- There's a range of disciplines in conservation
mostly focused on the varying materials
and periods from which those materials come from,
where the works of art come from.
Paintings, decorative arts, photography.
In the case of my department, we deal with ancient material.
We deal with archaeological artifacts.
They may be seen as works of art as well,
but primarily they're archaeological artifacts.
That puts a certain amount of responsibility
upon our plate and function to be sure that
we preserve all the evidence that's carried within
and on top of the object, in many cases.
This very cautious approach,
that restrains the conservator
and guides the conservator very often in terms
of what he or she might do to an an archaeological artifact,
certainly wasn't always the rule.
The main objective of early restorers was to
bring an object back to a state which they imagined,
in most cases,
existed in ancient times.
The way it looked when it was new,
undamaged, unharmed,
unsullied from the burial environment.
Unfortunately that led to
a great deal of invention.
For the recent projects in the department which
represents the problems of mistakes made
in early restoration of an object is a Roman bear.
We realized that the bear was not in it's correct position.
And it's very subtle, but looking at it closely
one realizes that there simply isn't room
for the back right paw to exist on the plinth
that's associated with the piece.
We began to investigate it from the standpoint
of how it had been reassembled.
So the conservator at the moment is
busy removing a lot of the overpaint
at the restored joints in order to determine
whether those joints were made correctly or not.
Among the reasons we might bring an object
up to the laboratory for treatment
may be that it's structurally unstable
or we may disagree with the method used
for aesthetic reintegration.
How loss, or what's called "akune" were filled
and how they were aesthetically integrated
into the rest of the surface.
In the case of Roman mosaic
that's being treated in the lab now,
there are only a number of fragments remaining.
Any of the places in between the fragments
are completely lost
and therefore were infilled and overpainted.
So the object was removed from the gallery,
disassembled from it's mount,
and then the soft and aging grout
from the modern restoration
was carefully and mechanically removed
from in between the tesserae.
Once that cleaning procedure is completed
there will be a greater distinction between
what is left of the ancient mosaic
and what is modern infill.
Not all the objects in the collection
come to us intact or even in one piece.
Particularly the ceramics.
What's laid out on this table,
a series of shards that all belong to
a rather large and monumental crater.
There are a lot of clues encased in these shards
and on their surface as to where they go.
It can be the design on the surface,
it can be basic shape,
it can be their thickness or color,
even the turning marks on the interior
left by the craftsmen as they created the vase.
All of those are used by the conservator
to slowly build the form.
To arrive at what has survived
the centuries of burial and time.
After assembly, and complete fitting of all the fragments,
and infilling of the losses and the gaps,
the conservator will in-paint the fills
with a suitable tone.
Repeating only the basic outline and segments of the design,
but never recreating the drawing on the vase itself.
The idea here is really to make our work visible
and highly available when you're seeking it,
and never allow it to be confused with the ancient material.
We can't make an object look like it was freshly excavated
and be honest about it.
What we normally try to do is return the object
to the last point in it's history
where an irreversible change had occurred,
and the best you can do is stabilize it at that moment,
hold it still in time,
and try to preserve it for future generations.