Tag: AIC’s 40th Annual Meeting

AIC’s 40th Annual Meeting – Information on the NEH SCHC Grants at the Linking Environmental and Heritage Conservation luncheon. May 9, 2012

Below are the comments I made on the National Endowment for the Humanities grants for Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections during the Linking Environmental & Heritage Conservation luncheon sponsored by the Committee for Sustainable Conservation Practice Committee at AIC’s 2012 Annual Meeting:

“Thank you Sarah Nunberg and thanks also to the Committee on Sustainable Conservation Practice. I appreciate having this opportunity to say a few words about NEH’s Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections grant program, which we call SCHC for short. We’re emphasizing sustainability, which we know is a word with many meanings. Our intent is to help museums, libraries, and archives plan and implement preventive conservation measures in sustainable ways – in ways that balance preservation goals, cost, and environmental impact.

Some of what the program encourages includes:

  • a more risk-based, institution-specific approach to identifying preservation needs with less reliance on prescriptive targets and perceived ideals;
  • pragmatic thinking, looking first for passive ways to improve conditions for collections as well as ways to make existing buildings and systems work more effectively and efficiently;
  • matching preservation strategies to institutional capabilities; and
  • a greater awareness of an institution’s environmental footprint.

Rather than discuss the specifics of the grant program, which you can read about in our online handout  and in the guidelines, I want to stress the important role that the conservation community plays in helping NEH make this an effective grant program.

The program defines a kind of collaborative and interdisciplinary planning that we think can lead institutions to more sustainable ways of achieving preservation goals.  When we launched the program in 2009, the guidelines indicated that planning teams could include conservators, architects, engineers, facilities managers, administrators, curators and others. But conservators were not always on the teams that first year, so for the second year we added to our guidelines a statement that “a collections conservator must be a member of the project’s team.” And that has helped, but sometimes we’re seeing the conservator’s role at the front end of the planning process, providing reports and specifications, with no role or a limited one thereafter. We believe you should be at the table throughout the planning process, on into implementation, and beyond, so we’re thinking about clarifying this during our next guidelines revision.

Also, we see how important the advice is that conservators give to museums, libraries and archives through conservation assessments and consultations. Applicants append your reports and recommendations to grant applications to justify their funding requests. How can the field ensure that conservation consultants and assessors are prepared to provide risk-based, pragmatic advice that can lead to sustainable preventive conservation strategies? If more educational opportunities are part of the answer, I would mention that NEH has another grant program for preservation education and training, with a deadline coming up June 28.

It is also important for institutions to share more about what they are doing to balance preservation goals, costs, and environmental impact. SCHC grantees are required to write “white papers” to share lessons learned. Starting this summer, my Division of Preservation and Access will begin posting these papers on our Web page from grantees who have completed their projects. We’ll make sure to alert you to their availability.

And, in early August, we’ll be announcing the third round of SCHC awards, and I think there will be some projects that should be of great interest to the field, so stay tuned. Visit our website if you are interested in seeing a list of awards from the first two years.

I also want to mention that we will be revising the grant guidelines for the next deadline, which will be December 4, 2012. If you would like to offer comments or suggestions about strengthening the program and the guidelines, please contact me by June 8 by email to lword@neh.gov or call me at 202 606-8501.

Finally, I want to congratulate you on the formation of this committee on sustainable conservation practice and on the creation of the Collection Care Network. We look forward to following your very important work. Thank you.”

AIC’s 40th Annual Meeting-Working With Artists Luncheon

Moderated by Nancy Odegaard, this lunch session featured three speakers, Landis Smith, Charles Stable and Glenn Wharton, who gave presentations about their experiences working with artists-from specific case studies to broad approaches-to carry out conservation work in museums.  All of the speakers touched on the idea that working with artists was necessary to determine a sense of the essence of the objects/artwork-even if they weren’t working with the artists who created created the items in question. These engaging talks were followed by a question and answer session which gave the speakers and the audience the opportunity to explore questions and concerns about the role of the conservator and the artist in interpreting and preserving museum collections.

The first speaker was Landis Smith, who spoke about her experiences working with indigenous artists. She has worked with people from many different communities, from tribes in the Southwest US to Native Alaskans, and in her career she has seen as shift in the way that museums work with these communities-from a post-colonial way of working toward facilitating greater access to collections for indigenous people. She has learned how objects from these communities are more than just objects-they are an embodiment of culture, traditional knowledge and memory, and this has affected how she carries out examination and documentation. She touched upon the idea that working with artists in this way always involves a risk-benefit assessment; that there is a middle ground to be found between artist intent, object meaning and conservation needs.

