Displaying items by tag: cleaning

Alchemy, a large-scale, sumptuously-textured painting by the Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock has returned to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice after undergoing an extensive conservation. The work, one of Pollock’s earliest poured paintings, traveled to Florence’s Opificio delle Pietre Dure (Hard Stone Factory), where it underwent an analytical study, cleaning, and conservation. The painting’s surface, which features dense layers of enamel, alkyd, oil paint, twine, sand, and pebbles, had been dulled by dirt and grime that had accumulated over the years.

For the duration of the exhibition, Alchemy by Jackson Pollock: Discovering the Artist at Work, the painting is being presented without glass or plexiglas, providing an unprecedented look at the restored work’s astonishly vivid colors and sculptural surface. Visitors are guided through every technical aspect of the conservation process thanks to a multimedia installation that features video, 3D reproductions, touch-screens, interactive devices, and documentation and original items loaned from Pollock’s studio at the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Long Island.

Surface-treatment trials are due to begin this month as part of a £7m restoration of a masterpiece of British Baroque—the Painted Hall in the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, south-east London. The “unprecedented” project aims to break new ground in the cleaning and stabilization of wall and ceiling paintings covering 3,700 sq. m and in granting members of the public access to conservation work being carried out 16 meters above the ground.

The soaring hall was designed by Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor as a dining room for naval veterans—the “Greenwich Pensioners”—in the seamen’s hospital that became part of the college. It was painted by James Thornhill over 19 years, beginning in 1708.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art will regild the thirteen-foot sculpture Diana (1892-94), which resides in the its Great Stair Hall. The work, which is by the Beaux-Arts sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), once sat atop Madison Square Garden in New York City.

The undertaking was made possible by a grant from Bank of America through its Global Art Conservation Project and will be helmed by the institution’s Conservation Department and the department of American Art. The regilding is expected to take four months to complete. and will require corrosion removal, surface preparation and the laying of 180 square feet of gold leaf. This process will be followed by any adjustments necessary to improve the appearance and lighting of the sculpture. The work was significantly eroded while on view at Madison Square Garden and cleaning and repair efforts that took place before the sculpture was installed in 1932 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art added to the damage.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art will document each step of the conservation and regilding process so that the public can monitor Diana’s progress.

In 2010, the UK’s National Trust was given five paintings from the estate of the late Edna, Lady Samuel of Wych Cross, the widow of Harold, Lord Samuel of Wych Cross, a property developer, philanthropist, and prominent art collector. Among the bequest was a portrait of an ornately dressed man believed to be a relatively unremarkable 17^th century painting. Although the work bears a signature and date reading “Rembrandt 1635,” experts believed it to be a later copy or the work of one of the Dutch master’s pupils.

The painting, which spent nearly two years in storage, has just been identified as an authentic Rembrandt (1606-1669) self-portrait worth over $30 million. The painting hadn’t been examined since 1968 and recent X-ray analysis along with newly found circumstantial evidence from the Rembrandt Research Project indicates that the work is in fact genuine.

The self-portrait is the only Rembrandt in the National Trust’s collection of 13,500 paintings and will remain on view at Buckland Abbey through the end of tourist season. Once it is taken off view the painting will be undergo a thorough cleaning and further technical analysis. Experts will perform dendrochronology to date the beech panel the work is painted on, the paint will be analyzed, and the painting will be x-rayed again to check for under-drawings.

David Taylor, the National Trust’s curator of paintings and sculpture, expects to have a final confirmation on the painting by early next year.