For many years I have been compiling a bibliography of works of fiction which in some manner deal with conservation and restoration. Quite often these works are mysteries that feature conservators whose lives are quite removed from the reality of the conservators I know. The protagonist of Georges Perec\u2019s \u201cPortrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere\u201d is a conservator turned forger turned murderer whose life is likewise quite removed (I hope) from that of \u00a0the average conservator. However, one detail in the description of his training in conservation stunned me: \u201cGaspard Winckler, trained at the Ecole du Louvre, holding a diploma in Painting Conservation from New York University and \u00a0the Metropolitan Museum, New York,\u2026\u201d
\nWhile the novel was not published until 2012\u2014decades after Perec\u2019s death–it is believed that he wrote the final version \u00a0in 1959 just before he left France for a job in Tunisia. In 1959, the NYU conservation program was just forming its first class of students. Unless Perec was prescient, the program must have been well advertised internationally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For many years I have been compiling a bibliography of works of fiction which in some manner deal with conservation and restoration. Quite often these works are mysteries that feature conservators whose lives are quite removed from the reality of the conservators I know. The protagonist of Georges Perec\u2019s \u201cPortrait of a Man Known as … Continue reading “Was the novelist prescient or had he heard about the opening of the conservation program?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}