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

At first, Richard seemed surprised when I agreed to become the museum’s “LOVE intern” this summer. The task at hand was to extract succinct meaning from the stacks upon stacks of treatment proposals, condition reports, photo negatives, correspondence, digital files, as well as the many yellowing newspaper articles through which the “love” puns (“What We Need is LOVE,” “Three Tons of LOVE”) were, of course, endless. Honestly, I surprised myself a little, too, with my enthusiasm for the job (and the joy in the puns). Never before had I considered that the sculpture—which had always held a kind of iconic status throughout Indianapolis and, consequently, my Indianapolis childhood—would be in need of labored research. Regardless, I gladly took on the job, and it was not long before I knew all about the weathering tendencies of Cor-ten steel, the varying protectiveness of different landscape designs, the underlying concepts of Pop Art. Or so I thought.

One day, as I drove past LOVE on my way into work, I was compelled to pull over. Though this very drive-by had become ritual—a check-in on the beast as I made my way to tame it—today the piece had attracted an atypical crowd. Though often prone to attention from love-struck couples, or children in search of a forbidden jungle gym (please, please, please stay off!), today the sculpture’s admirers seemed much more settled into their viewing positions. As I approached the sculpture, it soon became clear that these were art students, and that in addition to observing LOVE, they were painting its very form.

Encircling the sculpture were nine completely personalized interpretations of it. Not only was each painter incorporating LOVE’s setting—the museum’s contemporary façade, ambling visitors, the well-tamed summer turf—to a different extent, but each composition had its own sense of scale, of coloration, each “O” was angled to a different degree. In fact, the only trait the paintings seemed to share was a disregard for the very issues to which I’d become so concerned: the streaky discoloration of the exterior rust, the particular height of its mount, the Jesus fish that had been scratched inside the “V.” Instead of reflecting the many qualities that conservation sought to fix, these re-interpretations completely overlooked the sculpture’s material flaws, treating it instead like an icon, as intangible and fleeting as love itself.

As I sat down to my desk later that day, it was harder than ever to feel in control of my project. The particular treatment of a particular bolt, for example, no longer felt like a pressing matter; instead, it was just a small, simple detail that was sure to go unnoticed. Furthermore, LOVE’s many offshoots around Indianapolis—those SALE signs (with their otherwise arbitrarily italicized “A”), the mini-LOVE paperweights that seemed to rest on the desks of all my grade-school teachers—were now constant reminders of the inevitability of art’s reinterpretation.

Set-backs aside, I persisted in organizing the “LOVE files.” and did my best to turn the conservation staff’s many obstacles and victories into an easily referenced narrative. LOVE may seem, at times, like a painfully simplistic work of art—the perfect subject for a beginners’ painting workshop—yet its very candor is reliant on a complicated history of tweaking and mends. Though I learned a lot about the crucial role of conservation, I try to remind myself of what else I learned: that the document I produced—clarity and thoroughness aside—is prone to change in the eyes of someone else, to someone with their own idea of love in mind.

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.Although I got my Ph.D. in physics, and have worked in experimental physics my entire career (first at Argonne National Laboratory, and since 1982 as a professor of optical sciences and of physics at the University of Arizona), I also have had an interest in art that dates back to childhood.  By age 30 I had visited over 25 art museums in eight countries, always using any free time during travels to physics conferences to visit art museums.  And motorcycle museums.

Like my interest in photography, I have been a participant in art as well as an observer.  In the May 14, 2007 issue of The New Yorker Magazine, Peter Schjelhahl wrote “An efficient test on where you stand on contemporary art is whether you are persuaded, or persuadable, that Chris Burden is a good artist. I think he’s pretty great.”  Burden is perhaps best known for his November 1971 conceptual art piece ‘Shoot’, in which he had himself shot in the arm.  A month earlier, for his piece ‘220′, he and three others spent the night on wooden ladders in a gallery filled with 12″ of water into which he had dropped a 220-Volt electrical line.  I was one of those three participants.

Jumping ahead a few decades, in 1997 I was asked to co-curate the Solomon R. Guggenheim’s The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition that opened in 1998, and which set an all-time attendance record for that museum.  I shared an award for this work from the U.S. Chapter of the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art with the architect Frank Gehry, the then-director of the museum Thomas Krens, and my co-curator Ultan Guilfoyle.

Making a long story short, thanks to Ultan Guilfoyle, in 2000 I was introduced to David Hockney by Lawrence Weschler, who had written a story about him in the January 30 issue of The New Yorker Magazine.  This resulted in the most intense period of collaboration of my entire scientific career.  One consequence of our collaboration was that I was invited to the National Science Foundation in 2006 to give the Distinguished Lecture in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences.  Zina Deretsky attended that talk, resulting in her arranging for me to speak at the annual meeting of the Association of Medical Illustrators, resulting in me meeting Richard McCoy, resulting in this blog.

Artwork in the Infrared

In the spring of 2008 I realized that since modern digital cameras use silicon CMOS or CCD sensors, and since silicon is sensitive reasonably far into the infrared (to ~1100 nm, whereas the visible ends at ~750 nm), a suitably-modified camera might allow the capture of high resolution infrared photographs — “IR reflectograms” — of works of art.  The reason IR reflectograms are of interest for art is that many pigments are semi-transparent to infrared light, allowing such light to penetrate through these pigments to reveal features that are not apparent in the visible.  Such features can include defects in the canvas or board (Figure 1),

Figure 1

areas that have been repaired by overpainting (Figure 2),

Figure 2

or underdrawings made on the white gesso (Figure 3).

