I was excited to attend the 2010 Mid-west Regional Conservation Guild (MRCG) meeting in Louisville, Kentucky last weekend (November 12-14 2010). I had not been to Louisville and I was attending the meeting to give a presentation about the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), and to record all of the institutional history lectures for the FAIC Oral History archives and the ICOM-CC theory and history of conservation working group. This year marks the 30th Anniversary of the founding of the MRCG, in this reflective moment the guild asked representatives from conservation departments in the Mid-west to speak about the history of their institution.
Lectures were given in chronological order, with the lab that was first established lecturing first:
- 1927: Detroit Institute of Arts: presented by Barbara Heller
- 1936: Cincinnati Art Museum: presented by Cecile Mear
- 1938: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: presented by Chris Young
- 1952: Intermuseum Conservation Assocations: presented by Wendy Partridge
- 1956: Art Institute of Chicago: presented by Frank Zuccari
- 1958 Cleveland Museum of Art: presented by Shelly Paine
- 1964: St. Louis Art Museum: presented by Paul Haner
- 1968: Indianapolis Museum of Art: presented by Marty Radecki
- 1980: Midwest Regional Conservation Guild: presented by Richard McCoy
The Detroit Institute of Art (DIA) was celebrating their 125th Anniversary that evening, and Barbara Heller gave a thorough overview of the history of the conservation department at the DIA. She also provided me additional documents to give to these archives, which I really appreciated. The DIA talk discussed the paintings conservator William Suhr, who would come up in later institutional histories, as he was one of the first paintings conservators who worked in this region of the USA.
Cincinnati covered history and also touched on some projects, including the exhibit Art conservation: the race against destuction in 1978 which published a book by the same name. Since there have been so many discussions recently about outreach I thought it was interesting to see outreach by conservators in the late 1970s. Perhaps a discussion of the history of outreach in art conservation is in order?
Chris Young spoke about the history of the Nelson-Atkins Museum. She was once employed in the paper lab at that museum. Her talk included many funny antecdotes and interesting facts about the conservation department, when the department was first founded, conervators were hired to work a few days a week for the museum, and a few days for the chief conservator Forest Bailey’s private practice, which was run in the museum lab. This meant conservators had full-time work, but the museum did not pay benefits. In 1998 Forest Bailey retired and private work at the museum ended.
Alison Stewart discussed the covering of codpieces in painting The Wedding Dance by Pieter Bruegel the Elder at the DIA. This ‘modesty overpainting’ was to make these paintings less vulgar and exhibitable, but this practice would not be followed today because it means the original painting had to be painted over to hide these codpieces. Luckily, the overpaint was removed from The Wedding Dance and the codpieces can be viewed.
The Intermuseum Conservation Association (ICA) gave a really excellent presentation with images of the monument men, Christmas cards from the first conservation class at Oberlin, and a great image of a raised fist with a paintbrush, from the student protests when the training program closed. The ICA covered their move and plans for the future.
The Art Institute of Chicago presentation included archival information like the receipt for cleaning a painting in the 1930s = $25. Louis Pomerantz was their first conservator and he wrote the book: Is your contemporary painting more temporary than you think? which is a great title for a book and Pomerantz had almost as many mentions as Suhr in these presentations.
The Cleveland Museum of Art presentation mentioned how a painting by Matthias Grunewald was acquired in the mid-1970s and was then proved to be a forgery, the museum gave more resources to the conservation department. The presentation had a good format, a timeline slide that was continually added to and then antecdotes were told as asides.
The St. Louis Art Museum (SLAM) mentioned they have only had 10 conservators in their 46-year history, 5 of whom are still at the museum. I thought it was interesting they mentioned they have earthquake mitigation concerns for their mounts, I guess earthquakes are in areas outside of the ring of fire.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) was the last presentation, which was interesting considering the IMA is tied with Cleveland for hosting the most MRCG meetings (both have hosted 5 meetings). The department has grown in the past 40-years from one conservator to a staff of 11, which includes a conservation scientist.
The history of the MRCG was covered, and Richard McCoy has posted his slides online so you may watch his presentation yourself. He has also begun the MRCG page on Wikipedia, and made a fantastic map on google maps which everyone at the conference really enjoyed.
After Richard’s presentation he presented the rubber chicken award to Tom Edmondson for his work to MRCG to much applause. It was a great day of history and lectures, and as a newcomer to the mid-west it was really important for me to understand this history of conservation in this region, to meet conservators, and to share my ideas with the guild. I drove back to Kansas City with Tom Edmondson, Nancy Heugh, and Lexi Janezic and we talked the entire drive about the past and the future of conservation.
