Category: Conservation in the News

Mirwais Adeel, writing for Khaama Press/Afghan News Agency, reported on June 6, 2015 that using a very expensive projector and 3D image display, the Bamyan Buddhas destroyed by Taliban militants in 2001 were “returned” to the empty niches which had held them (“Return of Bamyan Buddhas with help of 3D image display”). If a one hundred and eighty foot tall sculpture can be successfully recreated, imagine all of the smaller damaged or destroyed works of art that could be virtually restored.

According to David W. Dunlap  (“A Rare Visit Inside a Deteriorating Gem (Hard Hat Required)”, The New York Times, May 21, 2015) who recently had a tour of its’ crumbling interior, the Soldiers and Sailors’ Monument in Riverside Park (New York City), built in 1924 was in terrible condition by 1954. Its’ present condition is even worse. The last repair work on the monument took place in the early 1960s. Now, the Riverside Park Conservancy is about to raise half a million dollars for an exploratory study of the structure’s condition. It’s been a long time coming and it’s about time.

In her review of, “Van Gogh: Irises and Roses”, the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibit of four still lives painted by Vincent van Gogh in May 1890 using an unstable red lake pigment (“A Study in Scarlet: Evanescence in Bloom”, The New York Times, May 22, 2015), Roberta Smith mentions that a slide show which accompanies the exhibit includes postcards of the paintings, produced over several decades which clearly show the fading of the red pigment. Until now, I had not given much consideration to the usefulness of postcards and other inexpensive reproductions as conservation research tools, but from now on I shall.

Conservators, preparators, and installers usually work anonymously. Museum wall panels and catalogues seldom mention the names of the people whose work made the displays possible. Therefore, it was good to read in  The New York Times article about the installation of Picasso’s “Le Tricorne” stage curtain in the New York Historical Society building (“Picasso’s Stage Curtain Is Unfurled At New Home in a Precise Operation”, by Annie Correal, May 18, 2015), that  lead installer Tom Zoufaly and the rest of the crew signed their names to the wooden slat that holds the curtain to the wall alongside the signature of James Lebron —the man who installed the curtain in its former home at the Four Seasons Restaurant in 1959.

In the May 3, 2015 issue the The New York Times’ T Magazine, Jessica Dawson wrote about “Filthy Lucre”, Darren Waterston’s take on James McNeill Whistler’s “Peacock Room” which will soon be exhibited in the Freer and Sackler Galleries along with Whistler’s room.  According to Dawson, “Where Whistler produced unabashed luxury, Waterston has made melancholic decay: In his version, paintings molder, pigments puddle and shelves splinter.”  She noted that it took Waterston and a team of craftsmen eight months to produce this “decay”. How long would it have taken the ravages of time to create similar looking but real decay?

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