Landis stressed the importance of working collaboratively with indigenous communities so that we can better interpret, document and exhibit their material culture. While most of the consultations she spoke about were in-person, she also briefly mentioned a live video consultation carried out as part of the Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: the First Peoples of Alaska at the Smithsonian. Using new technologies for this type of interaction may allow for more conversations and collaborative projects to take place that otherwise might be prohibitively costly or logistically difficult.  For any consultation, Landis stressed the importance of preparing in advance so that this experience can result in a meaningful information exchange and to allow a real dialog to take place.

Landis concluded her talk with a discussion of the fact that the missing link for ethnographic conservators is spending time in these communities. She recently worked with NMAI to organize a trip for their conservators and Mellon fellows visit communities in and around Santa Fe and Albuquerque. This type of experience offers the unique opportunity for conservators to being to make the link between the objects and the culture, the people and the landscape.

Charles Stable spoke next about a project at the National Museum of Scotland, where the museum worked with a Maori artist to recreate missing components of a war canoe in the collection. The canoe has mostly resided in storage and it cannot be attributed to a specific Maori community-it was likely made as a trade piece-and has been challenging to interpret. As a result, the museum consulted with Maori artist George Nuku, who suggested that the canoe was a pastiche that was not constructed by a Maori. He recommended that certain components be removed and replaced and the museum worked with him so that he could create pieces using his own inspiration and materials. Both Nuku and the museum wanted it to be obvious that these new components were reproductions, so Nuku chose to make these pieces in his material of choice-Perspex, which is essentially the same as Plexiglas. After creating these components he added new abalone shell inlays, and bound the pieces to the rest of the canoe using traditional methods.

During the talk, I believe that Charles mentioned that Perspex is not a stable material and so there would be issues with its preservation over time. Perspex is a Poly (methyl methacrylate)-I’m still not certain why it has preservation issues-it’s possible that due to the way Nuku carves into the Perspex, which may make it more brittle? If anyone else knows more about this please leave a comment!

In the end, this project was an attempt to balance the integrity of the object with Nuku’s interpretations and artistic expression. While some may find this type of work controversial, Charles pointed out that all of the additions made are reversible. To hear George Nuku speak about this project and to see him work on the new canoe components, follow this link.

The third speaker was Glenn Wharton, Time-based Media Conservator at MoMA and NYU Conservation Center faculty member. Glenn spoke about several projects at MoMA that have involved working with artists to exhibit their work many years after they were created. In the case of these artists and their work, there were questions about how the exhibition should look or be configured, so he requested interviews. He discussed the fact that working with the artists in this way results in the conservator, curator and artist working together to construct the authenticity of the artwork.

Glenn presented several examples, including Valie Export’s 1967-68 “Abstract Film No. 1”, John Maeda’s 2004 “Reactive Books” and Bruce Nauman’s 1993 “Think.” In some cases, because of technology or because the fact that the original artwork was a performance piece, the work as it was originally shown could not and cannot be exhibited. In these cases, Glenn has worked with the artist to identify the essence of their work and how this can be properly communicated to the public in a new exhibition. He spoke about the re-exhibition of these pieces as “translations” and “reconstitutions” of their artwork. In some cases, the pieces are re-dated to include the new date of exhibition, since this new exhibition is still part of the piece. So, for example, Bruce Nauman’s Think was originally created and exhibited in 1993 as 2 videos playing on 2 CRT monitors on a metal table with playback equipment, but in 2009, the videos were exhibited on 2 plasma screens on DVD. Nauman’s Think is now dated 1993/2009.

Glenn also spoke about his conversation with John Maeda, who felt that his work, which incorporated CRT monitors and plasma screens, was not about technology, but rather about people interacting with the work. He felt that this interaction should be filmed and perhaps this was the best way to exhibit (or preserve) the work into the future, however Glenn also mentioned that this idea may not be fully resolved by the artist or the museum.

Questions and discussion followed the talks, including conversations about artists’ “afterthoughts”-the fact that an artist’s idea of what the essence of their work is may be a moving target. Glenn reminded everyone that even in these more extreme examples that were presented, all interventions are reversible, which allows for future reinterpretation and changes to be made-both by the artists and the museums.

Several people voiced opinions about the notion of an artist reinterpreting another artist’s work-some people took issue with this and others thought this was interesting and an important way to involve artists. Conservation, after all, is not neutral either, no matter how much of an attempt we make for it to be. This led to a discussion on the importance of documentation-as we all know, no matter what decisions are made, it is important to document both the interventions and the decision-making involved. Landis also commented that documentation helps us to take the subjectivity out of our decision-making.

