Category: Conservation in the News

Deborah Baker, conservator of archival materials, is methodically restoring the archives of the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture, preserving thousands of irreplaceable drawings from the city’s oil-boom history.

Read the article in the Tulsa World.

“The drawings include floor plans, sections and elevations for some of the most iconic landmarks in Tulsa, from downtown skyscrapers to Southern Hills Country Club. In many cases, where historic structures have been torn down, these drawings offer the only surviving records that show how the buildings looked. Unfortunately, no one ever expected to keep these drawings forever, and many of them have been folded, creased, torn and taped back together.

“These are working drawings that people rolled up and took to construction sites,” Baker says. “You’ll see coffee stains and cigarette burns. And you see a lot of stuff like this,” she says, picking up a floor plan that has been Scotch-taped together. “It’s probably been like this for 50 years.”

Carefully, millimeter by millimeter, Baker removes one piece of tape to expose a tear in the yellowed drawing. She’ll use wispy Japanese tissues to fill in the gap, painstakingly cutting and pasting the new section of paper until it fits perfectly with the old part….

The foundation hopes to relocate later this year, taking the archives to a larger space where some of the drawings will go on display for the first time.

“These are truly works of art,” says Executive Director Lee Anne Zeigler. “People are going to be amazed at the detail and intricacies, all done by hand.” Her favorites include the elaborate, art deco elevations of the Medical Arts Building, designed in 1927 by well-known architect Joseph Koberling. Standing at Sixth Street and Boulder Avenue, it was knocked down in the early 1980s to make room for ONEOK Plaza.

“Look at this detail,” Zeigler says, pointing at the decorative chain links that supported the awning over the Medical Arts entrance. “A draftsman must have spent hours and hours on this one little section. You would never see that done today.”

The foundation’s archives include more than 35,000 original drawings, most dating from the early 1900s through the 1970s, when computer-assisted design began to replace hand drawings….

A federal grant last year allowed the foundation to bring in a specialist to help restore the archives [and to train staff in preservation and basic stabilization techniques].”

Excerpt from an American Chemical Society article below. Find the entire article here.

Researchers led by Kristin Wustholz, a chemist at the College of William & Mary, made the improvement to a protocol called surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). The method pinpoints the chemical make-up of pigment from just a single microscopic particle of the colorant, instead of needing large, destructive samples required for more traditional techniques. The pigment particles required for SERS analysis are “so small they are not visible to the human eye,” Wustholz says. Removing one does not change the appearance of the masterpiece.

In the standard SERS technique, a researcher picks off a pigment particle from the painting and treats it with strong acid to separate the pigment from paint binders, varnishes, and other media. The pigment can then adsorb to a silver nanoparticle mixture. Using a Raman spectrometer, the scientist then takes a vibrational spectrum of the pigment-nanoparticle mixture to identify the pigment’s chemical signature. The silver nanoparticle acts like a signal amplifier for the pigment particle, allowing scientists to get useful information from the tiny sample.

Using two 18th century oil paintings in the collection of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Wustholz collaborated with Williamsburg conservator Shelley Svoboda to discover that the acid step wasn’t necessary (Anal. Chem., DOI: 10.1021/ac200698q).

Wustholz’s team used the new technique to identify the lip pigment in the oil painting Portrait of William Nelson by Robert Feke. They found that the red color was carmine lake, an organic pigment extracted from insect scales. The team also used the technique to study flesh tones in Portrait of Isaac Barré by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The team chose Reynolds’ painting because he typically added to his paint a complex mixture of binders and varnishes, which would normally be removed by the acid treatment. Keeping these components, which can produce spectroscopic noise, in the sample was a good way to test the limits of the new protocol, Wustholz says. The team could still identify the pigment, which was again carmine lake.

The following text is from an American Chemical Society press release:

How scientists use chemistry to tell whether works of art are the valuable real thing or worthless forgeries is the topic of the latest episode in the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) award-winning Bytesize Science podcast series.

The high-definition video, “Is that ‘priceless’ painting the real deal or a cheap fake?” is available without charge at www.BytesizeScience.com and on the Bytesize Science podcast on iTunes. It is based on an article in the latest issue of ChemMatters, ACS’ quarterly magazine for high school students.

This episode describes the “Wacker Case,” one of the most famous frauds in art history, to illustrate the amazing ability of forgers to fool experts, let alone the general public, about the authenticity of works of art. The case involved 33 works allegedly painted by Vincent van Gogh and helped foster the development of scientific techniques, many based on chemistry, to examine paintings at the molecular level and determine their authenticity.

“We use the same techniques to find forgeries and to solve crimes,” James Martin says in the video. He is a scientist who has investigated forgeries for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, museums and buyers. “You start by broadly examining the object to look for alterations and restoration, and then, you try to identify materials and compounds in the painting,” Martin adds.

