JAIC 1993, Volume 32, Number 2, Article 1 (pp.

101 to 108)

CAN THE COMPLEX BE MADE SIMPLE?

INFORMING THE PUBLIC ABOUT
CONSERVATION THROUGH MUSEUM
EXHIBITS

JERRY C. PODANY, & SUSAN LANSING

LANSING MAISH

ABSTRACT—The growing public interest in the processes and principles

of conservation has led to the encouragement of numerous educational
efforts on the part of conservators, institutions, and professional
conservation organizations such as the American Institute for
Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC). In response to this
interest and encouragement, the J. Paul Getty Museum mounted an
interactive exhibition entitled Preserving the Past. This exhibition was a
collaborative effort of the Antiquities Conservation, Education and
Academic Affairs, and Antiquities Curatorial departments. In an attempt
to introduce the visiting public to conservation principles, activities, and
plans, Preserving the Past focused on conservation efforts applied to the
museum's collection of ancient objects.The exhibition was divided into
sections addressing conservation ethics and principles; scientific
examination and analysis; treatment; and environmental control
(including working models of seismic isolation mechanisms). The gallery
was staffed continually by specially trained museum education staff and
docents, called facilitators, who offered visitors access to more detailed
written information, hands-on activities, and guidance through the exhibit.
Approximately 12,000 people visited the exhibition during the seven
months it was on view.This paper describes the efforts to establish
guiding principles, and realistic and accessible approaches to presenting
complex subjects such as conservation to the museum visitor whose
prior knowledge, interest, and time may be limited. Exhibition planning,
the philosophical precepts for the exhibition, the physical installation and
design, and the evaluation of the final gallery format and its impact on the
visitors are discussed.

1 INTRODUCTION

During recent years the public's interest in conservation of both our

natural resources and our cultural heritage has increased. Practicing
conservators welcome this interest and the opportunity to inform the
public about the work and the guiding principles of their profession. A
current priority of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and
Artistic Works is to increase public awareness of the important functions
of conservation. The benefits of such awareness efforts go far beyond
the enlightenment of single individuals. Funding through federal, state,
and local agencies can be influenced by heightening the concern of both
individuals and private-sector leaders. When the public gains a clearer
understanding of conservation, both private and public collections are
scrutinized through more informed eyes and the need for their protection
takes on increased importance. And of course, some are so inspired by
what they learn that they decide to join the profession.
As part of the effort to enhance public awareness, the Antiquities
Conservation Department of the J. Paul Getty Museum, in collaboration
with the Antiquities Curatorial and Education and Academic Affairs
departments, set out to produce an exhibition entitled Preserving the
Past that would explain the conservation principles and activities related
to the museum's collection of ancient art. Since no activity in a museum
is ever independent or done by one person and since any exhibition,
regardless of theme or intent, requires a wide range of talents and
abilities, a small planning team was assembled from the participating
departments to define the goals and mechanisms of the exhibition.
Ultimately, the effort also required the expertise of many other
departments, including audiovisual, preparations, publications, and photo
services. From the initial planning to the opening, the exhibition took
about one year to develop. The budget was provided by the Education
and Academic Affairs Department. The planning team's first task was to
distill the basic precepts of the conservation profession and the myriad of
choices a conservator must make with each action taken. What did the
public already know about conservation? What did we wish to tell them,
and in what order of importance? The plan rapidly expanded, and the
complexities of the issues to be presented in a limited amount of space
and time became the first and most substantial hurdle for the team. An
attempt to present any conservation treatment in a condensed, easily
accessible, didactic display is risky. Many, perhaps most, of the concepts
that become second nature to working conservators turn out to be quite
difficult to distill for consumption by a general audience. After all, it is
often difficult to communicate these aspects to fellow professionals within
the museum world, let alone to the completely uninitiated visitor. Our
challenge was to come up with displays that would do more than just tell
a varied audience what we do every day (not always an exciting story) or
romanticize our roles by presenting only dramatic before-and-after shots
of cultural salvation. Instead, we hoped to involve visitors in a deeper
appreciation of what they were seeing or what they had not been aware
of.
Surveys at the Getty Museum have shown that visitors spend an average
of two to three minutes in any one gallery. With this information in mind,
we planned installations that would capture the attention of the public
and engage them for a sufficient time to provide a brief overview of the
conservation department's work. Recognizing that there are many
different ways of acquiring knowledge, we developed interactive learning
opportunities as well as traditional interpretive devises such as labels.
Throughout the exhibition, several layers of information were available.
The tone and format were relatively informal. There was no set agenda;
visitors were free to choose those aspects that especially intrigued them.
One of the strategies strongly supported by the Education and Academic
Affairs Department in previous interactive exhibits was the use of trained
facilitators, chosen from the museum education staff and a selected
group of docents. The facilitators were stationed in the gallery at all
times. Their main function was to interact with visitors, encourage their
involvement in the displays, and answer questions or provide avenues by
which visitors could obtain the answers. The facilitators also assured the
smooth working of the various pieces of exhibit hardware. Each facilitator
attended a series of lectures on conservation topics given by the staff of
the Antiquities Conservation Department. These lectures provided a
general background knowledge of the purpose of conservation so that
facilitators would be able to answer basic questions about the
conservation profession and its activities. Thus the facilitators could offer
visitors one more layer of information by which complex issues could be
made accessible. The facilitators received copies of a handout listing
pertinent publications available in the museum bookstore as well as the
addresses of conservation graduate programs and AIC. This handout
could be given to visitors who expressed interest in further study or
requested more detailed information about conservation issues and
training.
It was to our advantage to center the exhibition around the conservation
of antiquities. Such a focus allowed for a more unified and defined scope
to both the technical and the philosophical precepts and, in the end,
allowed more time to discuss the profession as a whole. It opened a
clear avenue to explain “minimal intervention” and permitted an
emphasis on efforts to preserve rather than restore.
Preserving the Past was located in a gallery adjacent to the antiquities
collection. This location allowed visitors to take what they had seen and
quickly relate it to the collection as a whole. To present a logical flow of
information, the exhibition was divided into four sections: Introduction,
Scientific Examination, Treatment, and Environment.

