The birth of conservation

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A Laboratory for Art: Harvard’s Fog Museum and the Emergence of Conservation in America 1900–1950

By Francesca G. Bewer

One finds oneself at a forked road when faced with a damaged art object. Does one restore it, to return it to its original state and allow the artist’s alleged intentions to manifest, or to conserve it, preserve it as a material document with all its history embodied within its deterioration?

This engaging and absorbing book, written by Francesca G. Bewer, research curator at the Harvard Art Museum’s Straus Centre for Conservation and Technical Studies, describes the emergence of conservation practices and the application of the scientific method in America through the initiative of Edward Waldo Forbes, the director of Harvard University’s Fogg Museum. His work led to the education and training of museum professionals through the best practices of mentoring and apprenticeship.

Forbes was aware that he was making history. The story of the first 50 years of the Harvard’s Fogg Museum began in Italy in 1899 when the 26-year-old Forbes fell in love with what was then considered to be unfashionable — mediaeval art — and he trusted his judgement to buy a badly damaged panel painting. His problems of transporting it back to America without letting it further deteriorate, and what to do with it once it was there, propelled him to investigate the techniques that would later form the seeds of conservation in America.

His quest centred on the Fogg Museum at Harvard, which had opened in 1895. Like most American museum collections at the time, the Fogg’s consisted mainly of plaster-cast reproductions and photographs of artworks and architecture. The idea promoted by British art critic John Ruskin that only original works contained the energy of the artist and had the ability to ‘effect emotional or spiritual transformation’ in the viewer was one embraced by the Fogg’s first director, Charles Herbert Moore, a man passionate about collecting original works. Forbes’ offer to place his purchases on loan to the Fogg was willingly accepted and Forbes then began procuring the best Italian paintings and Greek sculptures with philanthropic zeal.

These loans helped initiate the Fogg’s metamorphosis into a collection of genuine works of art. Forbes also set about his own empirical exploration of art techniques—consulting artists, art experts, restorers, and scientists, preparing his own pigments and mediums, and apprenticing himself to a copyist in Venice to learn about tempera painting. When he was appointed director of the Fogg in 1909 he came with the conviction that museums can improve the quality of life for people of all types and stations, a vision of the university art museum as a laboratory, and support for non-deceptive restoration.

What makes this book so engaging is that it is not only the story of the emergence of conservation in art through the scientific investigation of pigments and techniques, and the resulting ability to detect forgeries, but the flesh and blood men who, with their passion, pioneered in America this new field of conservation training at Harvard. It is the story of the meeting of science and art that sought ways to maintain the integrity of both traditions.

Laid out in five chapters detailing each of the five decades since its inception, the book is paper colour-coded for easy access – the Introduction and preface are printed on pale blue paper, the chapter dividers are orange, notes to chapters are on apple green, and the bibliography and index are on golden yellow. This is helpful for cross-referencing.

This is also a timely book, given the current dispute over the restoration of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Virgin and Child With St Anne in the Louvre, Paris, for those wanting a better understanding of the differences between conservation and restoration. In this case two of the twenty-strong committee, Ségolène Bergeon Langle, regarded as France's national authority on the art and the science of restoring paintings and former director of conservation for all of France's national museums, and Jean-Pierre Cuzin, the Louvre's former head of paintings, have resigned. The say the masterpiece has been given a brightness that Leonardo had never intended, owing to inadequate tests of the solvents.

Bewer details the successes at the Fogg as well as its failures. Although a formal conservation-training programme was never created, the Fogg has established a reputation as one of the oldest authoritative centres of scientific conservation in the world and a unique place for hands-on experience. The Second World War took its toll and by the end of 1951, owing to lack of funds, the centre was almost entirely disbanded. From this diminished place arose the International Institute for Conservation in 1947 and eventually, in 1972, the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC). This focused on continuing education, contact among conservators in North America, and a code of ethics and standards of practice.

This book is a rich account of a fledgling profession lovingly brought to light by Bewer’s writing.

A Laboratory for Art: Harvard’s Fog Museum and the Emergence of Conservation in America 1900–1950  by Francesca G. Bewer is published by the Harvard Art Museum, 2010. 368 pp. 34 colour / 114 mono illus.  ISBN  978-1-891771-53-8