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March 2007: Looking Back:
Three Conservation Profiles
For our March Project Profile, the Institute is taking a
look back at three recipients of our Conservation Project
Support grants. As the details of IMLS’ Connecting
to Collections initiative unfold, we want to shine a spotlight
on some of the important conservation work that the Institute
has funded in the past. Enjoy the following three profiles:
Gilbert Stuart Masterpieces
Conserved with IMLS Grant
Bowdoin College Museum of Art - Originally posted January
2003
The Art of the Book: Preserving
Islamic Manuscripts at the Walters Walters Art
Museum - Originally posted November 2001
Keeping Bugs in Their Place
with Help from IMLS
Science Museum of Minnesota - Originally posted June 2000
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Gilbert
Stuart Masterpieces Conserved with IMLS Grant |
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Bowdoin
College Museum of Art - Originally posted January
2003
Grant: 2000 Conservation Project Support
Grant, $6,662.
Contact: Katy Kline, Director
Bowdoin College Museum of Art
9400 College Station
Brunswick, Maine 04011-8494
Telephone: 207-725-3275
Fax: 207-725-3762
E-mail:artmuseum@bowdoin.edu
Web site: http://www.bowdoin.edu/art-museum |
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For nearly 200 years, visitors to
the Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine (25 miles from Portland)
have been able to enjoy the stunning portraits of Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison. Executed circa 1805 by American portraitist
Gilbert Stuart and bequeathed to the college in 1811 by its
founder, James Bowdoin III, the paintings form the centerpiece
of the college museum's collection of colonial and federal
portraiture. The Jefferson painting has gained enormous national
exposure through widespread reproduction in history books,
on posters, and even on a postage stamp.
Now, as the museum plans for a major renovation that will
update and expand exhibit spaces and create a more stable
environment with a full climate control system, the portraits
are receiving a thorough conservation treatment. With financial
assistance from an IMLS Conservation Project Support (CPS)
grant, the museum is able to address important conservation
concerns with the help of the Williamstown Art Conservation
Center in Massachusetts. Once the paintings have received
treatment, they will be stable enough to occasionally travel
to major exhibitions in distant cities and will be in a condition
to better tell the stories of the gifted American painter
who created them and of the historic figures he depicted.
Paintings with a Purpose
According to Bowdoin College Museum of Art Director Katy
Kline, the paintings were commissioned to fulfill an important
role for the young government of the United States. James
Bowdoin III was President Thomas Jefferson's minister plenipotentiary
to Spain and France. He commissioned the portraits with the
intent of taking them with him to Europe to introduce these
leaders of the new nation to the diplomats he would be receiving.
As it turned out, however, Bowdoin returned to the United
States before the paintings were completed.
Bowdoin had turned to the new nation's preeminent portraitist,
Gilbert Stuart, for this important project. Stuart was born
of humble beginnings in 1755 in North Kingston, Rhode Island.
The son of an immigrant Scot who operated a snuff mill, the
young Stuart showed an early aptitude for painting and received
his first formal training from Scottish artist Cosmo Alexander,
whom he accompanied to Edinburgh in 1771. He returned home
after the death of the older painter, only to travel again
to Europe on the eve of the American Revolution in 1775. In
London, he worked as an assistant to Benjamin West and quickly
developed his signature style and made many useful social
contacts. In 1793, Stuart returned to America and established
a successful career.
Stuart's style reflected both his training in Europe and
the sensibilities of Federal America. The Bowdoin College
Museum of Art describes it thus:
Stuart's mature style had its origins in the dramatic brushwork
of eighteenth-century British exemplars such as Sir Joshua
Reynolds. However, upon his return to America his portraits
become more sober and place greater emphasis on the sitter's
personality; yet they continue to express the dash and color
of their British counterparts. The successful syntheses of
republican frankness and European elegance led American critics
to hail Stuart as the preeminent portraitist of his day, a
title which he arguably still holds.
Modern Treatment for Historic Paintings
Kline finds that directing the conservation of such "venerable
and important treasures" as the Stuart Jefferson and
Madison paintings is both "exciting and a bit scary."
These paintings are so significant they are on a list of paintings
that cannot leave the college without approval from the Trustees.
She enlisted the help of Thomas Branchick, Director and Painting
Conservator of the Williamstown Art Conservation Center, a
nonprofit founded in 1977 by a consortium of museums and historical
societies (including the Bowdoin College Museum of Art) in
the Northeast to treat paintings, photographs, objects, furniture,
and works of art on paper.
