Category: Conservation in the News

Two recent pieces in The New York Times, “Tod’s to Help Colosseum Restoration” and ” ‘This Space for Rent’: In Europe, Arts Now Must Woo Commerce” have brought up the topic of commerical sponsorship of the maintenance and restoration of the cultural heritage. While there was no mention of advertising signage in connection with Tod’s pledged gift of $34 million for the multiyear restoration of the Colosseum, over the past year large advertising banners have appeared on the Musee d’Orsay and the Palais Garnier opera house and bring to mind the Bulgari ads that appeared on the facade of the Doge’s Palace in Venice. With cultural institutions in Europe (and in the U.S. too) in need of new sources of funding for their basic functions, might advertising ventures be preferable to sending out works of art for years at a time on moneymaking tours?

“Picassos in Reverse”, a brief profile of paintings conservator Simon Parkes and his studio published in the January 7, 2011 issue of The Wall Street Journal, ends with a quote from Mr. Parkes: “A picture of your granny is going to cost aproximately the same as a 1916 Picasso. I’m not going to pretend it takes any longer to do a Picasso.” These throw away lines inform the Wall Street Journal readership of an important principle of conservation

The New York Times has published a front page article, “Cunning, Care and Sheer Luck Save Rare Map” , about the conservation of a fortuitously discovered copy of an extremely rare map among the holdings of the Brooklyn Historical Society. When discovered, the “Plan of the City of New York” (which was drawn by a British Lieutenant, Bernard Ratzer in 1769 and first published in 1770), was coated with shellac, backed with linen, and cut into long strips. The article discusses the treatment carried out by conservator Jonathan P. Derow and mentions that he charged a reduced rate of $5,000 for his work. As the article makes no mention of what the usual fee would have been or how many hours Mr. Derow worked on the piece, an opportunity was lost to educate the public on the time consuming nature and cost of conservation work.

A section of the map before and after treatment

Two recent articles in The New York Times have focused on the conservation of ancient cities– one on the successfully completed rebuilding of the old city of Aleppo, Syria and the other on the recently restarted conservation of the site of ancient Babylon. Rather than just conserve individual monuments, both projects have taken into consideration the needs of local residents and the economic impact of conservation.

The full texts of the articles can be read at:

“Preserving Heritage, and the Fabric of Life, in Syria”

“After Ravages of TIme and War, Triage to Save Ruins and Babylon”

A bas-relief on a wall at Babylon

In the late 1990s, Hussein conscripted a calligrapher to copy the Quran in his blood. In what he reportedly described at the time as a gesture of “gratitude” to God, Hussein donated seven gallons (27 liters) of blood over the course of two years to be used as ink in the macabre volume, according to an article in The Guardian on Sunday (Dec. 19).

The Quran is now kept behind locked doors in a mosque in Baghdad, and officials are uncertain how to handle an object that is simultaneously sacred and profane.

“Blood is a common medium used in paint,” Bruno Pouliot, an objects conservator at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware and a professor of art conservation at the University of Delaware, told LiveScience. “Ox blood is one of the oldest forms, and a very stable form, actually, of paint.”…”You have to process it a little bit to get it to have the exact properties that you need, but it’s a relatively easy process that anybody who could search online or would have access to the historical recipe for oxblood paint could do,” Pouliot said, minutes before pulling up an oxblood paint recipe online involving linseed oil and lime.

“What’s different about things that involve human remains is that they are always controversial,” University of Delaware professor of art conservation Vicki Cassman told LiveScience. In the case of the Quran, Cassman said, “there is that symbolism – that is, who it represents and if this person’s spirit lives on in the object.”

Should the Iraqis choose to preserve the Quran, they likely won’t have to take many extra precautions in terms of preservation, Pouliot said. Regular book preservation should do.

“Climate control is the first step,” said Jim Hinz, the director of book conservation at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) in Philadelphia. Humidity and temperature are key, he said, with cooler temperatures being better. Books should also be kept out of direct light, he said.

Hinz said he had not worked with any artwork made with blood, but he did have a tip for anyone who bleeds on something important: Spit.

“The enzymes [in saliva] break down and essentially bleach out the blood,” he told LiveScience.

