For the opening of the new Ancient Art of the Mediterranean gallery, I completed a couple of conservation treatments on objects that haven’t been on view in a long, long time.  One of the objects is this Canosan vase which is from the 3^rd or 2^nd century B.C.E.  Here’s a video of the IMA’s Director and CEO talking about the vessel and the new gallery he curated:

Before this more than 2,000 year old artwork came into my Objects and Variable Art conservation lab, it was safely stored in two separate boxes—one box contained the ceramic vessel, the other contained the 9 pieces that were detached from it.  There’s a photograph in the historical files dating to the early part of the 20^th century showing how the vase was assembled when it was acquired in 1928.

My job was to carefully re-assemble these pieces and fill the missing areas to make the joints appear more seamless.  Finally, I inpainted my fills to make them less visible (if you get up really close to the case, you can see my work).

Aaron Steele, the IMA’s Digital Assets Specialist & Associate Photographer, photographed this object before and after my conservation treatment up in his photo studio.  Have a look:

Before treatment photographs

After treatment photographs

Filed under: Art, Conservation, IMA TV

One place I know I don’t want to go is Antarctica.    This is not to say that I think Antarctica is dull or something like that (I like the idea of auroras, bright stars, and a frozen, treeless tundra), it’s just that it’s cold in a kind of deathly way.  But recently I’ve been hooked on reading about a team of dedicated art conservators working at Scott Base. Their Antarctic Conservation Blog is hosted by the British Natural History Museum.

I’m not really sure how productive I would be in -40 degree weather (really, who wants to sleep in a snow filled bedroom or use a frozen porta-potty, Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Conservation

For reasons I’ll explain later, I’ve been digging around on youtube.com and other places for videos about art conservation . Today I found one of my all-time favorite videos about conservation.

It’s a video of Grant Romer of the George Eastman House talking about the famous Abraham Lincoln glass plate negative. I think there’s a lot to like about this video: it’s a great subject; the video is well produced (note that this “video” is made entirely from still images); and I think Grant Romer’s voice sounds a lot like William Carols Williams’. What’s not to like?

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Filed under: Conservation