Credit Suisse, the international financial services group, has a new print advertising campaign which focuses on how the company has helped its clients achieve their goals and ambitions since 1856. One of the ads highlights Maccaferri Flood Control Systems which “are helping to preserve Canaletto’s Venice”. Credit Suisse hopes to burnish its corporate image by linking itself to a preservation effort.
Category: Conservation in the News
Conservation affects many aspects of the world. This category tracks stories about conservation in the media.
Don’t They Know We Exist?
[With thanks to Walter Henry who told me about this movie]
“Framed“, a made for television movie first aired on BBC One on August 31, 2009 (and released on PBS Video on January 11, 2011), is based on a children’s book by Frank Cottrell Boyce which tells the story of a young boy in the poor Welsh village of Manod whose life is changed when a convoy of trucks containing the masterworks of the National Gallery (London) arrives in his village. The National Gallery has flooded and the works are to be stored in the mines outside of town where they were sent for safekeeping during World War II. The man in charge of the operation is Quentin Lester, a curator and not one of the National Gallery’s many conservators.
Did neither Boyce nor the producers of the movie know that the National Gallery has had a Scientific Department since 1934 and a Conservation Department since 1946?
Baker Fellowships in Paper Conservation awarded
The University of Michigan (U-M) Library is delighted to announce the first Cathleen A. Baker Fellows in Paper Conservation. Lauren Calcote and Aisha Wahab started their fellowships in early September and will remain in residence with the U-M Library Conservation Lab through August 2013.
Lauren Calcote is a September 2012 graduate of the New York State College, Buffalo, master’s degree program in art conservation, specializing in book conservation. During her fellowship she will be focusing on historical binding structures and book conservation treatments ranging from batch treatment of nineteenth-century cloth bindings to individual treatment of complex vellum books.
Aisha Wahab is starting her final year in the Buffalo program. The Baker Fellowship is helping to support her third-year internship at the University of Michigan Library Conservation Lab. Specializing in paper conservation, she has particular interest in the conservation of Islamic and Middle Eastern manuscripts.
The Cathleen A. Baker Fellowship in Paper Conservation was established in 2011 by a gift from Dr. Baker, Conservation Librarian in the Department of Preservation and Conservation at the University of Michigan Library. The fellowship provides financial support for conservators at various levels in their careers to enable them to spend time in the U-M Library’s Conservation Lab to increase their knowledge about the conservation of paper-based collections.
Applications for fellowship projects starting in Fall 2013 are due January 31, 2013. Information about the fellowship and application forms are available at www.lib.umich.edu/preservation-and-conservation/cathleen-baker-fellowship-conservation-2013-2014
Shannon Zachary
Head, Dept. of Preservation and Conservation
University of Michigan Library
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Recognize Your Colleagues-Nominate them for an AIC Award!
At some point in every career the guidance, support, or encouragement of a peer makes a world of difference. Every year AIC gives awards to exemplary conservators and other professionals
for their outstanding and distinguished contributions to the field. AIC members nominate the candidates for each award and the AIC Awards Committee selects the recipients.
Which of your colleagues deserve recognition in the following award categories?
AIC Publications Award—recognizes excellence in a non-AIC Journal article or book on conservation published during the preceding two years (October 1–September 31).
Robert Feller Lifetime Achievement Award—recognizes exceptional contributions to the conservation profession over the course of one’s career.
Sheldon and Caroline Keck Award—for excellence in the education and training of conservation professionals.
Rutherford John Gettens Merit Award—for outstanding service to the American Institute for Conservation (AIC).
Conservation Advocacy Award (formerly the University Products Award)—for the accomplishments and contributions for conservation professionals who, through substantial efforts in outreach and advocacy, have advanced the field of conservation and furthered the cause of conservation.
These AIC awards are truly special and meaningful to their recipients, especially because they represent peer recognition and distinction. Nominate someone special today!
Many institutions, organizations, and individuals support the care of collections and the field of conservation in a variety of ways important to us all. To which award category below can you
submit a strong nomination?
Forbes Medal—for distinguished contributions to the field of conservation by a nationally prominent figure whose work on a national or international platform has significantly advanced the preservation of cultural heritage.
Special Recognition for Allied Professionals—in recognition of the work and contributions by professionals in other fields to the advancement of the conservation profession. Distinguished Award for Advancement for the Field of Conservation—recognizes institutions for vital and longstanding support of professional development activities of conservators.
Ross Merrill Award for Outstanding Commitment to the Preservation and care of Collections, a joint AIC and Heritage Preservation Award—recognizing an organization large or small whose commitment to conservation has been sustained and exemplary.
For more information and award applications, please visit www.conservation-us.org/awards. The nomination deadline for all awards is December 15, 2012.
Ancient Egyptian mummy at Fitzwilliam Museum saved by engineering and LEGO
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-ancient-egyptian-mummy-lego.html#jCp
The conservation of the cartonnage mummy case was undertaken with the assistance of the Department of Engineering, who helped construct clever frames to support the delicate case during conservation and a new display case with internal supports using LEGO. The mummy case was found in the Ramesseum at Thebes in 1896. The gilded wooden face had been torn out by robbers and the mummy removed. Cartonnage is a uniquely Egyptian material, often only a few millimetres thick, consisting of layers of plaster, linen and glue. It is remarkably rigid but also very sensitive to humidity. At some point Hor had been exposed to damp conditions and had sagged dramatically around the chest and face. This caused structural problems and also serious cracking and instability in the painted decoration. There had been some attempts at repair and restoration, most probably in the cartonnage’s early years in the Museum.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-ancient-egyptian-mummy-lego.html#jCp
With proper maintenance, this could have all been avoided
Much has been written about the eldery Spanish woman who, distressed by the condition of a 19th century fresco in her local church in Borja near Zaragosa, repainted it with the knowledge of her local clergy (The New York Times, August 24, 2012, “Despite Good Intentions, A Fresco in Spain is Ruined“, by Raphael Minder).
