SAAM

Yesterday morning our site visit was to the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. Like at NMAAH, we started with a tour, but our guide was the head of the Lunder Conservation Lab, a woman named Amber. She turned out to have a very interesting history as to how she became a conservator; she didn't have money to go to college after high school, so she worked while slowly going to school part-time, mostly for Motorola (to which she credits her excellent public-interfacing skills). In the 90s the company offered generous buyouts to employees to downsize, and she leaped on it, using the money to finish college as a full-time student. By that time she'd become interested in conservation, but lacking the science background she still had to take two more years of science classes before she could get into one of the 5 conservation programs that exist in the US (Buffalo, NYU, Getty, U-Del/Winterthur, and one other) that take a couple of dozen students total per year. Ultimately she did get into Wintherthur, became a paintings conservator, and has risen to run the lab at SAAM, but she came into the field in her mid-thirties as opposed to early 20s. It was pretty inspiring to hear, honestly, since my image of those who become conservators has tended toward ultra-privilege, Ivy League background, etc, simply because I know how scarce spots in those programs are.

On our way to the lab, we did stop and talk about a number of famous pieces--Nam June Paik's enormous set-up of TVs in the shape of the US, broadcasting different clips for each state, David Hockney's wall + floor painting covered with tiny wooden dowels, which we heard about from the intern helping to conserve it, and of course a stop in the room with Michelle Obama's portrait (which also had Kehinde Wiley's LL Cool J, which honestly was much more awesome). Didn't get up to see Barack's portrait, so I'll have to return. Apparently there were long lines to see his portrait for months after it was installed, and this was a topic of some of our discussion in the afternoon with Elaine Heumann Gurian, who is, somehow, 81 years old, still kicking, and has served as a consultant for, as she puts it, every major museum in the world that deals with contentious topics--the Berlin Jewish Museum, the Holocaust Museum in DC, the NMAAH, and the Native American Museum, among others. She pointed out that as a museum designer, you need to find out what's keeping people out of your museum, because often it's subtle signalling that "this is not for you." As examples, she pointed out that people who don't have the cultural competency and comfort of entering museum spaces may be turned off by a big info/ticketing desk when they walk in; they may be anxious about being able to find the bathrooms (she complained that Daniel Liebeskind, in his infinite wisdom, made the bathroom doors in Berlin perfectly flush with the wall, forcing her to ask someone to show her how to get in!), figuring out where to eat lunch, etc. Sometimes, she notes, there is a big enough attraction that will make people come in anyway, especially if they feel it's important for their children, and that's the case with Obama's portrait--families stood in line (and still do, on weekends) to show their children that a black man could be president. Steve Lubar also pointed out that SAAM made the conscious choice not to position Obama as the focal point of that room, but rather a bust of Andrew Jackson, perhaps protecting themselves from right-wing criticism. Elaine added that in a museum, the policy of inclusion must mean you include everyone, not just people you like, which means (especially in history museums) the challenge of crafting a narrative that will speak to people from many different backgrounds, education levels, and perhaps prejudices.

The visit to the conservation lab itself was really cool. To get there, you walk past their Luce Visible Storage Center (so cool), and then you're in a long hallway of floor-to-ceiling glass, because everything they do in the lab is public. They have a frame restoration space, paper conservation, object conservation, and two paintings conservation labs. On the opposite wall are didactics explaining things like "the anatomy of a frame," how IR works, and using a damaged painting to show different types of degradation on paint surfaces. Upstairs, there was Edward Hopper's People in the Sun on an easel in the final state of conservation, along with a gorgeous Alma Thomas painting. And they had a beautiful rainbow display of pigments in glass jars in a cabinet! Oh, how I want something like that for us.

Today is the 4th. I'm heading down to the Mall to go to the National Gallery and see the Tintoretto show, and then I'm coming back up here in the afternoon, and we'll be watching the fireworks from the 7th-floor balcony tonight. By the way, yesterday it was my job to "curate" the 6pm reception (which I joked to Sean is "mandatory fun") so I walked to Safeway, about 20 minutes, uphill, during our break yesterday. It wasn't bad, but it turns out that walking 20 minutes in 92-degree heat while carrying 4 bottles of wine, a liter of seltzer, and some assorted groceries is not a good time. I was pretty much dripping by the time I got back to campus, with just enough time to throw the wine in the fridge and head to the library for our afternoon session. But my work is done on that score!