Surprisingly, the main priority for treatment of the nearly
200-year-old oil paintings was to undo a conservation treatment
the paintings received in 1967. The cause for concern was
what conservators call a "dramatically enhanced weave
impression." This means that the canvas threads, which
vary in their individual widths, became too clearly visible
from the presentation side of the paintings.
Records show that a conservator in 1967 lined the paintings
because they were at risk of flaking. The lining he used was
linen with an aluminum interleaf affixed to the back of the
painting canvas with wax resin as the adhesive. According
to Branchick, the flat surface of the aluminum pushed out
the threads from the back side of the canvas, flattening the
topography of the back of the canvas and creating the enhanced
weave impression on the front. While Branchick has occasionally
during his 25 years of conservation work seen and corrected
this condition, he said he had never seen such an extreme
case of enhanced weave impression before.
Branchick is in the process of removing old adhesives from
the paintings and relining them with linen and a thermo-plastic
with the tradename BEVA 371. The paintings have been cleaned;
the surface dirt and grime have been removed; the varnish
has been removed; and once they are both relined, they will
each receive a saturating coat of natural resin varnish and
a final coat of synthetic varnish.
Kinder and Gentler Conservation
"The changes to the conservation discipline over the
past 40 years have been dramatic," said Kline, who has
been a curator and museum director for most of that time.
Indeed, Branchick said, "Half of what we do at the conservation
center is undoing what was done with the best of intentions
in the past." He said, "The conservation profession
has become kinder and gentler. Affixing a total lining to
the back is not something we would do today."
According to Branchick, new conservation approaches are greatly
assisted by today's technology and a greater choice of materials.
"There are so many other adhesives that a conservator
can use, and so many different options, as far as a method
of attachment (for linings): the degree of pressure, the amount
of temperature, the choice of fabric," he said. He described
silicon rubber matting that cushions the paintings on work
surfaces and new sensors that can be used to ensure that the
painting is not heated irregularly. "Technology is really
aiding us so we can be exact about what we are doing,"
he said. "Precision is about having the ability to control
that precision."
An even more important advancement in conservation according
to Branchick, is the greater documentation conservators make
when planning and executing treatments. The records from the
1967 treatment plan described the linen and wax, for instance,
but omitted any mention of an aluminum interleaf. This led
Branchick to speculate whether the museum was even consulted
about that aspect of the treatment. He said, "a conservator
now, adhering to the American Institution for Conservation
code of ethics, will get a lot more detailed about what they
are doing, why they are doing it, and the materials used."
Clients are consulted, and conservation reports include photographs.
For Branchick, the conservation process involves fitting
together the pieces of a puzzle, a puzzle of the physical
history of an object. As the Stuart paintings have been examined,
they have raised new questions about their history and answered
unasked questions as well. The work that Branchick and the
staff of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art are doing today
will ensure that information is readily available to the caretakers
of the paintings for the next 200 years.
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The
Art of the Book: Preserving Islamic Manuscripts at the Walters |
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Walters Art Museum - Originally posted November
2001
Grant: 1997 Conservation Project Support
Grant, $50,000
Website: http://thewalters.org
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Contact:
Abigail Quandt
Head of Book and Paper Conservation
aquandt@thewalters.org
Priscilla Anderson
Collections Conservator
Baker Library 123-I
Harvard Business School
panderson@hbs.edu
Marianna Shreve Simpson
Independent Scholar
simpson@jhu.edu
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With the reopening of its Centre
Street building last month, the Walters Art Museum of Baltimore
unveiled a reinstallation of the building's permanent exhibits
that provides beautiful new contexts for already stunning
pieces of art. With four levels of new galleries, the building
showcases the museum's extraordinary ancient, medieval, early
Renaissance, and Islamic art collections.
Among the many improvements to the Walters' permanent exhibits,
is the first ever display of a selection of rare Islamic manuscripts
in cases with objects of similar origin, giving visitors more
context for understanding their artistic and cultural value.
Before an IMLS Conservation Project Support grant was awarded
to stabilize the condition of the manuscripts, the museum
could not consider such a display. The sensitivity of manuscripts
to light requires limiting the light levels and the duration
of a manuscript exhibit. With a large--now stable--Islamic
manuscript collection to draw upon, Walters curators were
able to develop a plan to rotate the manuscripts in order
to limit their time on exhibit to three months.