Figure 3

In addition to paintings, the camera provides useful information on 3-dimensional objects (Figure 4).

Figure 4

However, the IR sensitivity of the silicon sensor is only one factor in the operation of an imaging device, so the only way to know if such camera would actually provide useful information for works of art would be to modify one and characterize all of its relevant features.

I rationalized spending the money for this by telling myself that, even if it proved useless for extracting useful information from art, I still could use it for general infrared photography.  However, my understanding of the technologies involved gave me a great deal of confidence my money would be well spent. As a result, a technical description of this high resolution infrared imaging instrument just appeared as an invited paper in the July 2009 issue of the ‘Review of Scientific Instruments’.  You can download a copy of it from the link at the bottom of my art-optics web page.

Figure 5

I conducted the first tests of this modified camera in my own university’s art museum, and immediately discovered interesting new information in some of the IR reflectograms.  As an example, the lines in the underdrawing in Figure 5 that are revealed in the IR converge to a well-defined vanishing point, showing that this particular artist understood the laws of geometrical perspective that had only recently been articulated.  This is information that no one ever could have known before.

The Infrared of Indiana

Having determined that the modified camera was indeed capable of extracting useful new information from paintings, I took it with me to Indianapolis where I was to speak at the Association of Medical Illustrators.  Basically, the reason I brought it was to gain experience with it when “on the road,” vs. in the relatively controlled environment of a museum located only a few hundred yards from my office.  However, I didn’t know I would have the opportunity to test it at the Indianapolis Museum of Art against paintings recently studied with a special-purpose IR camera, so the introduction to Richard McCoy and David Miller made by Zina Deretsky was pure serendipity.

The results initially were disappointing to all of us when looking at the freshly-captured images on the camera’s LCD screen, but we were very pleasantly surprised when we pulled them into Photoshop(R) on one of the museum’s computers.  The reason for the difference in appearance is that the resolution of the LCD screen is ~10x lower than the resolution of the actual images.  As a result, even features that are quite apparent in the images captured by the camera usually are barely, if at all, visible on the LCD screen.

Since that first “in situ” test in Indianapolis in July 2008, I have captured IR reflectograms with this camera in eleven art museums on three continents so far.  One of my favorite incidents involving it was an evening talk I gave at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, in which I discussed some of features revealed in one of their paintings (a Pissarro) by an IR reflectogram.  I captured that image at 11:31 a.m. and talked about it at 7:20 p.m., which must be some new record for the fastest time between extracting new scientific data from an artwork and “publishing” the results.  You can see this talk on Youtube, and my 2 minute discussion of the IR starts at 50′ 40″ into the video.

I should note that nothing revealed by that IR reflectogram was particularly spectacular.  But, I already had data on another Pissarro painting in my talk, so this was a great opportunity to work in something previously unknown about a painting in that museum’s own collection.  I also gave the audience the homework assignment of remembering what I had just showed them, and after my talk going back to the actual painting to look for the features themselves.  So, in addition to extracting useful new data from paintings, this camera also can be used to engage an audience in art history in new ways.

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

Part I: Making the Connections

The year: 1998
The place: Madrid, Spain.

In Madrid I was learning encuadernación and life drawing when I met Zina Deretsky who at the time was illustrating many different species of Iberian lacewings at the same Universidad Complutense.  We became good friends and began trading stories on our walks to la Universidad.  My stories revolved around my upbringing in the agra-centric world of Indiana – topics included sports, people I knew in Future Farmers of America (FFA), unnecessarily large trucks owned by adolescent boys, and a now-defunct yearly event at my high school called “Farm Day.”  Farm Day was amazing, but I’m not going into that here.  Zina’s stories revolved around sunny California, Yale, and her quasi-scientific vodka sampling.  She went on to grad school at Johns Hopkins and later became an illustrator who works for the National Science Foundation.  And after grad school in New York, I went on to come back to Indiana as an art conservator for the IMA.

Antlion by Zina Deretsky

So, last summer I was more than happy to help Zina organize a workshop at the IMA for the American Medical Illustrators Annual Meeting.  And how did Zina get to Indy from her D.C. area home?  By motorcycle, of course

I quickly found out that one of the big highlights of the AMI Annual Meeting is the “Salon” where medical illustrators exhibit and celebrate their recent illustrations and projects.  After checking out some of gruesomely fascinating work (that one of the car accident for the court trial still troubles me) we bumped into University of Arizona PhD student, Aimee Allen, who had just finished teaching a workshop with Zina on drawing with camera obscuras. The cameras that they used for the workshop happened to be owned by Charles Falco  (who from here on, for sake of continuity and accuracy, will be referred to simply as “Falco”).

Falco was at the AMI Annual Meeting giving a couple of lectures including one on the “Use of Mirrors and Optics in Early Renaissance Painting.” Knowing a little about the Falco from his work on the Hockney-Falco thesis, and as the co-curator of “The Art of the Motorcycle” at the Guggenheim Museum, I really wanted to catch one of his lectures.  But I never could get away from the IMA to go hear him.

To make a long story short, Falco, Aimee, and Zina came by the conservation lab to have a look on the work currently being done on the renaissance-era painting by Sebestian Mainardi.   You may have seen this work in the Star Studio as part of the conservation exhibition.  If not, here’s an introductory video:

Note: as of last month you can now come and visit the painting installed in the Clowes Courtyard. (Yeah, it’s worth a special trip!)

