithsonian Institution’s Kickstarter crowd funding campaign to raise $300,000 to study and conserve its pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in the movie The Wizard of Oz (“Smithsonian Seeks $300,000 to Save Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers”). After the article was published, a number of laypeople expressed great astonishment to me about the amount. Yes Toto , the price of conservation can be quite high– but the end result is worth the expense.

In the October 21, 2016 issue of The New York Times, Eve M. Kahn writes about a number of recent research projects on the construction of 18th century European furniture (“Picking Apart 18th-Century Furniture to Detect Forgeries”)—one in Paris on a desk by Andre-Charles Boulle, one at the Frick Collection on the gilded metalwork of Pierre Gouthiere, one for a Bard Graduate Center exhibit of the furniture of Charles Percier, and one in England on furniture by Jean-Henri Riesener. What a wealth of riches for furniture conservators!

In the “Arts, Briefly “ column of the September 30, 2016 issue of The New York Times, it was announced that, as part of an effort to cut its deficit by $30 million, The Metropolitan Museum of Art had laid off 34 employees– but that the layoffs did not include curators or conservators. Although it is not good that the museum is in such a bad financial position, we should be pleased by the fact that at the MET conservators have attained parity with curators— at least when it comes to layoffs.

According to The New York Times (“Many Chinese Aghast Over ‘Botched’ Repair to Great Wall”, by Chris Buckley and Adam Wu, September 22, 2015), two years after a 1.2 mile section of the Great Wall of China in Suizhong County, Liaoning Province was repaired by covering it over with a white substance that is either cement or a mixture of lime and sand—depending on who one speaks to—photos were published in a local newspaper and the work brought to light. Officials of the China Great Wall Society were upset by this work which abandoned the principle of minimum interference, but cultural preservation officials responsible for that part of the wall defended the action saying that the section was in danger of falling down and that the work was done as an emergency repair. The loss of features such as crenelations,carvings,and the colors and textures of old brick is an aesthetic tragedy that has been called “vandalism done in the name of preservation”.