I thoroughly enjoyed this session and the discussion-it was evident that this was a topic that can and should be revisited repeatedly in the future-especially as museums and the role that they play in our culture evolve. I hope that anyone reading this will feel welcome to leave comments as well to continue this discussion and to raise any points that I failed to mention!

 

 

AIC’s 40th Annual Meeting – Architecture Session, May 10, “Interior Murals, The Conservators Perspective: Access and Experience of the Conservator within the Architectural Space” by Gillian Randell

Gillian (with a hard “G”) is  a conservator of interior murals and decorative finishes and presented beautiful images of a wide variety of 18th and 19th century American murals, with a deep appreciation of the special perspective of the conservator, given our unique level of access to these artworks. She began by relating this level of access to her experiences spelunking and finding herself in close proximity to spaces and places most people don’t ordinarily see – Werner Herzog’s 3d film of the caves of Chauvet came into the conversation here, with its attempt to give wider audiences that feeling of close contact, discovery, and the sense of actually being there.

American interior decoration of the 18th and 19th centuries is characterized by extensive interior painting. One of the artists Gillian focused on today was Edwin Howland Blashfield, who painted murals in both civic and ecclesiastical venues and had a particular technique of using rich layering on a monumental scale, producing a range of textures. In these murals, the distance of the viewer encourages the use of trompe l’oeil and other effects, which also have a significant impact when viewed up close. Blashfield was friends with Francis Davis Millet, another progressive muralist, and was a member of the group that founded the Mural Society of America in 1895. Many murals were produced as part of the “City Beautiful” movement, which promoted “beauty not only for its own sake, but also to create moral and civic virtue among urban populations.” Many neoclassical murals in public buildings were produced at this time, including Blashfield’s Power of Law in the Manhattan Appellate Courthouse, which was conserved in 2005 and is part of a mural cycle produced with other mural artists.

We moved next to the Essex County Courthouse where muralists Lowe, Walker, Turner, Cox and Blashfield painted a series of pendentives around the domes – Gillian noted that these were painted with extensive and subtle detail, even though it wasn’t necessary as they were viewed from a distance. These were cleaned in 2004 so the photo in the link above shows them rather at a worse phase in their lives…for better ones, look on Evergreene’s website.

St Matthew’s Cathedral in DC boasts a series of lunettes, painted in Blashfield’s studio and then installed afterwards, with more painting on site to integrate them. Here he used what was termed “percussive brushwork” (I don’t know where the term came from) using a large brush to “hammer” paint onto the surfaces, creating texture and movement. This was cleaned in 2003, removing surface dirt and grime. There was also apparently an early synthetic surface coating on these murals, which was analyzed at CCI; the murals are painted in oil on linen.

The Assembly Chambers in Albany NY display murals on stone by William Morris Hunt, which were partly covered by a ceiling installed less than ten years later. The mural “The Flight of Night” dates to 1878, a year before Hunt died in 1879; another is “The Discoverer”, dating also to 1878. He had produced many preparatory drawings and paintings as he had been working on this theme for decades; these as well as related 3d clay and plaster studies are in various museum collections. These paintings suffered from roof leaks, damage to the sandstone, salt formation, and most of all the use of paint materials incompatible with the substrate. Hunt may have been using “experimental” materials – he referred to a “secret recipe”. It seems that he was working in an oil-based medium. However, he did not put any preparation layer on the stone such that even while he was working, he noted that the stone absorbed the paint, leaving a more faded appearance the next day – in our terms, the stone had absorbed much of the oil binder, leaving a very underbound layer and precluding the formation of a stable oil film. Because of this “fading”, Hunt applied paint in multiple applications, but the underbound layers continued to fade and degrade over time.

At Rockefeller Center, the wall where Diego Rivera had painted his controversial mural (the one with Lenin), which was demolished in 1933, continued to cause problems with the replacement mural, called “American Progress” by José María Sert – problems which the conservators called “Rivera’s Revenge”. Here’s an NYTimes article about the conservation work there.

Because the architecture session had begun about twenty minutes late (the business meeting ran over) Gillian had to start to run through her remaining slides quickly at about this point. We saw Ezra Winter’s Fountain of Youth mural at Radio City Music Hall, and some wallpaper in the bathroom there designed by Donald Deskey, who was responsible for all the interior decoration of this building. We then sped over to the Pantheon de la Guerre at the National WWI Museum at Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, which is a cyclorama of WWI heroes which was painted in France and presented at the Chicago 1933-34 World’s Fair, then toured around the US (currently the subject of an exhibition).   It was 402 feet long and 42 feet high. After the tour, the mural was largely forgotten and stored outdoors until Baltimore restaurateur William Haussner bought it at auction in 1953. In 1957, Kansas City artist Daniel MacMorris persuaded Haussner to donate the panorama to the Liberty Memorial Association, which acquired it with the okay to alter it to fit a new space; MacMorris “revised” it, cutting and pasting and adding more heroes. The last place we got to visit was  Conception Abbey in Missouri, though I can’t tell you much more about that.