I was surprised when Falco brought a modified digital SLR camera with him that allowed him to photograph the Infrared Region (IR) of the electromagnetic spectrum.  Conservators have been using IR cameras as an examination and documentation technique for decades, but usually the process requires a more complicated set up than the SLR camera Falco was carrying around.

You now might have realized that the first image in this post looks a little different.  It’s not that it’s black and white: it’s an IR image taken by Falco’s camera in front of the Mainardi.

For example, the IMA has owned an IR video camera in its lab for close to 30 years. Being able to see into the IR is particularly helpful when looking at paintings that have underdrawings – literally I mean drawings underneath the paint layers that artists would have used as guides while making paintings (if you want to see how a renaissance artist would have used an under drawing in a panel painting go here).   Simply stated, using an IR camera to look at a painting allows us to “see” behind certain paint layers.  This is quite helpful for conservators doing research into an artist’s techniques and materials and it can also guide conservators in their approach in the event an intervention is required.

Laurence Robinson of Opus Instruments Ltd demonstrating the Osiris IR camera at the IMA

Having Falco visit when he did was convenient because a few weeks prior we were visited by Laurence Robinson of Opus Instruments Ltd. who came to the IMA from the UK to demonstrate a new digital IRR camera system.  This “Osiris” camera is fabulous. It produces high-quality and high-resolution digital images using an array of sensors.  This camera has the capacity to see into a greater range of the IR spectrum than the camera that Falco brought with him.  Though this camera is rather portable, it’s not nearly as portable as Falco’s modified hand-held SLR camera.  Also it’s considerably more expensive and requires some expertise to use properly.

Obviously, we were all thrilled to escort Falco and the rest of the gang around the lab as they looked at and photographed some other paintings that we had recently examined using the Osiris camera.  Falco snapped away in the lab and up in the galleries.  We were impressed with the immediate results of his easy-to-use camera.

And it’s at this point in the story that I will stop.  You’ll have to come back tomorrow to read Falco’s side of the story.  I’ll give you a hint, though, he shows some great examples of what he’s been seeing with his camera for the past year, and also talks about an upcoming publication in the July 2009 issue of the ‘Review of Scientific Instruments’.

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.

In graduate school at NYU, the conservation professors referred frequently to the standards and ethics outlined by AIC and required us to follow them in our coursework.  I became a member in 1997.  As an emerging professional, I found myself moving to Alaska, the home of exactly three conservators: one was a contemporary from the Winterthur/Delaware program (Monica Shah) and the other was the man I had just married (Scott Carroll from the Buffalo program.)

I also accepted a job as a curator of collections and exhibits, and began a part-time business doing private conservation work.  Suddenly I had a ton of questions about ethics, and the standards of practice I would have to live up to in starting a business.  Again, I turned to AIC and studied its core documents carefully.  I became more interested in listserves in order to stay informed about the conservation world, and frequently thumbed through the AIC directory to see if someone who had posted was affiliated with AIC and therefore steeped in the same professional standards I was familiar with.

Occasionally, someone with an excellent reputation and interesting postings was not listed in AIC at all, and I would wonder why.  In 2006, I jumped through the hoops to become an AIC Professional Associate, which seemed like the closest thing to being vetted by a national professional conservation organization.  I have used AIC and its core documents as a touchstone every step of my career.

WHY DOES AIC TICK PEOPLE OFF?
After I’d been in the field awhile, I began to hear more about why some people didn’t like AIC.  It was elitist, some claimed.  Critical and harsh to outsiders.  It was behind the times.  It didn’t do enough advocacy in the wider public arena to benefit its members.  It had a history of excluding natural history, archaeology, and ethnographic conservation.  It had a history of setting up confrontational or adversarial relationships with various groups of people: people who were not program-trained, restorers, foreigners, archaeologists, maritime conservators, etc.  And there were a fair number of people who had been involved with AIC their entire careers but declared they were fed up, and membership in AIC had no benefits for them.

At first, I assumed they had just had run-ins with some of the more abrasive and powerful personalities that often dominate organizations like AIC.  I daresay conservators can be a cantankerous and self-righteous lot.  I still think that’s part of the issue.  But I also think there is much to be learned (and perhaps a better path for the future) by studying the history of the organization.  There could be a thesis written on that, no doubt.

Reading the “Murray Pease Report” and other early documents however, makes it clear that in the beginning, AIC was largely an organization of conservators specializing in paintings and sculpture.  Individual artifacts of high monetary value that justified money being spent on their conservation.  Those who identified as “conservators” were interested in developing standards to differentiate themselves from “restorers.”  Conservators were scientifically and morally saving art from those who were using dubious recipe books and old wives’ tales to turn a fast buck at the peril of our heritage.  Was this the beginning of an “us versus them” mentality?  Throughout AIC’s history, the institutional culture has time and again organized itself around fighting “them.”  Loosely defined, AIC’s critics have come to see themselves in “them” … anyone who disagrees with the AIC.

CHARISMATIC MEGAFAUNA / BIG SEXY ART

Following the recent debate/defeat of certification, it seems that the organization has now entered a period of introspection and re-evaluation.   AIC is unlikely to break free of its aura of elitism.  It is also doomed to be a venue for those who insist on shooting off their mouths in an undiplomatic fashion.  But it does serve a very important role in conservation in the United States: it is our national professional organization.  Let’s not underestimate that.  But perhaps elitism has been at the root of conservation remaining separate from the museum world: separate programs, training curriculums, and conferences.

