WACC Paper Conservator Lectures in Atlanta

 WACC chief paper conservator Leslie Paisley was among the lecturers at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in a program organized around with the museum’s “Louvre Atlanta” exhibition series. Paisley joined Carel van Tuyll, head of the Louvre Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings, and collector Dr. Sheldon Peck, as featured speakers for the High’s Gudmund Vigtel Works on Paper Fund lecture.
    The program, titled “Inside the Louvre’s Drawings Cabinet,” offered a glimpse behind the scenes at the storied Paris museum. Van Tuyll, a Netherlands native and the first non-French curator in Louvre history, narrated a slide-show tour of the museum’s print and drawings department and storage room, located in a former royal reception hall of the Louvre Palace. The lecture described the museum’s system of vertical storage, where print boxes are stored on their ends, like books, rather than on shelves horizontally, as is common in US institutions. In a collection the size of the Louvre’s,  the system is an economical use of available storage space, Paisley observed, requiring that the artwork be mounted to withstand the stress of vertical storage.
    Mr. van Tuyll hinted that his department does not budget as much for conservation treatment, research and analysis for individual drawings, placing the emphasis on preventive conservation strategies such as conservation mounting, framing and environmental control that benefit the entire collection. In European museums, the nomenclature of art conservation differs slightly; the word “conservation” refers primarily to preventive care, while “restoration,” a term that in the US has the specific meaning of reconstructing a damaged object, among Europeans denotes any repair treatment performed on an artwork.
    Paisley followed with her talk, “Conservation Conversations: Treatment of Art on Paper.” She observed that a common misperception is that “conservation” refers only to “trees and polar bears.”
     “I prefer to think of myself as an art doctor,” she said. “My patients are as unique as individuals.” Paisley described what she called her “holistic” approach to art conservation, one that avoids local treatments to merely improve the appearance of the artwork for procedures that encourage more uniform aging of the artifact.
    Peck, a prominent collector of Dutch and Flemish drawings, spoke third, describing his process of examination and analysis in advance of an auction of Old Master drawings.
    The lecture, named for a long-time director of the High, was attended by some one hundred guests, including museum professionals, private collectors and Atlanta artists. The High Museum is currently showing the last in a series of three exhibitions featuring masterworks from the Louvre.