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’.

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? William Carlos Williams

While it’s surprising that the renowned Lunder Conservation Center of the Smithsonian doesn’t appear to have any of their videos up on youtube.com or Google Video, they have some good ones embedded in the web page (see if you can spot one of the Issac Mizrahi aprons ). I recommend this excellent video of objects conservator Helen Ingalls talking about a treatment she completed on a marble sculpture of Tecumseh.

As a graduate of William Henry Harrison High School (go Raiders!), I’m well aware of the important place in American history that Tecumseh and his younger brother The Prophet hold so I was thrilled to see this treatment.

The third video is just part 1 of 5 videos of the 1999 restoration of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts’ important painting by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, The Immaculate Conception.

You can find the rest of the videos on the museum’s web page and also check out a massive amount of documentation that was done before, during, and after the treatment. The conservation work was completed by Joan Gorman, David Marquis and the rest of the folks at the Midwest Art Conservation Center.

I would be remiss not to point out that IMA has begun to create some content about art conservation within its website. You can go here to check out the youtubers that have been made and you can go here to learn about the Sebastiano Mainardi Conservation Project . Since there’s been some recent talk about creating more content about art conservation for the IMA’s web page, I’d like to ask you what you think:

What kinds of things would you like to see more of from the conservation department?

• Discussions of the techniques and materials of artworks?
• Discussions of the condition of artworks?
• Demonstrations of conservation projects & treatments?
• Or something else all together.

Let me know, will you?