Chenhall’s Nomenclature anyone? Marie Malaro?  AAM’s General Facilities Report?

Conservation students are not taught much about the museum profession.  Often, the conservator on staff is seen as the obstructionist. The one who says “no.”  The one who goes by the book and makes everything difficult.  The one who does not get invited to the table.  Elitism is perhaps the cause of AIC’s biggest failure: people don’t know what conservation is.  When I give a lab tour, I always have to define conservation.  My good friends still mistake me for a curator. After more than 50 years as a profession (NYU’s Conservation Center was founded in 1960 and AIC in 1972) we still are scarcely known to the public. Plenty of people think we protect trees.

There is a term in the world of environmentalism: charismatic megafauna.  It refers to the use of large popular animals like pandas and whales to leverage support and protection for whole ecosystems and less flashy critters. Conservators have traditionally focused on Big Sexy Art, and while some aspects of preventive conservation serve to improve the condition of all collections, a lot of our cultural heritage is still neglected.  The Heritage Health Index indicates that 190 million artifacts are in peril, and many of them are in smaller museums with no conservator on staff and little funding to afford one.

These folks often post on listserves:
“How can I reshape this brittle basket in my collection?”
“There’s white fuzzy stuff on this saddle… is it mold?”
“How can I make this samovar shiny again?”

Often the answers come from their colleagues who are well-meaning but misguided.  Hardware store commercial products and Martha Stewart-inspired recommendations are common.  Occasionally someone might jump and scold, “Stop! You have to consult a conservator!”  Pragmatically and financially, many of these objects are not going to get a proper conservation treatment.  But they can be saved from poor treatment choices with just a little in-depth expertise and gentle words of caution in plain English.

Dave Harvey is the champion of this kind of service.  Marc Williams is also thoughtful and generous with his knowledge.  This is the kind of public relations that the conservation world needs more of.  Here’s some of the love!  Jump right in.  Individuals are sometimes working like this, but the profession is not.  What if providing this kind of public voice were a factor in assessing PAs and Fellows?

ELECTRONIC ELISTISM
Elitism is not solely the realm of conservators.  There is brand of elitism found among folks who have passion for computers.  People who are conversant in Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, Ning, Delicious, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace…those people are the future. They are connected.  They have the answers.  Or do they?  While the potential of many of these platforms is appealing, the actual content is often rather meager.  Visually stimulating and easy to digest, they remind me of the recent trend toward museums as entertainment.  The blockbuster!  The wall of graphics!  The touch-me interactive!  I say, show me the REAL STUFF.  Give me content.  What is it made of?  Who made it?  Why?

Web 2.0 definitely has its place.  It can function in ways that AIC can’t or won’t.  AIC has a hard time responding in a timely manner on current events and 2.0 folks can take advantage of front line opportunities for PR in our profession.  Viral marketing!  Professional organizations are a bit like museums: slow, careful, and deliberative.  Not designed to jump headlong into new things but rather hang back, observe, and help history sort itself out.  AIC would have a hard time keeping up with Daniel Cull in terms of relevance anyway. Maneuverability is an unfair expectation of AIC.  That should be up to us.  And perhaps our smaller and more nimble regional organizations like WAAC and MRCG.

WHERE IS THE LOVE?
This month, I’m joining the AIA and the SAA.  As a conservator of ethnographic and archaeological materials, I was not even aware until last week that the SAA has a group about perishables.  While I enjoy the AIC annual conference, I think I’ll be aiming to go less frequently in order to direct resources at attending conferences in allied professions.  This has been a talking point in AIC for some time, but there seem to be only a handful who walk the walk.  And I am posting information liberally on the internet…info that might have been considered taboo in the past.

When I was in graduate school, treatment reports done as part of the core courses were saved in a file cabinet in the library.  But it was locked.  Students had to request the key, and it was discouraged.  I never found out why, and I was too timid to ask.  In some ways, I feel the conservation profession is locked in that way, particularly when it comes to availability of treatment information, lest it “fall into the wrong hands.”  After more than a decade in the profession, I have come to believe that in many cases, lack of treatment information does not generally force those objects into the competent hands of conservators.  Nor does it mean that the object won’t be treated.  People will just give it their best shot.  Inside the tent pissing out or outside the tent pissing in?

I have had several stimulating telephone conversations with Jim Jobling at the Conservation Research Lab at Texas A&M.  Certainly there are many ways that his lab is not “AIC compliant.”  And you know what?  He doesn’t care.  He does his work the best he can according to the parallel universe of standards that have developed in maritime conservation world.  Google the names of people who treat shipwreck material or wetsite archaeology and most of those names are not coming from the AIC world.  In fact, many of those names have been affiliated with the Texas A&M program.  Or the program at East Carolina University.  If AIC cannot or will not be more inclusive then it is up to us.

I have long suspected that People Who Know Things tend to share generously, while people who are not sure of their knowledge tend to be defensive and secretive.  How about being the change we want to see? I’m trying to put content on my blog that looks like info I’d like to find.  What if Richard Wolbers had his notes on cleaning techniques that worked and ones that didn’t right there on the web?  What if Tony Sigel had a series of brilliant YouTube clips showing tips for treating ceramics?  Rogue exhibit critiques with Toby Raphael?