2 EXHIBIT INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION

The introductory section described, in general terms, the profession of

conservation. It immediately set the tone and gave the visitor a good
foundation for understanding the rest of the exhibition. Ethical
considerations and challenges regularly faced by working conservators
were described, and an overview of the rest of the installation was given.
The most effective component of this section, indeed of the entire
exhibition, was a six-minute “behind-the-scenes” video filmed by the
Audiovisual Department over a period of one year. The museum's
antiquities conservators, mount maker, and interns were shown working
on various projects, including the gap filling, inpainting, and mechanical
cleaning of stone, bronze, and ceramic objects. Scenes of a seismic
isolation mechanism being tested on a shake table at a commercial
engineering firm were also featured. The video showed the apparatus,
which is now used in the antiquities galleries, being run through a series
of tests using a cement facsimile of a monumental fifth-century Greek
statue. The tests approximated the movements of a powerful earthquake
of the kind likely to hit southern California. To meet the needs of our
Spanish-speaking visitors—a large and significant population in
California—we provided a Spanish-language version of the video script.
Judging from visitor responses to a survey we later conducted, the video,
more than any other aspect of the exhibition, was quite successful in
attracting and holding visitors' attention, giving them a glimpse of a facet
of museum work that they might never see.
3 SCIENTIFIC EXAMINATION

The second section of the exhibition stressed the importance of the

thorough scientific examination of objects before treatment. To provide
some hands-on involvement and to increase the variety of the
experience, a large-screen microscope, the Wentzscope, was readily
available so that visitors could manipulate and view a number of
samples, including pigments and mineral encrustations relating to objects
in the collection (fig. 1). Further examples of close visual and
microscopical examination were featured in a slide presentation. A large
photo mural of a conservation scientist with a scanning electron
microscope provided an example of the more complex analytical tools
used to get a closer look at objects. In an accompanying notebook,
scanning electron photographs of ancient gold jewelry provided more
detailed explanations.

Fig. 1. Visitor using the large view microscope in the Scientific Examination section
The problem of authentication of objects has gained a great deal of
attention in the popular press, and the public is especially interested in
how the identity and provenance of an object are verified. The exhibition
offered an opportunity to clarify misconceptions about both the abilities
and the limitations of technical and scientific investigation. A display of
two ceramic vessels, one ancient and one a modern forgery, led visitors
through a series of questions regarding their own perceptions and
observations as to what signals authenticity and what indicates forgery.
The answer to these questions and more detailed explanations were
included in a notebook kept below the case. The techniques of
thermoluminescence, ultraviolet inspection, and x-ray fluorescence
spectroscopy were also described in the notebook.