It is not clear whether there would have been such an uproar if the decendants of the artist had not recently proposed making a donation for its upkeep, bringing the repainting to wider attention. This incident highlights both the need for widespread public education about how conservation should be carried out and the necessity for institutions which are guardians of works of art to have continually replenished maintenance funds.
An unexpected source of information about conservators
The Weddings/Celebrations pages of the Sunday New York Times might be one of the last places one would expect to serve as a source of information about conservation. However, the August 26, 2012 “Vows” column writeup of the wedding of Joseph Godla, Chief Conservator of the Frick Collection and Charlotte Vignon, Associate Curator of Decorative Arts at the Frick informed countless numbers of people who may have been unaware of conservation that conservators have a passion for their work, do such things as crawl beneath pieces of furniture to examine their construction and determine authenticy, and have many, varied skills.
Are there others?
Peter Carey’s most recent novel, The Chemistry of Tears (Faber, 2012), is set in the fictional London Swinburne Museum of clocks, watches, automata, and wind-up engines. It focuses on Catherine Gehrig, a conservator who is mourning the death of her colleague and long-time secret lover. To help her get over her grief, Catherine’s boss gives her the challenging project of restoring a 19th century mechanical duck. Catherine’s project is based on the real life conservation of a silver swan automaton undertaken by Matthew Read of West Dean College.
We have all heard that Daniel Silva’s character Gabriel Allon is very loosely based on conservator David Bull. Are there other, less well-known instances of fictional conservators who are based on real conservators or of fictional conservation projects that are based on real conservation projects?
Conservators also oppose plan to sideline Berlin’s Old Masters
Conservators in Germany have joined the protest over plans to relocate the world-famous collection of Old Masters in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie. Under the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz’s (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) plan, the estimated 3,000 works will move into the much smaller Bode Museum to make way for modern art including the collection of Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch. Any Old Master that cannot be displayed in the smaller space will go into storage for an estimated six years until a new space is found for the collection on the capital’s Museum Island.
The move, which was announced at the beginning of July, poses a “significant conservation risk”, said a statement released by the Bonn-based Verband der Restauratoren (Association of Restorers) on 19 July. The association, which has around 2,500 members, argues that the Pietzsch collection should move into the Gemäldegalerie only when a suitable location has been found to accommodate the Old Masters. “Only then can transport be reduced and the possibility that large parts of the collection will disappear into stores for years be avoided,” the statement said. “Any handling, packaging and transportation—even within the building—means mechanical stress and climatic changes to the works, which weakens their substance.”
Around 12,000 people, including Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia, have signed a petition against emptying the Gemäldegalerie of its Old Masters. The petition was set up by Jeffrey Hamburger, an art historian at Harvard University. Earlier, the Verband Deutscher Kunsthistoriker (Association of German Art Historians) wrote an open letter to Germany’s minister of culture, Bernd Neumann, protesting “vehemently” against the plans. But the Bundestag has already made €10m available for the renovation of the Gemäldegalerie, setting the wheels in motion for the move.
The Berlin-based collectors Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch have donated 150 works of art, valued at €120m. But their gift was made on the condition that the works by artists including Magritte, Pollock and Ernst will eventually be on permanent display.
Heiner Pietzsch, an industrialist, has hinted to the German media that should the deal collapse, their heirs would have a lot of art to sell.
From the Art Newspaper >>
The Getty is using visitors’ mobile devices to educate about high-tech examination revelations
Excerpts from CNET by Daniel Terdiman:
At Getty Museum, revelations of art via tech. Known for its collection of classic European art, the Getty Museum in L.A. uses technology to enhance visitors’ experiences and to study its masterpieces. CNET Road Trip 2012 stopped by…
While visitors will use their mobile devices to learn more about the artworks they encounter at the Getty, they’re also being encouraged to learn how the museum’s scientists use technology to study and maintain art there.
This is currently being showcased in the presentation of Dutch artist Maerten Van Heemskerck’s 1544 triptych “Ecce Homo,” which is on loan from the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland. Located in a special gallery at the Getty, “Ecce Homo” offers visitors the chance to see how conservators use technology like X-Rays, stratiradiography, infrared reflectography, and multispectral and hyperspectral imaging to examine every element of the masterpiece — the front, the back, and even below the paint.
X-rays, explained Yvonne Szafran, the Getty’s senior conservator of paintings, are useful because the technology can provide a glimpse of the structure of a painting, and how an artist applied paint to it. That works, Szafran explained, because the pigments in paint vary in their radio-opacity. So, for example, anywhere Heemskerck used lead white paint shows up in an X-ray as very dense. 
With stratiradiography, Szafran and her team can examine a painting at an angle while spinning it around in order to see if there are elements that have been obscured. For example, with “Ecce Homo,” she was able to determine that on the back side of the triptych’s left panel, Heemskerck had originally included a swan, and then painted over it.
By using infrared reflectography, Szafran explained, it’s possible to see just below the layer of paint, but not all the way to the wood below, something that’s particularly valuable in trying to see the artist’s original drawing. With “Ecce Homo,” Szafran said, it’s possible to see that the drawing below the painting was done with black chalk.
Conservators also use ultraviolet light to discover post-painting restoration, as well as to identify certain kinds of pigments.
Finally, Szafran and her colleagues can use multi-spectral imaging and hyper-spectral imaging to identify the different kinds of materials used in an artwork without having to take a sample.