A Premier Collection
The Walters' highly regarded 840-piece manuscript collection
includes 236 Near Eastern volumes, calligraphies, paintings,
and bindings. "The collection is notable because of its
size and the variety of titles," said Marianna Shreve
Simpson, former Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator
of Islamic Art at the Walters. "It is the largest collection
of bound Islamic manuscripts in any art museum in the United
States," she said. In addition to more than two dozen
volumes of the Koran, the holy book of Islam, the Walters
collection contains numerous literary, scientific, and historical
texts, many with fine illumination and illustrations. The
collection covers the full expanse of Muslim history, from
its formative phase (8th to 10th centuries) through modern
times (18th to 19th centuries). It also represents the main
cultures of the Islamic world: Arab, Persian, Turkish, and
Indian.
While the holdings are not unique, they reflect the interest
of the museum's founder, Henry Walters, said Simpson, who
currently serves as Paul Mellon Senior Fellow at the National
Gallery of Art. "The Islamic collection fits with Henry
Walter's overall interest in beautiful books," she said,
"books as works of art." According to Simpson, it
includes such notables as a beautiful manuscript from a famous
14th century multi-volume set of the Koran made in Egypt for
an amir (commander) of the Mamluk dynasty and several volumes
made for Akbar and other Mogul emperors of India from the
16th and 17th centuries illustrated by the leading Mogul court
artists.
Eastern Challenges
The starting point for the conservation effort, said Priscilla
Anderson, the rare book conservator hired to supervise the
project, was an earlier survey of the entire Islamic collection
conducted under a different grant. "The collection showed
a lot of variety in terms of condition," she said. While
some manuscripts required minor work, such as repairs to papertears
and rehousing. Others required complete disbinding and reassembly
or the microscope-aided work of paint consolidation. The grant
would eventually cover work on roughly 100 manuscripts.
The Islamic manuscripts presented the conservators with a
number of challenges because they are constructed with materials
and techniques that differ significantly from their Western
counterparts. The first difference, said Anderson, is the
type of paper, which is often burnished, or rubbed smooth
with a hard stone.
The burnished surface is shinier than the matte surfaces of
the handmade papers used for mending, so the conservators
had to find an effective method of blending in their repair
materials.
The inks and pigments used in making the Near East manuscripts
originated from different sources than their Western counterparts.
Iron gall ink, commonly used in the West, was also used in
very early Islamic manuscripts. Later manuscripts have a carbon-based
ink, an ink that yields a darker text, but is also water-soluble
and can smudge. Great care must be taken to reduce the moisture
that comes into contact with these carbon-based inks. Traditional
preparation of the paper can in some manuscripts make the
inks and pigments
prone to flake off of the page. The treatment the conservators
used to address flaking paint and ink is a paint consolidation
with a gelatin applied in ultrasonic mist. For this highly
uncommon and specialized treatment, conservators rely on surgical
microscopes to identify areas of potential paint loss.
Tough Decisions
Abigail Quandt, the Walters' senior conservator of manuscripts
and rare books, was ultimately responsible for deciding how
much treatment each piece received given the grant's funding
limits and time constraints. One item, known by its accession
number W.659, had been in such poor shape, that prior to treatment
conservators had not even allowed its box to be opened. The
manuscript illustrated one of the most dramatic restorations
and typified some of the difficult decisions the conservators
faced when deciding treatments. Number W.659 is a secular
text on natural history. Though not a priority piece for study
orexhibition, it was in dire need of treatment. Many of its
pages were falling out of the bound volume, parts of pages
were missing, and the cover was no longer usable. The manuscript
was in need of complete disbinding and reassembly. The job
needed the full time attention of two conservators for nearly
three months. Of special concern was the copper-based pigment
used on each page in a border around the text. Often found
in Islamic texts, the pigment becomes more acidic over time
and eats right through the paper. In this case it had caused
the separation of a significant number of text panels from
the pages.
Associate paper conservator Elissa O'Loughlin was involved
with the selection and preparation of new paper for end leaves
and mending. She described the decision of how to treat the
corrosive copper-based ink as one that would have long term
ramifications and one for which manuscript conservators around
the world have no ready answers. She solicited advice from
conservators treating similar problems in Germany to determine
a course of action based on scientific studies. After careful
consideration of all options and potential outcomes, the conservators
devised their plan for treatment.