Looking up some of these sites online, I realize even more that it was a rare treat to see Gillian’s beautiful photos (I think she credited Whitney Cox with much of the photography) – there aren’t many images of many of these important works available, though often the Evergreene website has the best ones. Maybe some of the great images used in the presentation should be put online!

 

AIC’s 40th Annual Meeting – Architecture Session, May 10, “Preservation of Outdoor Public Murals: Research and Public Outreach” by Amanda Norbutus

Amanda Norbutus is in the Preservation Studies doctoral program at the University of Delaware, and has her undergraduate and master’s degrees in chemistry. Her presentation first outlined the state of public murals preservation and the issues faced today, then described current research into protective coatings for public murals and discussed a case study of a mural by Meg Saligman in Philadelphia that has been successfully treated.

The “Contemporary Mural Movement” refers to public murals produced since the 1960s (see cool book) and Amanda noted that there are more than 350 public art programs across the US that have facilitated the production of these murals. The murals often address themes of heritage and social and political equality. Loss and damage are rampant for a number of reasons: the murals are often spontaneous, not planned with long term preservation in mind; they are subject to extreme outdoor conditions; and they suffer from a lack of funding – while money is pledged for their production, none is usually allocated for preservation. The murals often also fall under various jurisdictional disputes – no one is quite sure who is responsible, or who has the right to make decisions about the wall or the image. To address some of these issues, Heritage Preservation has a program called Rescue Public Murals which carries out identification, documentation and conservation of murals, provides a network for those working on their preservation and researching best practice for mural production and conservation, and conducts fundraising (you can sign up here to get on RPM’s mailing list). They also have a partnership with ARTstor Digital Library to preserve images of murals, as not all can be physically preserved; there is a Community Murals collection in ARTStor.  Amanda noted one prominent case in which Ken Twitchell, an artist who had painted a mural (Homage to Ed Ruscha) on a federal government-owned downtown LA building, received a $1.1 million settlement after the mural had been painted over.

A few of the biggest problems facing murals are graffiti, physical destruction, and desaturation as the paint layers weather and are exposed to UV. UV radiation causes cracking, color change and fading. Oxidation chain reactions are the culprit on a chemical level. Research has been ongoing to look into protective UV barrier coatings. Some limitations are – scale, access, acceptability by stakeholders, safety (VOC’s), and ease of application. Some of the categories examined include acrylics, waxes, polyurethanes, and silanes.

In a study that began in 2005 at Delaware, Jessica Keister painted out more than 700 samples of blue, yellow and red colors of various types of paints from Golden, Novacolor, and Keim, in addition to some fluorescent colors. As coatings, she looked at B72 with Tinuvin, Novacolor, Golden MSA varnish, and a Triangle Triton coating (not reversible). The samples were placed on the roof and exposed to weather for three years. In 2008, Amanda began looking at the samples, noting the differences between colors – Hansa yellows did best – and paint systems – Golden heavy bodied acrylics did best. Golden MSA varnish seemed to protect the samples best – the Triangle coating was better at keeping mold and dirt off the surface, but its irreversiblity deducted crucial points from its usefulness. There was some success with B72 and Tinuvin (UV stabilizer), and in general two coats worked best of the protective layers. Amanda noted that products commercially sold as UV protective are not always so – she cited a test done by muralist Ed Massey on an industrial polymer coating that was purported to have a UV stabilizer, which failed completely. Finally, there needs to be more research into reversibility on a practical level, whether coatings can be effectively removed without affecting damaged paint beneath. Here’s more detail from Amanda about the parameters of the samples on an RPM blog post from 2008.

The Meg Saligman mural in Philadelphia is called Common Threads (1998), and when RPM assessed it in 2009 it was extremely faded. The artist didn’t want to repaint it, as she felt she would change it too much. Together with RPM and Winterthur Art Conservation faculty and students, the artist agreed to apply a coating of Golden MSA – but they had to get an exception from the EPA to use it on such a large scale. Applied after surface cleaning, this coating resaturated the colors significantly. They also then did some retinting with Sher-Cryl (Sherwin williams acrylic) and pigments (envirotint?) over the coating, then applied another layer of the Golden coating.

A key point is to work with muralists to prevent some of these problems from the get-go. Amanda noted that when doing this it’s important to address the bottom line – money – and emphasize that in the long run it is cheaper to use better products first rather than having to repaint or conserve a mural later.

