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Learn about current IMA events with Melvin and Bren Simon Director and CEO Maxwell Anderson. This episode features a conversation with IMA Conservator, David Miller.
Welcome back to imamuseum.org, I am Maxwell Anderson, The Melvin and Bren Simon Director and CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and we are standing the Star Studio.
Behind me is a panel painting from about five hundred years ago by the great Italian Renaissance artist Sebastiano Mainardi.
By 1965, the painting was deemed to be unexhibitable and has stayed in storage ever since. Ever since, that is, until 2006 when our conservation department
began work on restoring the picture and with that I'd like to take a minute to introduce you to the head of our conservation program in paintings, David Miller.
So tell us a little bit about what it means to clean a painting like this?
What we're doing, at this point, is we are removing material that was not put there by the original artist and that includes various adhesives, waxes, varnishes, oils, and repaintings
that have been done to rejuvenate the painting in various restoration attempts.
When people online are looking at paintings in their hometown museum, are they looking at clean paintings in their museums or do they have histories as well?
Every painting has a history and very often the more loved and venerated a painting is, the more often it's been restored.
We have in the Star Studio, a small gallery here, an opportunity for families to come and learn about the science of conservation by actually cleaning simulated examples of the painting itself
and so they use Q-tips and swabs and solvent, the solvent is water so it's not likely to cause any harm, and get some insight into how this restoration process works.
I would also note, we have probably the smallest lab coat in the history of museum conservation here.
We want to thank Jane Fortune for her support of this enormous conservation initiative and all the efforts to bring it to the public's attention
and we thank our conservation staff and curators at the IMA.
I'd like to try this too!
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