Benjamin Franklin by John J. Boyle
Detail of bronze sculpture, 1899
University of Pennsylvania
1996 conservation treatment

The interview was conducted by Ilana Stanger of TheArtBiz.com.

How did you get into conservation work?

I got into it in the 1970s. That was before there were formal graduate programs in conservation. I trained as an art historian at Bryn Mawr College and then served a five year apprenticeship at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. I worked with metals and terracotta and plaster and polychrome wood. After the apprenticeship I returned to the United States and started working with institutions on their collections.

What sort of training do most conservators have?

You need training in art history, fine arts--you have to be able to work with your hands very well--and science, mostly chemistry. Most people come to conservation from one of those three avenues. You also need to have good writing skills, or be willing to work on developing them. Documentation--along with photography, drawings, and text--is critical to the performance of the job.

It does seem there are a lot of fine artists who do conservation work to support themselves. Do you see a fine arts background as an asset?

I’ve found that fine artists can come on the job and very quickly understand what has to be done. I’ve worked with a lot of people with fine arts backgrounds, and some have gone on to become conservators, and others just work occasionally with me and are terrific. But if you want to become a professional conservator and have a good paying job and be in a position where you can design treatments, you do have to go to a graduate program. It can be done through years of apprenticeship, but that’s more difficult.

Are there a number of graduate conservation programs?

There are four major programs: the University of Delaware, New York University, State College of New York in Buffalo, and Queens College in Kingston, Ontario.

If you’re in a program you’ll get a very good scientific background, which is very important. Because I trained before there were programs, I don’t have a strong scientific background and I often need to subcontract the scientific component of a project. You really have to know what the condition of the material is and how your treatment is going to alter that material, so you can decide if the alteration is acceptable or not.

What sort of research goes into deciding on a treatment? First of all you determine what you’ve got. What is the material?

If it’s a bronze you want to find out what alloy it is if you need to make repairs. Then you need to look at the condition, and you decide why it’s in the condition that it’s in-- whether it’s just weather, or acid rain and pollution, or there’s actually been damage, or someone has done inappropriate conservation treatment in the past. After you decide what you’re looking at, you find out what the client’s expectations are. Clients have very different expectations.

For a museum with a high-style collection, they’re going to probably want the piece to look more like it might have looked when it first came out of the artist’s studio. A historical society might want traces of past treatments—-for instance, if they have a wooden cigar store Indian, they wouldn’t want you to take off all the paint layers, they probably want to leave that as a document of the history of the piece. After you determine what the client wants you give the client a proposal for their options, with costs. Then the client decides. Conservators really never decide the treatment, they recommend.

Is there any amount of creative vision involved in deciding on a treatment?

If you’re a fine artist, you have to put that in some other part of your personality. The aesthetic that you are driving for is the aesthetic of the period--that’s why you need to know art history. You need to know what the artist would have done at that period, and what he would have wanted the sculpture to look like. You use your aesthetic skills when you’re doing visual integration at the end of a job. For instance, say you’ve got a plaster sculpture that’s been badly damaged, and you begin to inpaint some of the chips. There comes a time when you will stop, because you don’t want it to look like new. If you have a developed sense of aesthetic you can see the whole work coming together in a way that people who don’t have the training can’t. So you can often make a better judgment about how the object will present itself to someone else.

Do you think about the environment around a piece as well?

I can recommend. We’re very concerned about the site. We’re concerned about signage in the area that could block out the objects, and that they’re well lit, and that shrubbery is cut back. Sometimes if there’s a horticulturalist on staff there can be heated debates about how much to cut back. Other times the architect has designed a basin for the statue to be placed in after it’s conserved, and the conservator usually says that that is 'a most unfortunate suggestion.'

The role of the conservator is to be an advocate for the art. Everybody else has an agenda. It’s really very exciting, especially as people are listening to conservators more and more.

What is the current state of conservation in America?

It was just starting in the early 70s. It’s come a very long way. Most museums now have a conservator or contract a conservator. Most curators who come from professional curatorial graduate programs wouldn’t think of treating anything without a conservator. Twenty years ago the staffs of museums would haul pieces out of storage and clean them and glue them back together when they wanted to display them. That would never happen now.

What work options are there for young conservators?

You can be on the staff of a museum, or work privately, or receive a fellowship. Some people work for two or three years on a fellowship-—both Getty and the Kres foundation offer fellowships where you can work in a museum and get a sense of the diversity of a collection and then go out into the private sphere with a lot of experience.

I think if you can get established privately it’s much more exciting to work with a variety of objects and collections then to be on the staff of a museum. At a lot of museums you spend time taking humidity readings and going to meetings rather than working with the actual art objects.

For conservators in private practice, what is the bidding process like for jobs?

At this point I don’t bid, because I have clients of long-standing. But if you’re entering the field you must be prepared for competitive bidding.

Who evaluates the bids?

If it’s a city project it’d have an art advisory committee. For museums it’d be their curatorial and conservation staff. The cost factor is important, but reputation matters more than price for most people.

If you do conservation you’re not going to get wildly rich, but you can support yourself and have enormous amounts of fun with beautiful art. You get to work with cool people, too.

Do you always work with a group?

I don’t work alone very often. A lot of people who come out of graduate school start with smaller projects--it’s too much of an adventure to bid on a large project where you’ll have to pay a team. They start out with private clients and small museums. Eventually you realize that you can offer a client a better price if you have a team. I subcontract different parts of my jobs—metalwork, scientific support, mold making. I never make a mold.

It seems there’s just no formula. Is every treatment different?

Yes. Every piece is different. Every object is old and it has its own histories: its fabrication history and treatment history and use history. We consider them all. The difference between a conservator and someone who just restores objects is that the conservator has to think for the object about its past and future care. You need to think very carefully about where it has been and where it's going.

Any other advice for someone breaking into conservation?

Get a student membership in the American Institute for Conservation. You get a newsletter and journal, and that’s a very good way to find out what goes on in the field. If you live near an annual meeting, then go to that and sit-in on some talks. Once you’ve read some literature call around in your area and see if there’s a conservator who is willing to engage you as an apprentice. Be warned that you might not be paid though.

What have your favorite jobs been?

That’s a tough question. I’ve worked on Philadelphia’s City Hall for ten years as a consultant. I worked on the William Penn statue, and did stone cleaning, and right now I’m working on the tower. It’s fun to have a long association with a project-—you see it from so many sides.

This article was originally created for TheArtBiz.com. It appears on NYFA Interactive courtesy of the Abigail Rebecca Cohen Library.

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