She ended with a summary of other key points to remember when working with murals/muralists:

  • Get involved with the community
  • North facing walls are best
  • Clean and prime the wall first (amazing but often not done!)
  • Choose the right palette – no fluorescents, they fade fast!
  • Use quality paints
  • Use a coating layers
  • Use a UV absorber
  • Create a maintenance and monitoring plan
  • Consult with conservators and scientists when in doubt

 

AIC’s 40th Annual Meeting-Outreach in Paintings Session: The Dessemination of Information Outside and the Field and Within, May 10, “Conservation, Engineering and Materials — Reinventing the Wheel?” by William Wei

William Wei, Senior Conservation Scientist at the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, gave a compelling and entertaining presentation about how art conservators and historians and the scientific community: scientists, chemists and material engineers communicate with each other.  Bill used a very personal style (walking onto the floor and just talking to us rather than standing at the podium) and humor (like the hysterically screaming man graphic) to make the point that, many times, by not doing a little research into the mechanism that we are describing and the proper terminology used we end up unnecessarily reinventing the wheel, that is, wasting a lot of time.

 Wei, a mechanical engineer with a PhD in metals with 15 years of experience in conservation science focused on the perceptions, myths and misconceptions that arise in that age-old, left brain vs. right brain breakdown in communication between the scientific and artistic communities, “What are they talking about?”  While a conservator may be choosing a fabric for a loose liner he/she might consider weight or weave while an engineer will be considering factors such as the thermal expansion coefficient, that is, using mechanical properties terminology. The conservator may not distinguish the difference between stress and strain, tension and stiffness or have an understanding of what level of vibration is allowable.   The engineer comes to the table, however, with a clear understanding of engineering facts regarding mechanical properties: stress is not the same as force, stress & strain are related, tension is not stiffness and the effects of vibration are cumulative.

 The author was not so much chiding the conservation community for ignorance of material science and testing as pleading with us to do enough homework to formulate the right question.  He used several examples to make his point. Two metal rods: the microphone stand and a pen…which is stronger? The answer depends on mechanical properties.  Stress = Force/area.  Size doesn’t matter!  The force required to break the stand might be less than that required to break the pen.  When testing adhesives, how does the application method affect the results? Are there bubbles, for example?  Can you simply sew the slashed Barnett Newman painting, CATHEDRA back together? No. You need the stiffness of a lining and the lining fabrics have to have similar stiffness: Stiffness=Stress/strain. Tension does not equal stiffness.

Although most painting conservators have an intuitive sense of these principles, I believe the author’s point was that we often do not articulate our needs using the correct terminology.  We may even use elaborate mechanisms or equipment to measure vibration or dust accumulation when simpler, more straightforward and practical models would suffice.

 We need to talk, the author emphasized, reinvent as we learn and redefine words.  He stated some guidelines to accomplish these goals.

 1) Nothing is simple but it can be simply be explained and understood

2) Conservators must be willing to learn and read about problem

3) Engineers & Material Scientists must be willing to translate

4) We all must be aware of language; we must be bilingual

How  does the wheel work?  Do we really need a new wheel?

Wei went on to describe some of the pitfalls in terminology misuse of abuse.  In some cases nano is relevant.  However in his example of climate change, is
a change of 1-2 degrees over 50 years relevant to artwork as it is definitely is relevant to an increase in climatic disasters?

Finally, Wei pondered whether in the fields of conservation, engineering & materials, are we creating value?   I might take slight exception to the author’s notion that restoration is recreating art, as it is but, as most of us learned, early  on, the reason we call our field conservation  is to emphasize the preservative nature of our work, not the remaking of art.  I agree that, clearly, we do create value by increasing our understanding of objects cultural significance through scientific research.  Wei’s call to arms was inspirational.  There are solutions looking for problems, we just need to ask the right questions.  In so doing, we need to have awareness of different professional backgrounds; communication and understanding leads to better solutions.  Outreach, he said, “is not just broadcasting, it’s receiving too [there needs to be] a Socratic dialog.”

40th Annual Meeting: Outreach in Paintings Session: The Dissemination of Information Outside the Field and Within, May 10, “Bridging the Divide–Conversing with Allied Professionals” by Michael O’Malley

Michael O’Malley gave a fascinating talk about describing the investigation he undertook on a painting he had treated in 1998, which resulted in an attribution.   His determination to uncover the mysteries of the posthumous Portrait of Mére Catherine de Saint-Augustin, a 17th Century Carmelite nun beatified in 1989 was piqued by hints given by materials analysis undertaken during the treatment of the painting; it suggested a good opportunity to the conservator to open a conservation dialog with art historians.  As no interest was evident in the subject in the years since the treatment, Michael later took it upon himself to do a little digging of his own, “I’m not an art historian but I can read”, he humorously, if modestly, stated!

