I joined the Conservation Department at the IMA in October as Assistant Conservator of Objects and Variable Art.  One of my most exciting projects to date has been the examination of the Corner Cabinet with Breton Scenes by Emile Bernard, a rare example of Pont-Aven School wood carving acquired by the IMA in 2010.

Laura Kubick, Assistant Conservator of Objects and Variable Art and Jeff Fieberg, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Centre College, analyzing the cabinet in the gallery using XRF.

My work has focused on the surfaces of the cabinet. To discover what pigments might be present, I first used XRF with the help of Jeff Fieberg.  Some pigments suggested by this work are red lead, chrome yellow and ultramarine blue.  I am also trying to find out what type of paint is present – is it oil, tempera, distemper, etc.?  And is there a coating layer over the paint?

Microscopic examination revealed wax on the surface. I also took microscopic samples that will be analyzed using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and Raman Spectroscopy with the help of Greg Smith, the IMA’s Conservation Scientist. These techniques will tell us which type of binder the paint has and more definitively identify the pigments present.

Microscopic examination of Bernard’s Corner Cabinet.

Photomicrograph showing a location where a yellow pigment sample was taken.

Once we have those answers,  I will work with Ellen Lee, The Wood-Pulliam Senior Curator, to answer further questions like would the cabinet benefit from cleaning and can cleaning be undertaken safely?  We may also answer a question about whether the frieze panel with faces is original to the cabinet or whether it may have been added later.  The work that Lee, Richard McCoy, and Jérôme Séré completed in the fall of 2010 examining the structure of the cabinet (check out the blog about this work) suggested that this may have been the case.  I look forward to the results of the analysis and sharing more about the cabinet.

Detail of Bernard’s Corner Cabinet with Breton Scenes showing the frieze with faces.

Filed under: Conservation

This is the first post in a monthly series about my work on the African Art collection.  I came to the IMA in October to complete a nine-month fellowship that will serve as the final requirement for my master’s degree in art conservation from New York University’s Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts.

My first weeks at the museum have been filled with introductions.  In addition to meeting new coworkers, there were plenty of new places to get to know as part of the job.  Work-related travel has included a day trip to the Miller House in Columbus, Indiana to examine furniture in storage, condition checking the Mary Miss installation FLOW: Can You See The River? in 100 Acres, and a behind-the-scenes tour of the historic Oldfields-Lilly House and Gardens.

My introduction to the museum’s collection of African Art, however, is proving to be the most complicated. One of my main responsibilities at the IMA is to help prepare that collection for reinstallation early next year. This will involve months of surveying, testing and treating objects in that collection, as well as consulting on matters of storage and display. To begin to tackle this project, I wanted to assemble a list of the objects in the IMA’s collection of African Art, in order to ensure that my survey is thorough.

That practical, seemingly simple, request led me straight into questions of how African Art is defined at the IMA. If the answer seems apparent–that African Art is defined as art that comes from Africa–then consider the following example. The IMA owns two works by the living artist El Anatsui, who was born in Ghana and currently works in Nigeria. One work, Sacred Comb, is on display in the Eiteljorg suite of African Art. However, the other piece, Duvor (Communal Cloth) is displayed in the museum’s Contemporary Art galleries.

Which artwork by El Anatsui is classified as African Art at the IMA?

Because these two curatorial departments use different criteria to define their collections (geography vs. time period), both can claim either work.  Furthermore, the IMA’s department of Textiles and Fashion Arts uses still different parameters for defining their collection–those of medium and use.  As a work that references traditional West African strip-woven textiles, Duvor (Communal Cloth) is actually catalogued as part of the Textiles and Fashion Arts collection.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Conservation, The Collection

Before coming to the IMA as a volunteer conservation intern, I worked in a cozy, climate-controlled painting conservation studio in Buffalo, NY.  I thought my work here would be similar, however I quickly found this not to be true and that my primary task of assessing and conserving the four artworks on loan to IUPUI would require hours in the hot, blinding sun.

At the beginning of the summer I set out to photo document each one:  Spaces with Iron, Mega Gem, Portrait of History, and East Gate/West Gate.  From this day of documentation I created detailed condition reports. From there, IMA Conservator Richard McCoy, and fellow conservation intern, Nicole Peters (of recent IMA Blog fame) and I returned to campus to wash all four and then wax the two bronze artworks.  By that time summer was in full swing and the 90 degree day with clear skies made for some pretty interesting (and sweaty) work.

Never having waxed a bronze in my life, I read up on the subject to prepare.  Patrick V. Kipper’s The Care of Bronze Sculpture breaks down each step in process of waxing a bronze artwork, as does the IMA blog from last year, Caring for Bronze in the Community.  It seemed easy enough.  Some light blow torching, applying wax, smoothing the wax out evenly, applying the blow torch again, et voilà!  You can imagine it was not so simple.  At ten in the morning the sun was already scorching hot.  Cleaning Will Horwitt’s Spaces with Iron proved difficult when the water was evaporating faster than we could rinse the suds away.

