One of the first steps of any conservation treatment is to closely examine the object, creating written and photographic records of its current state. Conservators do this using a variety of tools and methods. I started to examine King Caspar by looking closely under normal light. Then, I began to change the angle and intensity of light, eventually adding magnification (via a stereomicroscope). I also examined the sculpture under ultraviolet illumination to observe UV-induced fluorescence.
Thanks to a generous grant from the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation, funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, administered by the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation, the Denver Art Museum is conserving an eighteenth-century Ecuadorian statue that is part of the DAM's Stapleton Collection of Latin American Colonial Art.
Courtney Murray, the Samuel H. Kress Fellow in Objects Conservation at the Denver Art Museum, is documenting her conservation treatment in a four-part series you can find here.
Meet King Caspar. This small polychrome wood sculpture dates to eighteenth-century Ecuador and is part of the renowned Stapleton Collection of Latin American Colonial Art at the Denver Art Museum. King Caspar is one of a set of six polychrome sculptures in the Stapleton Collection that together represent the three Magi and their horses. It is currently undergoing conservation treatment.
Lyrical, structured, bold, colorful, whimsical, meticulous, commemorative, and even “crazy," the quilts currently on display in First Glance/Second Look: Quilts from the Denver Art Museum Collection cover a staggering amount of design territory. Enticing the viewer’s eye to the back of the gallery is a striking grid of red and black interspersed with a rainbow of other colors.
In part one of this series, we discussed assessing what needed to be done to conserve Big Sweep by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.
The successful conservation of the sedan chair now on display in Court to Café relied on a collaborative approach with conservators providing expertise in the treatment of furniture, objects, paintings, and textiles. As presented in Part 1 of this blog, the leather, paintings, and textile components of the sedan chair all needed attention. The goal of the treatment was to stabilize and visually integrate these elements through minimal treatment and using stable and reversible conservation materials, as required by conservation ethics.
In August, a conservation project on the sculpture Big Sweep was completed. Big Sweep was designed by artists Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg, who worked closely with fabricator Carlson & Co. to realize the sculpture in its final form.
Court to Café, part of the Passport to Paris exhibition, includes eight period decorative arts pieces from the Denver Art Museum’s own collections—seven furniture items and one mantle clock. When conservators examined the objects several months before the exhibition to determine if they needed treatment prior to display, they were pleased to note that the objects were in fairly good condition, requiring only minimal cleaning and some other minor and localized treatment.
Also part of the TEFAF was the conservation of the painting’s frame. The frame is "period," meaning stylistically it is of similar age as that of the painting, but not original to our Canaletto. This is not surprising since frames, historically, were not really perceived as works of art themselves and, indeed, the idea of placing a higher value on the “package” of both the painting and its original frame is a relatively new concept. Our frame is constructed of wood with hand-carved elements originally gilded using water and oil gilding techniques.
Canaletto Overall.jpg
The New World department has a comprehensive display of pre-Columbian artifacts from Central, Meso-, and South America located in the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Study Gallery of Pre-Columbian Art on Level 4 of the North Building. Objects in this space are made of clay (ceramics), metals, wood, and stone and served a utilitarian, decorative and religious/spiritual purpose. Often, all three functions were rolled into one.
The idea of reversibility is a very important concept in modern conservation practice. I chose materials with good and known aging characteristics, understanding that my work may need to be removed and/or redone, in the future. It is important that my conservation treatments are reversible. I know that the adhesive I chose to bond the original and lining canvases could be separated in the future and will not cause further harm to the artwork.
Now that I’ve reduced the distracting bumps caused by the previous lining adhesive, I must now re-line the picture to another auxiliary canvas support. I was hoping not to have to re-line the picture, but it was not possible to locally mend the tear since the fibers along the tear edges were too frayed and weak.