Collaborative Expertise
Expertise needed to determine conservation treatment was
often sought from non-conservation experts said Priscilla
Anderson. In one case, she consulted with a world-renown calligrapher,
Mohamed Zakariya, an American who converted to Islam and who
has been practicing calligraphy (a highly revered skill since
copying the Koran is an act of piety) for more than 20 years.
The conservators also consulted with a Turkish paper marbler,
Jake Benson, again in an effort to understand how the manuscripts
were originally made.
"These materials are composite objects. They are made
of leather, paper, varnish, paint, ink, and cloth," said
Anderson. "What was wonderful about the Walters is that
I could draw on the expertise of paintings conservators and
objects conservators." She said, "For instance,
I had never worked with lacquered furniture, but the objects
conservators helped me deal with repairs to cracks in layers
of varnish on the binding, which has much in common with furniture
varnish."
Art of the Book
Anderson recognizes the special nature of the objects she
conserves. "One of the really special things about working
on a book is that because it is meant to be held, it has to
move. It has to move for it to be used in the way it was intended.
It was engineered to withstand the moving of the spine and
the bending of the pages. This is different than a painting
that hangs on a wall or a sculpture that sits in a garden,
and it has implications for a conservator. The conserved book
has to be sturdy enough for it to be handled."
Simpson agrees: "The last thing one wants when turning
the pages of a manuscript is to watch in horror as pieces
of paint flake off." She added, "The conservators
corrected the weaknesses and deficiencies and made it possible
for me and my colleagues to open manuscripts safely and turn
the pages safely without worrying about further damage. Now
the public has the chance to really share these wonderful
works and the culture that they represent. Making manuscripts
and culturally significant holdings available to a wider public
audience is really the goal of any museum." |
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Keeping
Bugs in Their Place with Help from IMLS |
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Science
Museum of Minnesota - Originally posted June 2000
Grant: 1999 Conservation Project support
grant, $59,933 - including $9,933 for education component;
Matching Funds: $91,286
Contact: Gretchen Anderson
Science Museum of Minnesota
120 West Kellogg Boulevard
Saint Paul, MN 55102
Phone: (651) 221-4764
Gretcha@smm.org
Website: http://www.smm.org
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Gretchen Anderson thinks a lot
about insects. At the Science Museum of Minnesota, where she
works as a conservator, pests are one of the many threats
to the safe storage of the biology collections. She says,
“My job is to make sure specimens are preserved in the
best way possible. I conduct 'risk assessment,' looking at
the environment, the temperature, relative humidity, light
levels, pests, and other factors that can lead to deterioration.”
Until the museum completed its move into a new building situated
on a 10-acre site in December of 1999, the Science Museum
of Minnesota was located in a pair of smaller buildings in
downtown St. Paul. The museum had 3,350 square feet of central
collections storage at the previous facilities and was greatly
overcrowded. In preparation for the move, the conservation
staff helped design a state-of-the-art 11,240-square foot
collections storage space and applied for a series of grants
for new cabinetry.
In 1998, the museum used an IMLS Conservation Project Support
grant to purchase new high-quality cabinets for the museum's
collections of mollusks and bird study skins to keep them
in a more stable environment and safer from pests. The grant
also supported a conservation education component, which was
used to purchase video equipment to enhance the museum's visible
labs.
The bird study skins and mollusk specimens were formerly
housed in 35-year-old metal cabinets with drawers of oak.
The cabinets posed two potential hazards for the collections.
The cabinets' exposure to pesticides over the years left a
buildup of a residue that can interact with objects, and the
oak wood of the drawers themselves produces acidic vapors
that can damage shells. The new cabinets are all steel and
have powder coat enamel. They will be integrated into a high-tech
mobile storage system (cabinets on rails) for space-efficiency.
Only five percent of the museum's collection is on display
at any given time. Like other museums with systematic collections,
the remaining natural history specimens are available for
scholarly research. Scientists, such as ornithologists, mammalogists,
and entomologists, use the biology collection, as well as
artists and other researchers.