Michael began his talk with an overview of the Conservation Center of Quebec which sounds like a superb facility which appears to have a great community outreach and interaction with allied professionals including training, tours and bilingual publications.

Michael described the treatment of the painting, the article he wrote for the
Journal of Canadian Art History, the analysis that was conducted at CCI and the
additional research he completed to arrive at his attribution.

The unsigned and undated portrait of the nun, according to oral tradition, had been painted at her deathbed and had been attributed to Hugh Pommier (1636- 1686) a priest and artist that lived in the colony at the time. Mére Catherine de Saint-Augustin (1632-1688) was revered figure in New France and was considered to be the founder of the Catholic Church there. She was first a nurse then the keeper and director general of the hospital of the French colony.

The painting had undergone at least two restorations in the past, one by a nun who had been charged with the task of making Catherine look, “younger with a more cheerful appearance”! The painting had been glue lined, heavily overpainted and coated with a natural resin varnish.  The treatment included lining reversal and relining, varnish and overpaint removal and loss compensation.  After cleaning, the face had renewed subtlety; evident cracquelure, the original greyish-blue tone.

Stylistically the painting appeared to be of European origin. Eminent art historian Gerard Morisset Gerard Morisset (1898-1973) placed painting in an inventory of paintings in Quebec parishes and churches.  As early as 1936 he had noted a stylistic resemblance to works by Claude Francois aka, Frère Luc (1614-1685), a student of Simon Vouet and an influential artist in New France.  The artist had returned to his mother country, however by the date of the nun’s death.  Morisset saw the painting in the 1950’s at which time the background had already been overpainted.  In 1960 Morisset had made a connection with a painting of St. Claire in an altarpiece by Frère Luc.  He saw similarities with paintings of the two nuns and other similarities in the naturalistic qualities of other faces by Frère Luc as well as similarities in the treatment of the landscape elements.

Cross section and pigment analysis conducted at CCI by scientists Marie Claude Corbiel and Elizabeth Moffatt revealed a double ground layer, consistent with grounds used in France in the 17th Century  (The author referred to  Elaine Du Val’s publication on red grounds in 17 C France.) and  lead tin yellow which placed the painting prior to 1750.

O’Malley did further study of 17th C Carmelite portraits. He learned that Catherine’s death was described in the annuals of the day.  Because the date of
her death was not consistent with Frère Luc having been documented as being in
New France, he hypothesize that the painting was not, in fact,  a true portrait but a commemoration; his attribution, when published, was well received.

Michael O’Malley’s work nicely demonstrates a situation when a professional must “cross the aisle” to an allied profession when information gleaned in our work demands to be researched and shared to the benefit of all.

AIC’s 40th Annual Meeting, Objects and Research and Technical Studies Joint Session, May 9. “The Use of Agar as a Solvent Gel in Objects Conservation” by Cindy Lee Scott

Perhaps better known as a medium used in biological studies, agar is gaining traction in the conservation profession as an ingredient for building poultices. The material, a combination of the polysaccharides agarose and agaropectin derived from the cell walls of an alge, is widely available, both in a highly purified form through laboratory supply houses and in a food grade form. It is used as a rigid gel to make poultices for flat surfaces or as more liquid sol-gel for three dimensional surfaces.

Cindy Lee Scott’s study of this material and possibilities for its use in removing shellac from ceramic surfaces was inspired by work using agar gels to clean outdoor plaster busts presented in 2010 by Paolo Cremnesi and published by Anzani et al. In their work, deionized water was the primary ingredient in their poultices, but Cindy Lee wondered if solvents and other cleaning agents could be added to these mixtures to extend their versatility and how these additions might change the stability and working properties of the gel.

After reviewing various properties of the material, particularly the manner in which the porosity of an agar poultice could be modified by altering its concentration, and then the  manner in which the gel is typically prepared, used and removed from a substrate (it peels off the substrate cleanly), Cindy Lee presented her own work, conducted in two phases.

The first phase of her work, a component of her thesis as part of her studies at the UCLA/Getty program, involved exploring agar as a gelling material for various cleaning agents on terracotta test tiles coated with a kaolinite-type slip with the goal of finding new ways to removing shellac from previous restored ceramics. She tested agar sol-gels mixed with ethanol, acetone and 5M sodium hydroxide, alone and in combination. She looked at efficacy of cleaning and clearance using visual analysis using a binocular microscope, UV-fluorescence microscopy, and FTIR spectroscopy.