The big questions that come up with the preservation of biological art aren’t technical, Pouliot said. Instead, they’re ethical. Conserving art sometimes involves applying stabilizing resins.

For blood, “there could be many reasons why it would not be desirable to change the composition of that material, in case it is useful for future studies,” Pouliot said. “Often the cultural aspects of that object become important.”

The above text is excerpted from an article in LiveScience. Read the complete article in LiveScience.

After eighteen months of analysis, conservation, and re-stabilization, the bronze statue of Apollo Saettante (Apollo as an Archer) from Pompeii will go on view at the Getty Villa from March 2 to September 12, 2011 in the exhibition Apollo from Pompeii: Investigating an Ancient Bronze. Providing a behind-the-scenes look at this rare treasure, the special six-month exhibition presents the results of the first full study of this ancient sculpture.

“This project has provided us an unprecedented opportunity,” said Erik Risser, an assistant conservator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum and co-curator of the exhibition. “Large bronzes rarely survive from antiquity, and the chance to conduct a thorough investigation into the Apollo Saettante has brought to light its rich and complex history.”

A variety of approaches, including archival research, X-radiography, ultra-violet photography, and endoscopic examination, have provided important new information regarding both the techniques used to make the statue in antiquity, and also the methods used to restore it in the nineteenth century. The investigations extended to analyses of the metal alloy composition, the pigments on the surface, and even of the types of bolts used in the re-assembly, all to answer questions about previous restoration efforts.

Apollo from Pompeii: Investigating an Ancient Bronze presents the results of these investigations, displaying art-historical, technical, and scientific evidence side by side in order to demonstrate the range of methods used during the study of the statue at the Getty Villa. Special features include the discovery of a large void in the statue’s back, which indicates that the method of its ancient manufacture was highly unusual, and the identification of two different phases of restoration. An interactive touch-screen display in the exhibition will provide visitors with the opportunity to explore the statue. This interactive feature will also be available on the Web at www.getty.edu.

Read the full article here.

A recent “Antiques” column in The New York Times contains a brief writeup, “As Seen on Desi Arnaz” , of the conservation project undertaken by the Raices Latin Music Museum in East Harlem using a $3,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to treat the straw hat that Desi Arnaz used when performing “The Straw Hat Song”.

“The Right Stuff to Wear”, a New York Times Science Times article about the development of the design and function of U.S. spacesuits which reports on a November 2010 panel discussion on the subject at the National Air and Space Museum and gives notice of a spring 2011 Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition of full sized photographs and x-ray images of some of the 300 suits in the collection, makes a few points about the condition and conservation of these artifacts.

A front page article in The New York Times,“Restored, Then Reconsidered, A Met Velazquez Is Vindicated”, discusses how, after a year of study and treatment, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Portrait of Philip IV” has been reattributed to Velazquez almost four decades after it was downgraded to the work of an assistant or contemporary follower. The portait, which was in terrible condition with many layers of yellowed varnish and extensive repaintings, is thought to have been painted by Velazquez as one of several replicas of an official portrait. An acetate tracing of another of these replicas(collection of the Meadows Museum) was used by conservator Michael Gallagher when he positioned and repainted a missing eye.

A detail of the hand after cleaning and before inpainting

NEWPORT NEWS – When Navy divers and NOAA archaeologists recovered the USS Monitor steam engine from the Atlantic in 2001, the pioneering Civil War propulsion unit was enshrouded in a thick layer of marine concretion.

Sand, mud and corrosion combined with minerals in the deep Cape Hatteras, N.C., waters to cloak every feature of Swedish-American inventor John Ericsson’s ingenious machine, and they continued to envelop the 30-ton artifact after nine years of desalination treatment.

Just this past week, however, conservators at The Mariners’ Museum and its USS Monitor Center drained the 35,000-gallon solution in which the massive engine was submerged and began removing the 2- to 3-inch-thick layer of concretion with hammers, chisels and other hand tools.

Working slowly and carefully to avoid harming the engine’s original surface, they stripped off more than 2 tons of encrustation in their first week of work alone, gradually revealing the details of a naval milestone that had not been seen since the historic Union ironclad sank in a December 1862 storm.

….Read the full article as it appears in The Daily Press., with video.