PRINTLasting impressions
Protecting contemporary art for future audiences
James Maritz
Greig Thompson places a spacer between the original watercolor and the glass to prevent condensation buildup while reframing.
July 3, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
In 2003, archaeologists unearthed three 30,000-year-old mammoth bone carvings in southwestern Germany. Scientists hailed the finds as the world’s oldest surviving figurative works of art.
Four years later, artist Andrew Wielawski stood in a plaza in Florida with a 2,500-lb. sculpture he’d been unable to sell. He deemed it a failure, destroyed it and offered the broken pieces to curious onlookers.
$750 Estimated cost to restore a 2-foot marble sculpture in good condition
6.25 Estimated number of hours required to complete such a restoration
$120 Hourly charge for a conservator’s services
10,120 Number of museum curators in the U.S.
9,950 Number of conservators in the U.S.
220 Number of museum curators in Missouri
640 Number of museum conservators in Missouri
$50,210 Mean annual wage a curator in Missouri earns
$34,550 Mean annual wage a conservator in Missouri earns
Some artists embrace art can not be preserved. Others seem driven by a desire to create works that will outlive the artists themselves. Michelangelo prized marble. DaVinci worked with oil paints. These mediums endured,
and both men earned a slice of immortality.
Most contemporary artists fall somewhere between the two extremes, but even the most carefully wrought work of art isn’t immune to the ravages of time. A recent artistic trend toward the use of less hearty materials such as paper and natural fibers has compounded the problem and made the jobs of art conservators more difficult.
Exposure to light, water damage and fluctuations in humidity and temperature will inevitably cause decay, says Greig Thompson, chief museum preparator for the State Historical Society of Missouri.
Spending his days in a room overflowing with art, Thompson devotes part of his day to caring for the pieces. He refrains from using the term restoration. Instead, he calls his work “remedial care,” because, he says, “restoring implies adding something that was missing before.”
Modern conservation techniques focus increasingly on prevention and long-term maintenance. The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City now keeps a detailed catalog of information about museum works, says Amy Duke, collections manager and museum registrar.
“If we’re acquiring something we know is going to be difficult to maintain, we’re sure to document the piece,” Duke says. “We have the artist provide as much information as possible, so if something should change over time, we know how they did it.”
As art changes, so will conservation techniques. “There will always be complications, because our understanding is constantly evolving,” Thompson says.
The preservation practices of one era are often discarded by the next. For example, the method of treating paper with chemical bleach was found to degrade paper. Now conservators use less invasive methods, such as sun bleaching.
Conservators also try to keep their methods reversible so future conservators who use advanced techniques can undo treatments and work on the art in its original condition, Duke says.
The choices of artists, on the other hand, don’t always take the distant future into account. “It’s about finding beauty in the moment, not beauty in longevity,” says Joel Sager, an artist and associate curator at Columbia’s Perlow-Stevens Gallery.
Sager creates mixed-media collages that incorporate acrylic painting with flea-market finds. He washes the collages with roofing tar and scrapes oil pigment on and off with a palette knife to create a layered, moody effect. “I like the aesthetic of old things better than new,” Sager says. “I like finding the modern in the antiquated.”
Although Sager draws inspiration from the altar pieces of Europe’s Renaissance and Gothic cathedrals, he thinks focusing on the potential lifespan of a piece detracts from the spontaneity of the creative process.
Within the national consciousness, questions of preservation loom large and have birthed numerous projects and institutions in recent years.
In 2002, the Library of Congress established the Paper Splitting Project to strengthen an abundance of historically valuable paper documents weakened by natural decay. To date, 35,000 sheets have been treated. In Boston, the Finca Vigia Foundation works to preserve the cache of decaying papers and personal items housed in Ernest Hemingway’s Cuban estate.
So where does a sculptor who destroys his own creations fit in? And if it won’t last, is it truly art?
The answer is slippery and should account for the artist’s intentions, says Eryl Wentworth, executive director of the American Institute For Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, a membership group for art collectors and professional conservators.
“(Some art) was never meant to last (or) to educate future generations,” she says. “That’s not to say it’s not valuable, that it’s not art. But it is different.”