Bird study skins enable researchers to gather different kinds
of data about species, says museum biologist Richard Oehlenschlager:
“With a range of specimens, a person studying species
variation can look at patterns in color and size. He or she
can measure specific traits that vary within and between species,
such as color, wing length, beak length, tarsus length, and
tail length. And look at age and growth development. A lot
of variation exists…. Some variations are subtle enough
that they are determined only with detailed measurement or
by some direct side-by-side comparison.” From a theoretical
standpoint, these careful comparisons help scientists understand
how life on earth has unfolded and changed over time. From
a practical standpoint, they contribute to a multitude of
applied uses from the conservation of natural resources, to
the study of pathology to save people's lives.
Fresh water mussels can be used as environmental indicators
by looking at changes in their distribution and correlating
their decline with changes in water quality. Museum researchers
are currently studying the heavy chemical absorption into
shells collected from nearby bodies of water, such as the
St. Croix River. Like the rings in a tree trunk, the shells
tell of their exposure to chemicals at various stages of growth,
allowing researchers to time-date the occurrence of heavy
toxins in the water. Providing one of the few clues to the
changes in water quality over the years, the mollusks enable
researchers to better understand the connection between water
pollution and the loss of habitat to ultimately help save
native species from extinction.
Oehlenschlager and Anderson are eager to talk to people about
the work in biology and conservation that happens behind the
public exhibit spaces at the museum. For many years the museum
has had a visible lab, a room adjacent to the exhibition hall
where visitors can see some of the many ways a specimen is
studied and preserved.
IMLS is particularly interested in finding new ways to bring
the work of conservators into public view. In fact, Anderson's
grant included funds to add a public education component to
her project. Anderson plans to use these funds to develop
videos and improve the museum's new visible labs.
One of her video ideas has, for the starring role, a subject
that is sure to delight (or repulse) any curious youngster-the
dermestid colony. Most natural history museums, if they have
active bone collecting, or osteology, have a dermestid colony.
Also known as carpet beetles, larder beetles, hide beetles,
and odd beetles, they are the bugs that finish the work of
the biologist to remove any flesh from the bones that are
kept in the osteology collection.
For her part as a conservator, Anderson makes an effort to
overcome her slight bug phobia: “The dermestid are fairly
disgusting, but without them….we would probably be ear-deep
in corpses - dead things.” She says that just as a beautiful
flower is considered a weed in a vegetable garden where it
does not belong, the dermestid can be destructive in the general
collections if not contained:
The dermestid, in its niche, is fabulous. You move it into
your house, or into your museum, uncontrolled, and it's a
nightmare. Once it discovers a food source it will go through
it. It makes it very frightening for a museum. It eats fur,
it eats wool, it loves feathers, skin, horn, anything made
out of protein. It is the best, safest way for the bone to
get cleaned, but you've got to keep the little critters contained.
What I want to do is a time-lapse video of a bird skin or
some feathers being eaten by the dermestid colony. It's what
they do naturally, but this is the kind of damage they can
do.
When Anderson talks to people about general conservation
issues and techniques, such as keeping light levels low in
the exhibition hall or protecting a collection from pest infestation,
she says she is building support and understanding for the
role of conservation in a museum. She says, “I feel
like we can offer the public a service….We can get the
message across. When people understand the issues that conservators
are working with…there's a better understanding of what
we see in a museum, and there's a better understanding of
what we have to go through to preserve it.”
Update (March 2007):
The Bird Skin and Mollusk project happened just about
the time that the Science Museum of Minnesota moved to the
new facility (which opened December 1999). The collection
was successfully re-housed in Delta Design cabinets on the
high density system in the new collection storage room. The
environmental conditions in storage are maintained at 45%
relative humidity and 68 degrees F year round (not an easy
feat in Minnesota).
This project and subsequent projects to improve storage for
biological specimens were funded with the help of IMLS Conservation
Project Support grant. Since moving to the new facility, the
Science Museum of Minnesota has completed the following projects:
installed a compactor system for fluid based collections (2000);
acquired a major collection of bryophytes (moss and lichen)
and housed them (2001); purchased oversized Delta Design cabinets
to properly house oversized flat hides (2002); and finally
mitigated light in the galleries.
With all of these projects, the Science Museum of Minnesota
has continued to expand and develop modular exhibitions about
the Agents of Deterioration, including video
and web components. The most recent video on light mitigation
is being shown both in the Collections Gallery as originally
intended and in the museum’s lobby. Finally, there is
a newly installed video camera inside the dermestid colony
with a feed to one of the galleries and plans to put the feed
on the Web site.
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