Only a small percentage of what I am doing is unique or mature enough to bother jumping through the hoops of journal publication.

But plenty of my files are interesting…

…To folks on lab tours: here is more detail on what happens behind-the-scenes
…To the scientist at NOAA: can we collaborate on this project?
…To the grant committee: here is this prototype of what I would do with the money
…To the prospective intern: this is what working with me would be like, are we a good fit?

Plenty of files in the AIC office are interesting too.  Documents on the history of the organization.  Discussions and reports about difficult issues like certification.  Letters to AIC.  Writings from the Kecks.  Do you have to go to Delaware to read the AIC oral history project?  I would love to see pdf postings of all the past conference brochures!

My own blog doesn’t even need to generate new material…I just need to clean up and post the useful stuff that’s already on my hard drive.  I think AIC could do the same.  And so could you.  If you look at my blog it is probably obvious that what I want is a real webpage, but I can’t be bothered with learning how to set it up.  In fact, I’m pretty bad with technology in general.  If you see a hyperlink (is that the right word?) in this posting, it is because the folks at the IMA know how to make it work, not me.  But a weblog is an easy place to dump my content for everyone to use, and best of all, it has a comment section to allow collaboration.

So, what do you think?

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

But, listen, I know typos really can irritate people.  A typo = unprofessional, unpolished, not quite perfect.   Typos are mistakes that could have been corrected if more time had been spent proofreading and copy editing.  Usually, though, we don’t like talking about mistakes, especially when it comes to art conservators – those of us that are given the responsibility of preserving and even occasional physically intervening with cultural property.  I feel pretty comfortable when I say, in general, museums also don’t like talking about mistakes; they don’t like talking about when art gets stolen, broken, damaged, or lost.  In every museum I’ve worked for, visited, or interned at I’ve witnessed people working diligently to reduce the potential for mistakes to happen.  Most that work in museums believe in the importance of art in a profound way. But mistakes still happen.  Muriel Verbeeck-Boutin, CeROArt’s editor in chief, discusses what it means for art conservators to make mistakes, and how we can change our minds by learning from them.  I don’t think she’s calling for an international movement to start talking about all the mistakes we make in museums, but a little more dialogue around this topic seems in order.  To that end, I’m glad that CeROArt decided to devote an entire issue to L’erreur, la faute, le faux.  And I’m glad they invited me to write an article in English, and not in French.

While my typos are one kind of problem, I have serious doubts that everyone is in agreement that this article even counts as a “real publication.” After all it’s in an online journal, it’s not a “real journal,” right?  CeROArt is one of only a few free, online journals (the other one that I think of is e-conservation ).

Are “professional publications” something that you have to hold in your hand and then stick on a shelf, or stick someplace different all together?  Is there a difference in legitimacy in the things that are actually printed and physical and the things that you read on your screen?  Is there a difference between the content you see in a catalogue, the Internet , and a gallery label?

Of course, I think my article is a legitimate publication, and that the topic is timely and important.  I’m not going to make a substantial effort to quantify the difference between print and screen publications.  That’s somebody else’s work.  Clearly, there is a difference between the two.  Not everything is better on the screen; I only read literature in books with real pages.  But I don’t really want to read data and information from a book anymore; I want that on a screen.  I need to acquire information quickly and efficiently, and I need to be able to compare it for my own purposes.

It’s fair to say that there are all sorts of new, legitimate “professional publications.” For example, conservators can list blog publications on a C.V., or list Flickr sets they’ve made around a conservation project.  The IMA conservation department has made some excellent Flickr projects that are as informative and timely as many print publications that I’ve read recently.  I even think doing work on a Wikipedia article can be a professional publication.  I certainly think it would be an important professional activity if a conservator played a major role in writing about the degradation of plastic on the Wikipedia article for Plastic?

But, if you’re reading this blog, I probably didn’t need to tell you any of this.  I’m guessing that it’s those that don’t look to the screen for information that disagree with me.  I guess the only way to get to them is to print this post out, give it to them and ask them to send me a letter in the mail about the topic.  (By the way, that would be totally amazing if it actually happened.)

So what about my typos?  Oh, yeah, those.  Actually, my typos point to one of the benefits of not publishing an article in print.  If I really, really wanted to I could find all the mistakes I made and then send them to CeROArt and they could fix them. I think I’d rather just move forward and let them be.

Finally, the real benefit of online publications is that they have the potential to be seen by everyone in the world, at any time of day they want.  That’s awfully cool.  If only CeROArt had a comment section, then there’d be potential for some feedback on their site.  But then wouldn’t it just be a blog?  Maybe we should collectively rename online journals and blogs to something more professional.  That way when they are printed out folks will know they are extra real.

In addition to Tyler’s post, Ms. Genger’s installation was also discussed in Interior Design and Ana Finel Honigman interviewed Ms. Genger over at Saatchi Online. Don’t forget Ms. Genger herself wrote a post for this blog back in December.

Almost the whole installation

Anyway, you might be surprised to hear that we actually considered the possibility of someone trying to climb one of the pieces, and more specifically the possibility of someone bumping into one and toppling it. Be warned, though, Ms. Genger is awfully clever and with the help of Larry Smallwood (a freelance project manager), an internal support system was engineered to prohibit this from happening. Without going into the details I can say it’s highly unlikely that one of these pieces will topple. But, please trust me on this one: don’t come over and “test them out” for yourself.