She found that these agar gels performed beyond expectations particularly in comparison with other options tested for that study. She found that agar sol-gels had excellent working properties when they were mixed with ethanol and sodium hydroxide and had good clearance from the surface. Clearance improved for gels with a lower concentration of agar when Japanese paper was used as an intermediary layer.

The second phase of Cindy Lee’s work, undertaken during her internship at the Museums of New Mexico, extended the number of cleaning agents added to agar gels. Additives included solvents, surfactants, chelating agents, oxidizers, and acids. She noted working properties of each mixture, color changes to the gel that might lead to staining, and stability of the resulting gel. In this phase, access to analytical equipment was limited, so her analysis was generally limited to visual observation. Additionally, these mixtures were applied to plaster tiles coated with various materials including alizarin dye, shellac, various paints, PVA emulsion, and soil and artificially aged to test cleaning and clearance.

To summarize very quickly, as far as adding solvents go, best results for workability were achieved with ethanol, then Stoddard Solvent followed by acetone and xylenes. She noted that solvents added in too high a concentration could cause the gel to dissociate. Good working properties were also noted for gels made with the chelating agents, oxidizers, acids and bases tested. The surfactants tested caused complete dissociation of the gel. As far as cleaning efficacy, it appears that gels tested had a more difficult time removing dye and smaller particulates, but with regard to smaller particulates, concentration of agar within the gel appears to have a great influence. She found that efficacy could be improved by altering concentrations of agar and solvent, the temperature of the poultice on application, the length of application and number of applications of the poultice.

Cindy Lee concluded her presentation with  pros and cons of using agar-based solvent gels for objects conservation. Since she was kind enough to provide me with her paper and slide deck to help me write this post, I will share them here (if you click on the image it expands):

In short, I found her presentation to be an excellent introduction to this material and I can’t wait to experiment with it myself. It was also excellent to see the kind of simple testing we all do regularly in our own labs presented in a RATS/OSG session, and I look forward to seeing this work published. I don’t presently use Agar, but her presentation has encouraged me to do some experiments to see if this material would be appropriate to use in my own practice.

AIC’s 40th Annual Meeting, Book and Paper Session, May 10, “True Love Forever: Preserving the Legacy of Norman ‘Sailor Jerry’ Collins”

Presented by Samantha Sheesley, Paper Conservator at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts

“Good work ain’t cheap and cheap work ain’t good.” This is one of many pearls of wisdom from Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins, a colorful man and visionary artist whose unique style (a hybrid of American design and Japanese colors) and innovation (he developed the first non-fugitive purple tattoo ink and designed the magnum needle) made him the most important figure in American tattoo art. The CCAHA recently undertook conservation treatment on Collins’ flash art, acetate stencils, and preliminary drawings, which are currently on exhibition in London.

Collins was a sailor in the Navy and it was while he was stationed in the Pacific that he befriended Japanese tattoo masters and developed his love of tattooing, sailing history, and Asian philosophy. A feature documentary about Sailor Jerry was produced in 2007; Sheesley played the documentary’s trailer as part of her presentation, which I really enjoyed – it was nice to hear Collins speaking in his own voice about his work and to see more images of his art.

Collins longed for the day when tattooing would be respected as art and he was committed to using high-quality materials. His flash art, the drawings posted on the wall of tattoo parlors for customers to choose from, were done with fine inks and watercolors on cotton wove paper; the colors on these drawings remain vibrant and the flash art required little treatment beyond removal of pressure sensitive tape from the back. The acetate stencils, which were used to transfer designs onto the customer’s body, are artifacts of a lost practice, since these stencils are created digitally now. Creating acetate stencils was typically the first task of a tattoo apprentice.  Treatment of the stencils included surface cleaning and mechanical removal of adhesive residue. The preliminary drawings, custom designs, and sketches are crayon and charcoal rubbings and drawings on thin tracing paper.  These were quite fragile and required extensive mending. All of the art was housed in sealed packages for safe travel, storage, and display in preparation for worldwide exhibition.

This project provided many opportunities for outreach, including news articles, exhibitions, presentations, and videos, that connect with a wide range of audiences.  For conservators, Sheesley’s talk was an opportunity to learn more about the art of tattooing – it’s history, technique, and materials. She has also had the chance to speak with tattoo enthusiasts, who are very interested in and knowledgeable about the art, and teach them about conservation treatment and how to care for their designs.

