It is an uncomfortable truth that in showing you an artwork in a museum, we are potentially destroying it.  As a conservation professional, it feels wrong to admit that, but it is true.  Every photon, or packet of radiant energy, that strikes the surface of an art object has the potential to do damage, and we most often see that as a negative change in the artwork’s aesthetics: darkening, fading, yellowing, chalking, crosslinking, etc.  It’s an unstoppable phenomenon, but one that proceeds at a variety of rates.  Certainly color change is one of the most notable alterations that light can cause in an artwork, and so we must dole out the expected lifetime of an object using an informed and rational approach.  Conservators and collections managers go to great pains to protect artwork by limiting its exposure to light.  This can take the form of reducing light intensity, restricting its spectral output, or limiting the duration of an exhibition.  These stewards of the collection get additional insight and data from scientists who study the fading behavior of artists’ materials.

For the past several months the IMA has been conducting a condition survey of its photograph collection, over 800 objects that span the history of the medium.  This program is sponsored by a generous grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a wing of the federal government that supports museum and conservation activities.  In addition to the inventory and conservation assessment of each artwork, the grant has also funded a study of the lightfastness of the contemporary color photographs in the collection using a technique called microfade testing (MFT), or microfadeometry.  The goal of the study is to determine the susceptibility to color change for the highest priority color photographs in the collection and to determine patterns of lightfastness among the many photographic processes.  This data in turn informs our exhibition, loan, and lighting guidelines for the collection.

Figure 1. Watercolor paint outs after artificial light aging.

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Filed under: Conservation, Photography, The Collection

Paul has recently surveyed our collection of Weegee photographs, which came to the IMA in 2009. Weegee is a pseudonym for Arthur Fellig, who immigrated with his family at the age of 10 to New York from the Ukraine in 1909. He began his work in photography as a darkroom assistant for Acme Newspictures (which became United Press International Photos) before striking out on his own as a freelance photographer, concentrating on crime photography. He would often arrive at crime scenes before the first responders, which led to a joking reputation for prescience. This earned him the nickname of “ouija” (from the future-predicting board game), which was phonetically reinterpreted as “Weegee.” Weegee became well-known as a hard-boiled, scruffy, street-smart individual. He was also a natural self-promoter, who began signing his work “Weegee the Famous.” He is considered one of the first street photographers, as opposed to the traditional studio photographer who worked with staged compositions and tightly controlled content. His approach paved the way for the work of later notable photographers, such as Diane Arbus and Robert Frank. Weegee developed and printed his own photographs, and his work was published in all of the prominent New York City newspapers. He became widely known for his gritty, unvarnished views of crime, but perhaps he is best appreciated today for his capture of NYC life in high and low places—glimpses of ordinary moments frozen into significance as unselfconscious documents of time and place.

Paul called my attention to two particular photographs that struck him as singular, both of which are portraits of Weegee: one is a gelatin-silver print by photographer Larry Block and the other is a color Polaroid self-portrait by Weegee. These images, while very different from each other, are praiseworthy for their success within their respective techniques in conveying a strong sense of personality. They are also beautifully rendered, aptly utilizing the aesthetic parameters of the materials servicing these processes.

Larry Block “Portrait of Weegee,” undated. Gelatin Silver Print.Caroline Marmon Fesler Fund, Gift of the Alliance of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Roger G. Wolcott Fund, Nancy Foxwell Neuberger Acquisition Endowment Fund, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore P. Van Vorhees Art Fund, Cecil F. Head Art Fund, James V. Sweetser Fund. 2009.272.

The undated portrait of Weegee by Larry Block is a study of the photographer in a pensive moment, fueled by a focused intensity. He is slouched informally, yet commands great presence; the setting is casual but dramatically rendered. This is clearly an individual that deserves our attention even as he ignores the camera, seemingly alone with his thoughts and his trademark cigar. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Conservation, Photography, The Collection

This post is part of an ongoing series that explores new interpretations of works within the IMA collection through creative writing. In the post below, author Joe Wadlington provides his interpretation of  The Majesty Receives by William Holbrook Beard. After reading, visit the IMA’s online collection to learn about the artist’s intentions for the work. 