Rinsing off "Spaces with Iron" before waxing can begin.

After scrubbing off grime and bird guano from the artwork, we added heat to the already hot day with the help of a large propane torch.  Monitored by Richard, Nicole and I created an efficient team, with one of us heating the metal and the other waxing the surface.  At first I was a little unsteady with the large blow torch so I worked as the waxer, however my fellow intern Nicole did not share my jitters and helped out immensely.

Nicole Peters uses a blow torch to heat the bronze surface as Abbott Nixon applies a protective layer of wax.

Once finished with Spaces with Iron there was a great sense of satisfaction … for about one minute, then we remembered we were about to do this all over again with the Zhou Brother’s Portrait of History. Unlike the smooth surface of Spaces with Iron, Portrait of History has a mottled texture which proved difficult not only to clean but to wax as well.

Abbott Nixon cleaning the difficult surface of "Portrait of History" By the Zhou Brothers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Conservation

The past few weeks in the Objects & Variable Art Laboratory, I’ve been working with a lot of staff to get Andrea Zittel’s Indianapolis Island ready for its next annual summer resident, Katherine Ball.

Nicole Peters in the process of cleaning the front deck on "Indianapolis Island."

 Zittel’s Indianapolis Island is an artwork that presents many challenges and complexities that arise when conserving contemporary outdoor artworks.  For starters, the location is tricky as it is situated in the middle of the 100 Acres Lake and is only accessible via boat.  Secondly, biological effects on the island are difficult to accurately assess from the shore’s distance.  When I say “biological effects” I mean those of a Great Blue Heron taking up its own kind of residency.

Indiana Blue Heron

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the artwork requires a human to activate it by taking up an annual summer residency, which is a fundamental principle of the artwork itself.  The combination of these factors encouraged both problem solving and some creative thinking when devising a treatment plan for this interesting contemporary work.

After our initial assessment, it was obvious that a few things needed to be addressed before Katherine moved in.  The first issue being the bird guano left behind by the Great Blue Heron.  This was indeed a two person treatment which required at least one of the two people to be exceptionally tall (cue Richard, who is rather tall).

The biological effects of the Blue Heron resident on top of the island.

So, literally on the hottest morning of the summer, Richard and I rowed out to the island to scrub and wash Indianapolis Island.  We used an Orvus WA Paste-H2O solution as our cleaning agent, nitrile-dishwashing gloves, sponges, and nylon brushes for the treatment. We performed this cleaning from the island’s deck area, as well as from the rowboat.

Objects & Variable Art Conservator, Richard McCoy, utilizing his height for the cleaning process of "Indianapolis Island."

There were two fisherman on the shore who we chatted with before heading out and I believe they may having been taking bets as to when our rowboat would capsize, dumping Richard and I into the lake during the rowboat treatment.  Luckily, this did not happen and our boat remained afloat for the duration of our island visit.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art and Nature Park, Conservation

The National Headquarters for the American Legion lies deep in the heart of the Midwest, right here in Indianapolis.  Not exactly the first place I would expect to find an early 20^th century painting by the French artist, Léon Reni-Mel.  Not knowing what to expect inside the formidable, austere building, I was somewhat surprised to find a quiet office space full of friendly staff, a small museum of military artifacts, and a grand meeting hall with a desk for each state’s representatives; the latter being home to the America painting, which has hung on the wall of the main stage for the past 90 years or so.  My daily walk to our workspace includes a trip down a long hallway flanked by countless photographs of past National Commanders and officials from as early as 1919, the legion’s inaugural year.  It is a daily reminder of the deep history and singular culture that this organization and its members have lived through.

Walk to work at the American Legion National Headquarters.

Another amazing glimpse into the history of this project was through the incredible collection of letters and archival material that has been preserved since the early 1900’s.  I was privy to primary source materials written directly by Reni-Mel and various officials of the legion, including rare footage of the artist painting America in his studio in France.

Now onto the project:  The painting, America, was created in 1918 by the French Ministry of War Painter, Léon Reni-Mel, and given to the American Legion for the United States’ assistance to France during the Great World War.  The canvas is 12’ x 7’ and depicts two allegorical soldiers, one stalwart American raising his hand to halt the enemy while assisting the other, a wounded Frenchman about to collapse.  The soldiers stand on a bank of highly textured mud with smoke and flames rising around them in the distance, blending slowly into the swirling colors of the sky.  At the bottom of the canvas, Reni-Mel gave the work its own caption, AMERICA, flanked by the signatures of two honorary National Commanders, General John Pershing of the United States Army and Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the French Minister of War.  Reni-Mel’s signature and the date of completion were also added at the lower left and right.  The painting has very high impasto, giving the work incredible texture and depth, but making the cleaning process even more challenging!

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Conservation