I bring this up as an example of how we spend a lot of time around here considering things that our visitor may not be aware of. We take seriously the representation and care of our artworks. In fact, to focus on complex installations like Ms. Genger’s this institution developed an interdisciplinary team dedicated to the care and representation of artworks that we consider “variable.” In short, we say that variable art is a term that defines art that possesses changing observable state.

While Ms. Genger’s artwork likely will not vary considerably while on view as part of the “Whole” installation, we’ve been thinking about what it will mean to separate our newest acquisition, “Len,” from this installation, and then represent it in a new location. Remember, we didn’t acquire the entire installation, just our new friend Len. You can see him in the picture above in the bottom right corner.

Anticipating the possibility of the IMA acquiring one of Ms. Genger’s pieces, Lisa Freiman and I sat down with Ms. Genger the day after her excellent Artist Talk. We excerpted a segment of what conservators call an “artist interview” to hear Lisa talk about one of the reasons she was drawn to Ms. Genger’s work; you can here that excerpt on the “Whole” web page. The excerpt picks up in the middle of the conversation in which Lisa is talking about why she let out a loud laugh during Ms. Genger’s Artist Talk.

In case you’re really interested in the artist interview, here it is in entirety:
Download audio file (interview_with_orly_genger_and_lisa_freiman_and_richard_mccoy_11_21_08_32k.mp3)

In the interview I try to cover as many technical aspects of her work as possible. Art conservators are constantly researching from what and how art is made, and what better time to figure all of this out than just after art is made? Just think if there were recorded conversations with some of your favorite artists from the past. Those sure would help conservators out a lot.

But doing an artist interview is just one of the things we do to gather information about contemporary projects. While the project is being planned we’re constantly collecting information and images that describe and define it the process and final product. The hope is that this information will be useful the next time an artwork is installed, be that next year or 100 years from now.

Here’s something from the Genger project I find particularly interesting and helpful.

Artwork Installation Plan

It’s a plan drawing that illustrates the final placement of all of the pieces in the “Whole” installation. I won’t describe all of the details but it is important to point out that we worked hand and hand with Ms. Genger to make sure that the pieces were installed just how she wanted them, while at the same time insuring that we were providing proper access in the space for movement and egress. This is just a fraction of the information that the “Variable Art Team” collected during this project. In case you’d like to know more about this, I’d like to point you to a couple of great resources:

The Tate’s Media Matters project
The European Union project, Inside Installations
International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Artworks (INCCA)

So, finally, I’d like to say, please be nice to Ms. Genger’s installation while it’s here at the IMA. And, I’d like to suggest one way for Tyler to get his hands on his own and very portable Orly Genger. He can go here and get one of her necklaces.

I tried to think of a way to represent the announcement with some kind of image, but couldn’t come up with anything, so instead I made this.  That pretty much sums up what I think about the news.

Today, though, I’m in Kansas City at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art looking around.  Yeah, just looking around at the art, inside and outside.  I don’t often get to do this.  But I’m here because the Midwest Regional Conservation Guild is convening its 28th Annual Meeting this weekend.  For a long time the MRCG has been an important association for conservators in the Midwest – an organization for which I’ve been honored to be the Secretary/Treasurer for the past 4 years.

How, you might ask, did I get to KC?  Riding in a car (8 hours!) with two IMA conservators, Martin Radecki – and this is where I give him some much-deserved props –, the 2007 winner of the prestigious 2007 Sheldon and Caroline Keck Award, and Claire Hoevel, the IMA’s senior paper conservator.  I think the highlight of our car ride was a necessary stop at Cracker Barrel somewhere in Missouri.  No, not because of the food – it’s a necessity thing – but because of the spirited “Test of Our IQ” at the table.   (If you’re really feigning for a taste of the game, you can play it here, and, no, I’m not going to give you a link to the cheats for the game.)  Anyway, fine, Marty is the champ.  I admit he’s “Purty Smart” and Claire and I are “Just Plain Dumb.”  Fine, whatever, you win, Marty!  (The observant reader would, of course, note the real competition that this game caused, and anticipate that I’ll be suggesting we stop at a CB on the way back so I can have a rematch.)

But today we’ll be spending some time looking around the NAMA, and then on Saturday and Sunday we’ll get down to MRCG business.  I’m looking forward to our Meeting not only because there are some engaging presentations, but because I’ll be able to catch up with a lot of friends.

The featured speaker of the Meeting is Dawn Heller, a conservator of paper and photographs in private practice, and a member of the AIC taskforce on Digital Documentation.  She will be speaking about the new AIC guidelines for Digital Photography and Conservation Documentation.  You may not know it, but that’s kind a big deal in the conservation world.