W. Grant & Sons, the company that now owns the Sailor Jerry name (which is used to market a variety of products including a popular spiced rum), recently opened a venue in London called Hotel Street, named after the location of Collins’ tattoo parlor in Honolulu. The Sailor Jerry art is currently on exhibition at Hotel Street and Sheesely traveled to London to speak about the conservation treatment. W. Grant & Sons also has a collection of letters and manuscripts in the Sailor Jerry archives, which will soon make their way to the CCAHA for treatment.

AIC’s 40th Annual Meeting – Conservation works at the Templo Pintado de Pachacamac, Gianella Pacheco Neyra, Museo de Sitio de Pachacamac

This talk presented how the works of restoration and conservation in the Inca, 1000 years old Temple of Pachacamac were conducted. The importance of this temple relies in the fact that is the only temple with painted designs in its walls besides the fact that it was one out of the two oracles in Inca times.

The main guidelines for this project were 2: maximum research and minimum intervention.

Research stage focused on several aspects:

  • The record of the structure of the building
  • The recuperation of partially erased designs from the mural paintings, as well as a research of the painting instruments that were used for the elaboration of these murals.
  • The analysis and identification of most of the pigments
  • An stratigraphic analysis
  • The record of environmental conditions and
  • The evaluation of the materials previously used in conservation treatments

Regarding the interventions they were focused on the conservation of:

  • The walls that were cleaned, hydrated and consolidated.
  • The paintings
  • The plaster which was consolidated with cactus gel recovering ancient Inca techniques
  • The adobe blocks which were consolidated and repositioned to its original position
  • The installation of roofing and wind breakers that are made out of Bamboo. This material was carefully chosen because of its weight to harm the less possible the structure of the temple.

What I appreciated the most of the work of Miss Pacheco is the respect of original techniques employed by Incas, which are sustainable, and that up to now had proven to be effective, and unlike to promote microorganism colonization as one might think. Her work raise some interesting questions about the green pigment used on paintings,  and its identification is still to be made. I will definitely follow up the progress of these works at the Pachacamac Inca Temple with a lot of interest.

AIC’s 40th Annual Meeting, Wooden Artifacts Session, May 10. “Ornamental Opulence: The French Régence Frame in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Cynthia Moyer

It is not unusual to find extraordinary examples of the carver and gilder’s art surrounding important paintings in collections all over the world. And while the provenance, subject, and materials of the paintings have been considered by curators, art historians, and conservators, equal attention has not always accorded to the work of art surrounding the painting, and so I was delighted there were two papers considering picture frames in this session.

In this paper, Cynthia Moyer, the first designated picture frame conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, shared her investigation of a French Régence frame, dated approximately 1720, which frames Atalanta and Meleagar by Peter Paul Rubens,c. 1616. Both painting and frame had been in storage for over 40 years as a result of their poor condition. As the painting was conserved, Cynthia studied the frame from a technical point of view, stabilized its damaged ornament, and repaired and compensated losses.

She observed that the frame had originally had a landscape orientation rather than its present portrait orientation based on the nature and position of the carvings, and suggests that it may have been a royal commission based on the quality of the ornament. As would be typical of the guild system in which such a frame would have been made, the frame was unsigned and its construction is typical of the period. Cynthia described the stylistic characteristics of frames of the period to help place where the ornament is situated within. The frame’s sight edge had been modified to accommodate the painting and had an added build-up on the back which obscured any marks that might have been found there.

Radiographs were taken to understand how the carving was applied. Although the resulting image was difficult to read, they did confirm that the frame had been enlarged along the sides. Cross sections of the gilding layers were examined under the microscope and using scanning electron microscopy. Microscopy revealed a simple glue layer over the water gilding. No toning was evident in the sections examined. Hematite and carbon black were identified in the bole layers in SEM, and the gold leaf was found to contain less than 1% each of silver and copper.

After describing the conservation treatment undertaken on the frame, Cynthia went on to consider how this frame, which most likely related to architectural moldings, came to be associated with the Rubens. The circumstances of this French Régence frame stands in contrast to the one presented in the talk given by MaryJo Lelyveld earlier in the same session, which was commissioned for the painting it contains. Although curatorial files for the Rubens record an extensive history in and out of private hands, dealers, and auction houses, Cynthia could find no images of the painting in its frame nor any descriptions. There were many opportunities to reframe the painting over its lifetime, and it was not unusual for frames to be replaced and thrown away on the whim of a collector. It remains unclear where this frame came from and when or how it came to be associated with the Rubens.

Museum docents report that visitors are often curious about frames on paintings. A study of frames helps flesh out the story of the people who owned the paintings and how they lived. Important frames, their history and the manner in which they were constructed need to be published more often so that their context can be better understood as well as any underlying messages that may be communicated when a painting is reframed.