The newest archaeology exhibition at Williamsburg’s DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum includes a blue and white urn, one of only a few excavated in the American colonies.
The urn is encased by itself – fitting given its back story.
Beyond its historical significance, the partially formed vessel represents what can be accomplished through art conservation, a delicate process that must balance the integrity and authenticity of the original artwork with what’s essential for its long-term preservation.
The urn is part of a class of “special” artifacts, singled out as having enhanced value, whether it be because they are of substantial financial worth, tied to a relevant historical figure or simply cool all on their own.
What rises up to receive extra attention and funding is debatable. For Mark Lewis, conservator at the Chrysler Museum of Art for nearly 24 years, it’s complicated.
“Which are your favorite children?” he asks.
In the case of urn, it wouldn’t even exist without conservation and the DeWitt Museum receiving a Kress Conservation Fellowship that funded reconstructing the 2,545 ceramic sherds and thousands of delaminated glaze shards that were stowed in boxes for years.
“It takes collaboration between a curator and a historian or the archaeologist as to what priorities bubble up to the top,” said Patty Silence, director of Conservation Operations at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which promotes educational programming, preservation and ongoing research. “The urn is iconic. It’s a unique object. We have so much of it, too.”
The overwhelming challenge was reattaching the glaze, part of the larger project that consumed Kress recipient Skyler Jenkins for nearly a year.
“It was like a two-layer puzzle,” said Jenkins, who holds a degree in conservation and archaeological materials from UCLA Getty, one of three programs in the United States that awards graduate level degrees in this area.
While an interdisciplinary background in art history, materials science, studio art and chemistry is essential for art conservators, patience might be the chief prerequisite for their arduous work.
When the Colonial Williamsburg Archaeology Department excavated the remnants of the urn from a sawpit in the South Yard of the Wren Building on the William and Mary campus in 2014, the pieces were sealed in boxes and put into storage.
Soil from excavation remained on nearly all the pieces. It took Jenkins three months to surface clean each glaze sherd. Most were refaced and recleaned to assure a proper fit for reattachment.
Burial pollutants interfered with the process. The glaze fell off during burial and accrued calcified dirt, which necessitated using a chelator to remove it without further damage.
Pattern recognition, particularly the black spots that are likely manganese, helped with the reconstruction that culminated in 35% of the exterior and 20% of the interior of the vessel that stands 10.8 inches. Only one of its spiraled handles is reattached. Though another handle was excavated, it doesn’t fit this urn.
“The urn has a twin,” Jenkins said, her own epiphany moment that sets the stage for a future project.
Restoring painting in Norfolk
Lewis’ current conservation focus is of a far different nature.
Earlier this year, the Chrysler Museum received a $75,000 Bank of America Art Conservation Grant that will enable him and other staff to restore Edgar Degas’ painting “Dancer with Bouquets.”
The life-size oil on canvas of a prima ballerina bathed in the footlights curtseying to the audience in the Paris Opera House was found in the French Impressionist’s studio when he died in 1917.
The Degas painting is in exceptionally good condition structurally with minimal conservation treatment in the past. Walter Chrysler Jr. was only its third owner when he bought it in the 1930s.
Paintings are fragile, and as they age they tend to decay over time. Although well over 130 years old, "Dancer with Bouquets" is in exceptionally good condition. Much of the Chrysler's conservation efforts center on recovering Degas’ original intentions for the work. Early Impressionists were often regarded as rebels exploring new ways of painting that clashed with the traditional way artists showed the world.
"Initially, nobody would buy their work; and only few dealers would even show their work," Lewis said. "They banded together and did their own thing."
It's not surprising that this painting by Degas, like others from that period, was previously treated after the artist's death. At some point it was cleaned and varnished, deepening and darkening the colors and adding contrast, which in some cases, is how the artist wanted it to look. As for Degas' intentions? “We’re looking for clues and comparing notes with other museums ” Lewis said.
Removing the varnish is risky, but he has almost 50 years of experience in the conservation of paintings.
“It calls for using a blend of solvents that will remove just the varnish and not affect the original paint layer,” said Lewis, who will dab a small amount of solvent on Q tips and test it in a small square-inch area, ensuring only the natural resin varnish appears on the swab. It’s an undertaking that could take close to 100 hours to complete.
Even if it’s ultimately determined that the painting should be varnished, a stable but reversible synthetic resin would likely be applied for its appearance and long term preservation.Degas frequently designed frames for his paintings. The current frame – highly ornate and gilded, similar to something that would fit right in on the walls of the Paris Opera House – is unlike the simple designs Degas favored.
“We’re looking at using one of his designs to have a frame recreated that would be entirely different from what we’ve always shown the painting in,” Lewis said.
Degas worked on “Dancer with Bouquets” over the last 20 years of his life. Today, infrared technology can provide a look below the surface of the painting and reveal the compositional changes.
“This technology allows us to time travel and see the artist at work in his studio,” Lewis said. “We can imagine watching him as he changes his mind about how the dancer's figure should be posed. We want to share that insight with people, which might encourage them to look at the painting a little longer and think about it a little more.”
The museum plans to reveal the restored Degas painting in a public presentation likely in the spring.
As unique as both the urn and the Degas painting are, every artifact in a museum tells a story. A conservator is charged with caring for everything in the collection.
“Everything falls apart,” Lewis said. “Stone and glass, unless you drop them, slower than everything else. Textiles and color photographs are falling apart second by second. There’s a different clock ticking for all these sort of objects. We’re trying to create the environment that slows this clock down. Unless people intervene, art will not last.”