4 TREATMENT

The section on treatment began with an interactive activity that involved

two fragmentary reproduction vases. Visitors were invited to join broken
pottery fragments and then identify the name of the vase from a chart of
Greek vase shapes. We hoped this activity would give visitors an idea of
the patience and manual dexterity that conservators need, but, more
important, we wanted to help them make connections among all aspects
of the exhibit. This activity could be criticized for encouraging a common
public perception of conservation as an activity involving putting together
old pots, but it proved to be an effective method of getting visitors
interested in the subject matter of the exhibition.
The vase exercise effectively introduced a display on ceramic
conservation that described the step-by-step procedures a conservator
may employ to complete the shape of a fragmentary vessel. The steps
involved in the reconstruction of a Greek kylix cup were laid out in a
horizontal case (fig. 2). Visitors first saw a fragmentary vase displayed on
a sheet of grid paper. Next to it was a small Plexiglas sandbox with two
sherds that recently had been joined. A kylix with one half of its shape
reconstructed using epoxy putty, which would eventually be adhered with
an easily removable adhesive, emphasized the point that all restorations
are reversible and employ inert, scientifically tested materials. A silicone
mold of a cup handle and a Plexiglas vase foot demonstrated the
reconstruction of missing vase parts when there is enough comparative
art historical evidence. The display concluded with a completed kylix cup
emphasizing that even though the reconstructed areas were painted to
approximate the colors of the original vase, they were still distinguishable
from the ancient ceramic surfaces. It was noted that in addition to being
reversible, all conservation treatments are well documented for future
evaluation and study. The contents and concepts revealed in this case
surprised most of the visitors to the exhibit.

Fig. 2. Treatment section displays

The treatment of ancient bronze and marble objects was illustrated by

before-and-after color photographs of two portrait busts from the
collection. Wall-mounted text panels amplified the philosophy behind the
treatment as well as the treatment process itself. Further explanations
and photographic documentation of mechanical cleaning techniques
were located in the notebook on the podium below the wall display (fig.
2).
Too often, people learn about conservation from the presentation of
stunning, dramatic before-and-after views. This technique is an assured
way to attract attention but an ineffective method of keeping it. The
comparison of the conservator-object relationship to the doctor-patient
relationship has tinged the profession with an often unrealistic, and
certainly overly romantic, tone. The surgeon making a dramatic decision
to operate, resulting in the patient's miraculous recovery, makes a better
character in a novel than does the practitioner who advises on good diet
and exercise. Yet in reality, and especially in our modern world,
prevention is preferred over intervention, both in medicine and in art. In
our exhibition, we tried to minimize the strong but overemphasized
doctor-conservator analogy and raise other concerns more pertinent to
modern preservation.

5 ENVIRONMENT

A display of a cutaway microclimate exhibition case containing a bronze

statuette introduced the section on the importance of environmental
issues (fig. 3). The display exposed a variety of protective layers under
the case build-ups that help maintain a stable and controlled
environment. A duplicate mount and build-up illustrated how the statuette
was held in place. A tray of silica gel and a digital hygrometer were also
visible. An accompanying notebook described additional environmental
equipment used to monitor humidity, light, and ultraviolet radiation levels.
This display may not have attracted as much initial attention as the video
or the reproduction vase exercise, but for those who took the time to
consider carefully the issues involved in prevention and the continual
maintenance of works of art on display and in storage, it encouraged
reflection and discussion.

Fig. 3. “Cut-away” microclimate exhibition case

The oil and grime that can accumulate on art objects just by being
touched was illustrated by a 4 in square piece of modern marble that had
been exposed to handling for one year prior to the show's opening. This
display prompted several visitors to say that they will no longer be
tempted to touch objects in a museum after seeing the difference
between the protected central area and the unprotected peripheral areas
of the marble piece.
Another environmental display evoked much reflection on the dangers
that works of art face in the seismically active area of California (fig. 4).
Two reproduction vases were mounted to a build-up over a small “shake”
table that was constructed by the antiquities conservation mountmaking
staff. One vase was mounted with the added protection of an isolation
base. When the visitor pushed a button, the build-up in the case shook,
simulating earthquake motion or other sudden trauma. The
demonstration clearly showed that the isolation mechanism protected the
vase from damage, while the other vase shook violently. Simpler
methods of securing vases—for example, the use of dental wax to
secure some vases on Plexiglas mounts—were pointed out in the
adjoining vase display gallery.

