The conservation and restoration of cultural property focuses on protection and care of cultural property, including artworks, architecture, archaeology, and museum collections. Conservation activities include preventive conservation, examination, documentation, research, treatment, and education. This field is closely allied with conservation science, curators and registrars.
John La Farge was an American artist whose career spanned illustration, murals, interior design, painting, and popular books on his Asian travels and other art-related topics.
Harry Sternberg (1904–2001), was an American painter, printmaker and educator. He taught at the Art Students League of New York, from 1933 to c. 1966.
The Brumidi Corridors are the vaulted, ornately decorated corridors on the first floor of the Senate wing in the United States Capitol.
The Intermuseum Conservation Association is the oldest non-profit art conservation center in the United States, currently located in Cleveland, OH. The ICA offers conservation and preservation treatments for paintings, murals, works on paper, documents, objects of all media, outdoor sculpture, monuments, and textiles.
The Abelardo L. Rodriguez Market is a traditional public market located in the historic center of Mexico City, northeast of the main plaza, or Zocalo. It was built in 1934 as a prototype for a more modern marketplace and has a number of unusual features such as day care and an auditorium. However, the market's most distinctive feature is the approximately 1,450 square metres of wall and ceiling space covered in murals. These murals were painted by muralists, some former Diego Rivera helpers. Rivera had a role in approving artist designs, but little else. The works mostly reflect socialist themes, such as the exploitation of workers, peasants and miners, the fight against Nazism and fascism, and racial discrimination. Earthquakes, time, humidity and vandalism took their toll on the murals from the time they were painted until restoration began in January 2009. Restoration work is expected to take almost two years.
Heritage Preservation was an American non-profit organization founded in 1973. Its mission is to preserve the nation's heritage for future generations through innovative leadership, education, and programs. As of June 30, 2015 the organization was dissolved by its board. Several of its programs and resources have been absorbed by the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation.
The detachment of wall paintings involves the removal of a wall painting from the structure of which it formed part. Once a common practice, with the move towards preservation in situ, detachment is now largely restricted to cases where the only alternative is total loss. According to the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), "detachment and transfer are dangerous, drastic and irreversible operations that severely affect the physical composition, material structure and aesthetic characteristics of wall paintings. These operations are, therefore, only justifiable in extreme cases when all options of in situ treatment are not viable."
A paintings conservator is an individual responsible for protecting cultural heritage in the form of painted works of art. These individuals are most often under the employ of museums, conservation centers, or other cultural institutions. They oversee the physical care of collections, and are trained in chemistry and practical application of techniques for repairing and restoring paintings.
The Lovejoy Columns, located in Portland, Oregon, United States, supported the Lovejoy Ramp, a viaduct that from 1927 to 1999 carried the western approach to the Broadway Bridge over the freight tracks in what is now the Pearl District. The columns were painted by Greek immigrant Tom Stefopoulos between 1948 and 1952. In 1999, the viaduct was demolished but the columns were spared due to the efforts of the architectural group Rigga. For the next five years, attempts to restore the columns were unsuccessful and they remained in storage beneath the Fremont Bridge.
A textile conservator is a conservator-restorer charged with the care, treatment, research, and preservation of textiles. Issues addressed by a textile conservator are generally related to the field of textile preservation, and include damage caused to textiles by: light, mold and mildew, insects, cleaning, surface cleaning, washing, mounting for display, and storage. Variations in textile types and “the diversity of the textile conservator’s work makes it a very rewarding profession”. Textiles are among the most fragile artifacts, as they are susceptible to damage from atmospheric pollutants, moisture, biological organisms, and environmental changes and care varies with size, shape, material, and condition issues, all of which a textile conservator must be well versed.
The conservation and restoration of outdoor murals is the process of caring for and maintaining murals, and includes documentation, examination, research, and treatment to insure their long-term viability, when desired.
Frances Currey was an American folk art painter.
América Tropical is a 98-foot wide fresco mural created in 1932 by David Alfaro Siqueiros and other artists in Los Angeles, California, on a second-level exterior wall of the Italian Hall. It was painted over soon after its completion on an external wall of the Italian Hall on Olvera Street, in El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument of Downtown Los Angeles. It was restored and revealed to the public in 2012, 80 years to the day after its first unveiling.
The conservation and restoration of paintings is carried out by professional painting conservators. Paintings cover a wide range of various mediums, materials, and their supports. Painting types include fine art to decorative and functional objects spanning from acrylics, frescoes, and oil paint on various surfaces, egg tempera on panels and canvas, lacquer painting, water color and more. Knowing the materials of any given painting and its support allows for the proper restoration and conservation practices. All components of a painting will react to its environment differently, and impact the artwork as a whole. These material components along with collections care will determine the longevity of a painting. The first steps to conservation and restoration is preventive conservation followed by active restoration with the artist's intent in mind.
The De Wild family was a Dutch family of art professionals, including conservator-restorers, art dealers, painters, and connoisseurs. Prominent internationally in the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, they were especially known for their advances in art restoration.
Mural is a large painting by American artist Jackson Pollock. Although signed and dated 1943, the signature and date were not added until 1947, and the work was probably completed around the fall of 1943. It was made with oil paint on linen, and is Pollock's largest canvas, measuring 2.43 by 6.04 metres. The work was commissioned by Peggy Guggenheim for the long entrance hall of her townhouse at 155 East 61st Street in New York City.
The conservation-restoration of Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic refers to the on-going conservation-restoration treatments of American painter Thomas Eakins' 1875 painting The Gross Clinic throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. These treatments are a testament to the changing methodologies undertaken in the field of paintings conservation.
Carroll F. Wales was an art restorer and conservator of paintings, icons, frescoes, and murals. He specialized in the conservation of early Christian Byzantine art and worked on restoration projects in the Middle East, Europe and the United States. A fine arts major at Harvard College, he received an art conservation degree from the Fogg Art Museum. Wales graduated in 1949 and went on to restore important mosaics and frescoes at prominent museums and religious sites around the world. In addition to these projects, he became co-proprietor with Constantine Tsaousis of Oliver Brothers, an art restoration firm in Boston, Massachusetts.