William Holbrook Beard, “The Majesty Receives,” 1885. James E. Roberts Fund. 76.13

Michael was having the dreams again. His therapist explained that Michael was projecting unresolved issues with his wife onto his mother-in-law’s withheld approval, making her “the gatekeeper of his marital bliss.” His wife said he needed to stop eating Slim Jims before bed.

Either way, once Michael hit the final stage of sleep, his dreams took him to a perverted Sherwood Forest. But not the Sherwood Forest from the play or book Robin Hood—the one from the Disney movie Robin Hood, where everyone was an animal. Michael would be something weak, like a rabbit, mouse, or stoat. While his mother-in-law, the villain of Michael’s dreams and waking life, would be re-imagined as King John in the form of a fox or bobcat (and this one time an especially aggressive panda). Except that if it was Disney’s Robin Hood, then shouldn’t the fox be Robin Hood? Or maybe Michael was supposed to turn into Robin Hood? What was a stout anyway, like a gerbil thing?

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Filed under: Art, The Collection

Mario Botta, Single-family house in Ligornetto,Ticino, Switzerland, 1975-1976.

My first project in architectural school was drawing a house designed by Mario Botta. It was an exercise designed to teach us how to draw isometric images, and I think the Botta house was selected because it was such a simple form.  It was a long narrow house that looked like a shoebox on its side, with irregularly shaped openings cut out of it and stripes across the sides. I loved it! I had never seen a house like this and I was immediately interested in finding more of his work.

Botta’s roots in Lugano, Switzerland certainly reveal themselves in his work. Lugano is in a mountainous part of the country, with tranquil lakes and an amazing alpine skyline. The proximity to Italy no doubt allowed him to be exposed to the work of Carlo Scarpa, an architect whose attitudes to masonry, geometry and precise detailing seem to be reflected in Botta’s work. While the majority of his work is in his native region and includes single-family houses, vacation houses, offices religious buildings and even warehouses, his best known work in the United States is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Mario Botta, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1992-1995.

I think Botta is a good example of an “architect’s architect.” His work is precise and tailored, sensitive to context, but bold and self-assured. Symmetry and texture play an important part in his work, and his vocabulary generally consists of a masonry shell, cracked to reveal its jewel-like contents as though you took a band-saw to a geode. Strong striping and simple geometric forms define its character.

Mario Botta, Tesi table, 1985.

This table acquired by the IMA is an evolution of that architectural vocabulary and an extension of his materiality. Like the center of a geode, the Tesi materials are multifaceted and shiny. A simple metal triangle extrudes to create a minimal base. Bold metal stripes articulate the support of the rectangular glass top. The Tesi table is a great piece of interior architecture that fittingly represents Botta’s bold body of work.

Filed under: Design, The Collection

Poster advertising the “International Exhibition of Modern Art.”

Last month marked the 100^th anniversary of the International Exhibition of Modern Art, better known as “The Armory Show,” opening in New York City. The nearly 1,600 avant-garde works by artists who were little-exhibited in the U.S. were met with public response that fluctuated between outrage and delight, curiosity and apprehension. Theodore Roosevelt’s A Layman’s Views of an Art Exhibition encapsulates the general sentiment: “It is true, as the champions of these extremists [Modernist artists] say, that there can be no life without change, no development without change, and that to be afraid of what is different or unfamiliar is to be afraid of death. It is no less true, however, that change may mean death and not life, and retrogression instead of development.” Yet history is written by the victors, and in this case, Modernism won. Today it is hard to overstate the impact that this large-scale exhibition organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS) had on 20^th Century American art.

Just one year prior to the 1913 exposition opening, the AAPS solicited the John Herron Art Institute (forerunner to the IMA) inquiring “whether the institution would be interested in exhibiting the work of members of this organization.”

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Filed under: The Collection