Watch the video on the ACS website.

Judith Dobrzynski’s article on RealClear Arts, an artsjournal.com weblog discusses the interesting experiment in “visitor engagement” at the Minneapolois Institute of Afts where the institution has been asking people to vote on the conservation desitny of a painting in the collection.  The issue centers on whether the hunter figure dressed in red, a later addition to the painting, should be covered over to allow viewers to see the artists original intent.

Read the full post on the ArtsJournal.com

Also take a look at the MIA’s case on their blog “The Bubbler“

The Brooklyn Museum took Lady Gauteshenu – a rich lady from the Late Period of Egypt’s glorious past – to North Shore University Hospital for a look under her skin, as it were. She’d been X-rayed before, but assistant conservator Tina March said there were still some questions left unanswered.

Read the complete article in The Brooklyn Paper.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art hired a group of skilled Moroccan craftsmen who have experience in monument restoration to recreate a medieval Maghrebi-Andalusian style courtyard in its Islamic Art galleries. For two months, a reporter and a photographer from The New York Times observed and documented the craftsmen’s work. “History’s Hands”, a Times article raises two points for consideration:

–The great value for both art historians and conservators of such a thorough documentation of working methods.

— Why it is acceptable for a museum to recreate a piece of architecture, when it would be unacceptable for a museum to hire a painter to recreate a work from a certain school of painting that was not represented in its collection?

According to “Bellini Work at Frick is Seen in a New Light”, in late May, after a year of study and treatment of the painting which yielded new insights , the Frick Collection will reinstall Giovanni Bellini’s “St Francis in the Desert” in a special exhibit that will include computer kiosks at which visitors will be able to study the painting’s structure and Bellini’s working methods.

During the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila in the Abruzzo region of Italy, many works of art were damaged. According to the Wall Street Journal “Donor of the Day” feature, “Restored Italian Statue Visits Its Guardian Angels”, in the aftermath of the earthquake, the Italian American Museum in New York City collected $110,000 in small gifts from thousands of donors. That money was earmarked for the treatment of damaged works and one of those works, La Madonna di Pietranico, has been sent to the Museum on a two-month loan as a thank you gift.

Chief Conservator of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Jim DeYoung, is interviewed about life behind-the-scenes working to preserve the museum’s significant collection. Jim covers a lot of ground about the daily activities of a small conservation staff (Terri White, Tim Ladwig, and Chris Nivor). From exhibit condition reporting to gallery surveys, answering public queries and keeping documentation records, hosting tours and actual treatment activities, it is all in a day’s work…or 30 years of work.

Read the interview at OnMilwaukee.com.

To many, he’s the godfather of American tattooing, the original outsider artist.

Between 1940 and 1973, Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins inked his distinctive tattoos on the flesh of visitors to his Hawaii shop. His distinctive style combining bold lines and careful coloration is still imitated today and can be found today on thousands – perhaps tens of thousands – of people.

“It’s pure folk Americana and it has a rich history,” said Erich Weiss, of Philadelphia, who wrote a book and directed a documentary about Collins. “People now consider tattooing as an art form, but back then they didn’t see it that way. “

Now Center City’s Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts is preserving Collins’ work for prosperity with the same care they’ve put into historic documents and other masterpieces of art. They’re finishing up the project in time to mark the 100th anniversary of Collins’ birth this year.

Read the full article in the Philadelphia Inquirer to find out what the conservators are doing to the unusual archives. The art Samantha Sheesley is working to preserve left an impression on her that she decided to make permanent.

Two separate articles in the current issue of Art & Antiques magazine make for an interesting juxtaposition.

The first article profiles the artwork and conservation of AIC Professional Associate Daisy Craddock and gives a glimpse into the work of someone who both creates and conserves paintings.

The Afterlife of Eva Hesse discusses the changes that time and inherent vice have wrought in her artwork. Conservation can only do so much.

“Golden-hued foliage has darkened to an earthy tan. A sunny yellow field has faded to off-white. In spots, the paint is powdery and has started to flake off.

Vivid colors are deteriorating in Henri Matisse’s iconic The Joy of Life, owned by the Barnes Foundation, and scientists are stepping in to help before the giant canvas is moved to its new home in Philadelphia.

Conservators presented the results Tuesday from a sophisticated chemical analysis of the painting, which will guide the effort to retard further damage and perhaps, someday, to reverse it. The research, presented at a conference of the American Chemical Society in California, was led by Jennifer Mass, a senior scientist at the Winterthur museum in Delaware who was enlisted by the Barnes.”

Francesca Casadio, senior conservation scientist at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Barnes Foundation conservators, Barbara Buckley and Margaret Little, completed the research team.

Read the full article in the Philadelphia Inquirer online edition.