Plus there will be a lot of other talks that cover a wide range of projects (including one by yours truly).  Here’s the list:

• Moving a Wall – The Howard Cook Mural Project, Randy Ash, Fine Art Conservation, Denver, Colorado
• Gainsborough’s Portrait of Miss Ann Ford, The Second Time Around, Stephen Bonadies, Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio
• Lazarus Raised from the Dead: Repair of a Lead-Base Alloy Nouveau Lampshade Frame, Jim Cutrone, CCR Design, Cleveland, Ohio
• Foam (12), by Zhang Huan: The treatment of an oversize chromogenic print, Thomas M. Edmondson, Conservator, Heugh-Edmondson Conservation Services, LLC, Kansas City, MO
• Revisiting Old Repairs: Issues with Treating Objects from the DIA Islamic Collection, Kathryn Este, Kathryn G. Etre, Mellon Fellow in Objects Conservation, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
• The Responsible Care of Asian Paintings: A Discussion of Remounting Considerations, Claire Hoevel, Senior Paper Conservator, Indianapolis Museum of Art.
• To LED or not to LED?, Gersil Kay, Conservation Lighting International Ltd., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Using the MRCG’s Wiki Site (a Talk and Tutorial), Richard McCoy, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana
• The Conservation of an Abstract Expressionist Painting, “December 1957”, by Frank Lobdell, Marissa Racht Ryan, Yoder Conservation, Cleveland, Ohio
• Peeking behind the Cloth of Raphaelle Peale’s “Venus Rising from the Sea – a Deception,” Mary Schafer, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
• Charles Russell’s Studio: What Can Be Gained When the Cleaning Lady Doesn’t Come, Jodie Utter, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
• The Conservation of Charles Meynier’s Muses, Dean Yoder, Yoder Conservation, Cleveland, Ohio
• Edgar Degas, two decades later, Chris Young, Nashville, Tennessee

After all of that we’ll get back into Marty’s Volkswagen and head back to Indy.  Hopefully I’ll be the guy in the back sleeping, or reading the rest of Georges Perec’s Species of Places and Other Pieces, or looking for signs for the Cracker Barrel.

And of course, I want to mention the NAMA’s blog, Blog @ the Nelson.  I’m a big fan of Jodi O-K.

The Wikipedians, Max, and I.

Pictured from right to left are: Max, Aaron (aka The Urbanophile), Jasmine, Christina, and myself.  Not pictured here are Jenny and Joelle.  While I know that Jenny had a scheduling conflict that day, we never did get a response back from Joelle (where’d you go, Joelle?).

Here’s a list of the articles they created:

Christina’s Sutphin Fountain

Jasmine’s Numbers

Aaron’s Mega-Gem

Joelle’s LOVE

Jenny’s SnowPlow

I’ve been watching these articles since they were created and noticed each one has been added to by other Wikipedians – even if just a little.  The article on Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture has really taken off.  It’s started to grow into an article about all of Indiana’s LOVE sculptures, not just the one at the IMA, which of course was the first sculptural version that he made.  Wouldn’t it be cool if it became the place for information about that sculpture!

Though I don’t think I’ll be offering lunch with Max anytime soon for making more articles, I do encourage you to make an article about an artwork in the IMA’s collection.  Maybe it’s just because I’m a believer in Wikipedia, but I think it’s important work.  It could be a student project either at the college or high school level – really, anyone can make an article once you get the hang of it.

Because I’m interested in exploring and developing the idea that Wikipedia articles can serve as a place to document public artworks by hosting images, referencing other published information, and allowing the public to have first-hand involvement in the history and preservation of public art, I started working a while ago with a two other conservators Crista and Daniel to make Wikipedia articles about a few public artworks.

Here’s a list of the articles that we created:
In Indianapolis:
Ann Dancing

Depew Memorial Fountain

In Wabash, IN
The Lincoln Monument of Wabash, Indiana

In Washington, D.C.
Always Becoming

While we found that hosting images can be a little tricky (clearing copyright, etc) there’s clearly a lot that can be achieved through this work.  Take for example the Ann Dancing sculpture here in Indy by Julian Opie.  While it was installed in January of this year, it had some display issues and was recently taken down for repairs.  How do I know this?  I found out when someone made an edit to the article.  In a matter of days an image was uploaded and links were made to the local newspaper coverage.

I had never been so interested to see an artwork not working.  It was an example of history being written almost as it happened!

Who knows what will come of all of this but I believe there’s great potential for Wikipedia to help raise awareness about the preservation of artworks through documentation and keeping an up-to-date history – something that print publications simply can’t do.

Here’s the link to Lunder’s Twitter Site.  I’ve been following them since I first saw that blog post; I also follow a few other people: one of my brothers, a friend, an artist, and so on.  I’ve never posted anything to my Twitter account, but I do update my “status” on my Facebook account somewhat frequently, which is a lot like using Twitter.  Who knows why it so compelling to let my “friends” know what I’m up to, but I do it.

I hope by this point you’re asking yourself why the Lunder Center (or anyone) is tweeting or updating their facebook status.  Because that’s what I’ve been asking myself recently.  Why are we interested in doing this?  Are we deepening the way we communicate; or is the way we are communicating, searching, reading, and surfing on the internet changing us?  In the end I think this is the more interesting question: how is technology changing the way we think?

With Linda’s post last week and then Damon Darlin’s article, Technology Doesn’t Dumb Us Down. It Frees Our Minds in the NYT, which was a response to Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic Monthly article Is Google Making Us Stupid?, I’ve been kicking these thoughts around recently.

Of course, I don’t really have any answers, and I trust you weren’t expecting them from me.  To pair all of this down to a sentence or two: I don’t think technology is making us stupid, and, well, I really don’t think it’s making us any smarter.  But I am thrilled to be at this moment when technology is opening doors that were previously closed, showing us into parts of the museum (and every other part of society) that were previously off limits, and allowing us to collaborative work together on projects that are greater than each individual.

Listen to Clay Shirky at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo talk about “waking up from the collective bender” we’ve been having on our free time and you’ll know what I mean.  I for one agree with him about the idea of “carving out a bit of the cognitive surplus” and putting it to good use.  And of course agree that it’s better to do something rather than to do nothing with “free time” (one of his arguments I find a bit tough: that playing World of Warcraft is more productive than watching a sitcom like The Office).