Fig. 4. “Shake table” display featured in the Environment section

6 SURVEY RESULTS

During the last few weeks of the exhibition, the Education and Academic
Affairs department conducted an informal survey of 125 visitors as they
left the museum and did 38 in-depth interviews with people as they left
the Preserving the Past exhibition. The facilitators also kept a log book in
which they noted visitor reactions to the exhibition. The elements that
made the most impression (in order of preference) were the video, the
vase sherd exercise, the earthquake shake table, the microscope, the
vase reconstruction display, the cleaning of the bronze and stone busts,
and the vase authenticity case. Other visitors liked the entire exhibition,
with no preferences. The time spent at any one station varied depending
on individual interest. The longest time a visitor was observed with an
individual segment of the exhibition was about 10 minutes spent at the
vase sherd table, but some visitors were observed spending more than
20 minutes in the entire exhibition, really taking the time to see, do, and
read everything there.
As in any endeavor with a varied audience, some visitors found the
exhibition not technical enough and wanted to know more, and others
thought it was too technical.
We had intentionally targeted the exhibition for adults because it was the
audience we wanted to reach, but some expressed the desire to see the
show geared more to children. Small children were very intrigued with
the vase sherd exercise and the earthquake shake table. Preteens and
teenagers were able to grasp much of the exhibition with curiosity and
enthusiasm. Of the 38 visitors interviewed, most were able to discuss at
least one of the principles of conservation highlighted in the exhibition
with impressive accuracy. All expressed the desire to see more exhibits
like this one on all facets of the conservation field.

7 CONCLUSIONS

Preserving the Past encouraged much discussion, provided a great deal

of information, and heightened awareness of the conservation field for a
large and varied audience. We hope that many of the estimated 12,000
visitors, including school children, will approach their future visits to our
museum and other museums with a new and enlightened outlook. Such
exhibitions provide the public with a window through which they can view
the complexity of the field, the decisions that must be weighed, and the
development of solutions for the complicated problems that await us. We
found that with careful and thoughtful planning, exhibition that open to
view the world of conservation can in fact be made simple and
understandable to a general audience.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors wish to acknowledge and thank the J. Paul Getty Museum
Department of Education and Academic Affairs (Wade Richards and
David Ebitz), Antiquities Curatorial Department (Karen Manchester),
Preparations and Audio Visual departments (Bruce Metro and Stepheny
Dirden), the Photo Services and Publications departments, as well as the
staff of the Antiquities Conservation Department.

SOURCES OF MATERIALS

Wentzscope (Easy View Microscope, Museum Edition)

Budd Wentz Productions, 8619 Skyline Blvd., Oakland, Calif. 94611
Panel Mount Digital Hygrometer
Edmund Scientific Company, 101 E. Gloucester Pike, Barrington, N.J.
08007–1380

AUTHOR INFORMATION

JERRY C. PODANY has been head of the Department of Antiquities

Conservation at the J. Paul Getty Museum since 1986. He lectures and
teaches frequently on the subject of conservation and collections care at
 the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Southern
California, where he is an adjunct professor in the School of Fine Arts.
He received a certificate in archaeological conservation (with distinction)
from the University of London. He is a Professional Associate of the AIC
and a Fellow of the IIC. Address: J. Paul Getty Museum, P.O. Box 2112,
Santa Monica, Calif. 90406.
SUSAN LANSING MAISH graduated from the Art Center College of
Design, Pasadena, California, with a bachelor of fine art in 1984. She
interned at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where she worked on
its collection of historical silver. This led to a collaborative project on
silver cleaning abrasives with Glenn Wharton of Glenn Wharton and
Associates, Santa Barbara, California and William S. Ginell of the Getty
Conservation Institute. She joined the staff of the Antiquities
Conservation Department in 1986 and is an assistant conservator and a
Professional Associate of AIC. Address: J. Paul Getty Museum, P.O. Box
2112, Santa Monica, Calif. 90406.
Section Index

Copyright © 1993 American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works
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