Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

Here is a post from one of my summer interns, Lucie Alig, that speaks for itself.

My desk in the conservation lab was situated amongst Renaissance sculptures, ornately painted vases, African artifacts, and yet I was there to devote myself to one specific artwork far too large for any lab: Robert Indiana’s 1970 sculpture, LOVE. Needless to say, it is a piece that prompts a nod of recognition. Whether identifiable from its centralized positioning on the grounds of the IMA, or through its plastic incarnation as a dangling, mass-produced key chain, most everyone seems familiar with the trademark tilt of LOVE’s “O,” as it has been so hopefully interpreted to symbolize a movement forward or—in the case of my research of LOVE’s conservation history—a rather complicated stepping back.

Lucie Alig considers LOVE

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The following post was written by Charles Falco (pictured below), Professor of Optical Sciences; Physics and UA Chair of Condensed Matter Physics.

Professor Charles Falco

OK, yesterday Richard gave you his version of events.  Today, it’s my turn.

Part I: Making the Connections

My Background

The year: 1960
The place: Ft. Dodge, Iowa
Richard started his story ten years ago in Madrid.  I’ll start mine fifty years ago in Ft. Dodge.

I’ve been keenly interested in images since early childhood, starting with an old Kodak box camera, and advancing to my first “serious” camera when I was twelve. This involvement with creating and manipulating images using various processes — photography, cyanotypes, silk screening, etc. — steadily expanded as I got older, to the point that by age 30 I owned at least 20 lenses ranging up to a 800 mm super-telephoto, as well as had designed and fabricated various pieces of specialized photographic equipment for my imaging experiments.

The infrared camera described in this blog is the most recent piece of fabricated/altered imaging equipment dating back to an enlarger I made in high school by modifying an old bellows camera. Read the rest of this entry »

My guess is that you’ve never considered what motorcycles, medical illustrators, Madrid, two cameras that can see into the Infra Red, and underdrawings in Renaissance-era paintings have in common.  Frankly, before last summer I hadn’t either, and now that I’ve started out this way it’s going to take some work to connect all of these things together.  To do it, I’m going to break this post into two parts. Today I’ll give my side of the story and tomorrow you’ll hear from my new friend, Charles Falco, who will tell his.

Group IR Shot. David Miller, Charles Falco, Richard McCoy, Zina Deretsky, Aimee Allen, Christina Milton-O'Connell, and Linda Witkowski

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And now, a word from IMA’s Richard McCoy:

Ellen Carrlee is an objects conservator who lives in Alaska.  We’ve never met in person and only know each other through these internets.  Along with our other friend and objects conservator, Daniel Cull, we’ve decided to take turns this week writing aboutour ideas for “New Directions” for the American Institute for Conservation (AIC).  I was a guest blogger for Ellen on Monday. My post up there in Alaska is filled with lots of crazy ideas.  On Friday, Daniel Cull will make a post on his blog… who knows what he’s cooking up.  Here’s Ellen’s offering:

Straight from Wikipedia:

Elitism is the belief or attitude that those individuals who are considered members of the elite—a select group of people with outstanding personal abilities, intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes—are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most weight; whose views and/or actions are most likely to be constructive to society as a whole; or whose extraordinary skills, abilities or wisdom render them especially fit to govern.

First things first: we need AIC and I respect the vital role it plays in our professionalism.  You could say I was suckled at the AIC teat.  Back in 1993, I was trying to find someone who would tell me what the heck “conservation” was.  I made a long distance phone call to Jay Krueger, who my uncle told me was a friend of a friend, and one of this mysterious breed called “conservators.”  It was quite a short conversation, and the upshot was “ask AIC.”  I sent away for their brochures (by mail!) and poured over the requirements of the programs.  It was the first of many times I turned to AIC to tell me what I needed to do.

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I just re-read my article in CeROArt; not because I’m a total  narcissist, but because a friend of mine told me yesterday that there was lots of typos in it.  The article, “Collaborating in the Public’s Domain”, was published this Wednesday and is about the potential for conservators to find news to work together to preserve cultural property with the help of museum visitors.  Daniel Cull reviewed the article here.

I’m kind of surprised that Mr. Cull didn’t beat me up about the 10 or 20 typos in the article.  After thinking about this for a while I’ve come to realize that the typos don’t bother me.  Really they don’t.  I’m more interested in the ideas, the Content written with a big “C,” and feedback.

CeROArt

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