So, maybe this is why I’m so interested in following museum projects with Twitter, or why I’m willing blog for the IMA, read other conservation blogs, work on Wikipedia projects, or fool with Facebook (mind you I really don’t mess with any of these things while I’m here at the IMA, I’m just too busy with the “work” work I do. Honestly, that’s the truth.  I do all that stuff at home, on my free time.). I’m willing to do it because it’s doing something not nothing.  (Another side note here, the other weekend I made an application in Facebook that allows you to send art conservation tools to your friends – because they may need them.  I’ll let you be judge if this is doing something or doing nothing.)

I remember sometime ago when Tyler Green over at Modern Art Notes announced  that he was on Facebook, but then said “Not sure what I’ll do with it, but I’m open to suggestions.”  (Yes, he’s on also Twitter .)   Yeah, “open to suggestions.”  Me too.  I think that’s a big difference: it seems everyone and everything is now open for suggestions or discussion, or is just plain open. This is a change in thinking.  I think this proves that technology has the potential to free our minds, not make us more stupid.

I feel a need to bring this back to art conservation because, in the end, that’s what I do and what I’m nominally supposed to be writing about.  Using technology to talk about conservation or work on conservation projects has plenty of positives.  And doing it in an open way has the potential to get more people involved and make the work that we are doing in the museum more accessible.  Do I think using Twitter to let you have up-to-the-minute updates on what the conservators are doing on projects is a good idea?  I don’t know, and I don’t think I’ll be up for answering that anytime soon (unless, of course, the Nugget Factory decides to pony up the money to cover my cell phone data plan to let me experiment with it).

Finally, then, I’d like to take this post in a slightly different but related direction and end with another question: how does all of this technology and accessibility change our understanding of and interest in art?  I’m fairly certain that all of the art in the IMA’s collection has nothing to do with you sitting at home looking at a computer screen; you have to come here to see it.  Because I work in conservation, I’m reminded on a daily basis that art is a physical thing: it has dimension, occupies space, and in some ways is living a life here at the IMA.  A flat, glowing screen can’t relay this kind of information; art must be viewed and experienced in person.

Here’s my attempt to reduce this to a tweet: “Richard McCoy is unsure how technology influences viewing art.”

Here’s a link to our project description.

Since the Conflux Festival is “The art and technology festival for the creative exploration of urban public space” we thought this would be an ideal place to expand our ideas and methods for documentation as we prepare for a number of upcoming projects in the contemporary department.

So, here’s the plan: we have a bag full of recording equipment that those ever-helpful Nuggets let me use (note to self: don’t get this bag ripped off) and a bunch of interesting projects and artists to investigate.  Rebecca and I have identified three perspectives for “viewing” an artist’s work:

1) Artist Vantage Point
The artist documents his/her perspective of the work.
2) Participant Vantage Point
The participant in a work documents his/her experience.
3) Witness Vantage Point
The witness or observer documents the work.

Of course, there’s some cross over between these three perspectives, but by identifying them this way we’ll be able to pick specific projects that best illustrate them.

Here are some projects that we’ll be working on:

49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs: Grand Finale by John Cage, a realization by Twiceband.

“The piece calls for participants to do a performance of their choice, or make an audio recording, or listen to the environment at any 49 of 147 randomly selected locations in New York City. For Twiceband’s realization, we are using the locales originally selected by Cage (using the I Ching), and will document all of the waltzes with text, audio recordings and photography.”

Here’s a link to a NYT article about this project, and a link to Kurt Gochstalk’s blog that discusses the project.

9/10 by Lucas Murgida

“A cabinet will be constructed and left on a sidewalk. I will be hidden inside and not reveal myself until someone assumes possession and brings the cabinet to their home.”

Here’s a link to Lucas’ Twitter (http://twitter.com/lucasmurgida) and Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucasmurgida/) sites, where you can follow his adventure live this Saturday.  Also, here’s a link to his web page (http://lucasmurgida.com/) , where you can see a picture of him in the cabinet.

Acting Stranger by Andrew Schneider

“I act out and document short, scripted scenes with complete strangers as my scene partners. We set up a date, time, and location. The camera is rolling when they arrive, the only words out of our mouths are scripted, and there are no “thank yous” or “goodbyes”. We interact as dictated by the words. There is no direction. There are no second takes. There is nothing that is not within the context of the scene. We experience each other. The scene ends. We leave.”

I think there’s still time to sign up for a scene , if you’re gonna be in the City.  Here’s a link to Andrew’s blog.

Urban Disorientation Game Led by Calvin Johnson and Scott Knowles

“In this 2-3 hour game, participants are blindfolded and driven to a location several miles away from Conflux Headquarters. The game-players are divided into teams, and each team will be led by a UDG “guide.” The guides will each supervise a team, making certain that all precautions are taken to insure a fun and safe play of the game. Teams will not be allowed to use cell phones, maps, or transportation of any kind other than walking, and will only be provided the most minimal of tools in order to find their way back to the Conflux.”

Here’s an article in yesterday’s AM New York that mentions the UDG, and also that this is the last year for the Conflux Festival.

Clearly, Rebecca and I have enough to do to keep us busy for the next few days.  So busy that I don’t think I’ll even have time to visit any museums, but I’ll certainly have dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in the world: Candle 79.