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Vincent van Gogh’s The Yellow House (1888). Image credit the Van Gogh Museum
Jonathan Jones, writing in The Guardian, reports that -
Research undertaken by the Van Gogh Museum reveals the master’s favourite paints have faded badly since the 1880s.
Vincent van Gogh has a good claim to be the greatest colourist ever. His yellows, his blues, his cherry trees and sunflowers and skies all created through thickly impastoed smears of chromatic splendour have made the very name Van Gogh synonymous with intense expressive colour.
Yet some of the colours we see in Van Gogh’s paintings are just pale echoes of the hues he originally set down in the 1880s. This startling discovery has just been revealed by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. A research project undertaken by the museum reveals that a number of Van Gogh’s favourite paints have faded badly and changed the appearance of his works, making them milder, more empty, less exquisite in their use of complementary colours than they were when he painted them.
The article does not make clear which paints have faded and what steps have or will be taken to prevent further degradation. Full Guardian article here.
SmithsonianVideos
What’s possibly the most calming yet nerve-racking job in the world? Come behind the scenes of the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art to find out!
The conservation and scientific research of ancient Asian art takes a large team of experts from many fields. In order to bring thousands of treasures from the East to the galleries of the Smithsonian in downtown Washington, D.C., several critical and careful steps toward ensuring the objects’ continued longevity must be taken.
Learn more about the hard work taking place to keep these works alive and on display here.
The old Mary Rose Museum has closed but the new Mary Rose Museum is nearly finished and will open to the public on the 31 May 2013
For almost three decades since being raised from the Solent, the hull of the Mary Rose – Henry VIII’s 500-year-old flagship – has been continuously sprayed, first with chilled fresh water to remove salt and then with Polyethlene Glycol (PEG), a water soluble wax which prevents shrinkage of the timbers, having been submerged underwater for almost 500 years. Now, just four weeks from the official opening of the new £27m Mary Rose Museum, staff at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard have announced that these spray jets have been turned off for the first time today (Monday 29th April), marking a new historic milestone in the conservation of the ship.
The Tudor warship will now enter into an air drying phase, where over 100 tons of water will be extracted from the hull over the next 4 to 5 years. With a pioneering building design, the new museum encircles a “Hot Box” chamber that houses the hull of the ship as this highly technical drying out process takes place. This notable design will enable visitors the intriguing opportunity to see conservation in action through windows into the airtight chamber where the hull lies, as fabric ducts direct conditioned air, in a highly sophisticated pattern, to gradually remove water from the wood. This carefully monitored process has only been executed on this scale on the Swedish warship Vasa, and the Mary Rose Trust has worked closely with them to learn from their experience and the Trust team are now considered to be the leading experts on maritime conservation in the world.
The Splendour of Stonehenge
An exhibition of pictures from the Wiltshire Heritage Museum’s art collection
Image credit the Wiltshire Heritage Museum
The Museum has an extensive collection of paintings, drawings, engravings, prints and photographs of Stonehenge, dating from the 18th century to the present day. Artists represented in the collection include Frederick Nash, A V Copley Fielding, George Richmond, James Bridges and Henry Moore.
The exhibition will show how different artists have been inspired by the monument and how interpretation and emphasis has changed over the years. More modern studies show a bold, often provocative approach, with a greater understanding of the real nature of Stonehenge, contrasting with the (often technically inaccurate) classical Romantic interpretation of the 19th century.
The Museum has been fortunate in having recently acquired a number of important works depicting the monument and this exhibition is an opportunity for members of the public to view them for the first time.
The exhibition runs from 25 May until 1 September 2013 (not 29 March as previously advertised) and will be on show in the Museum’s Art Gallery. Details here.
The Rijksmuseum
Mark Savage writing for BBC News Entertainment & Arts reports that -
When Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands officially reopens the Rijksmuseum [this] week, it will mark the end of a painful restoration project. The work ran five years over schedule and millions of euros over budget. The Dutch state museum has been closed since 2003. Renovation was delayed by flooding, asbestos and a dispute over access for cyclists. “It was kind of Murphy’s Law,” says museum director Wim Pijbes. “What could go wrong did go wrong.”
On Wednesday, Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid was rehung, making it the last major work to return to the museum in the heart of Amsterdam. The old masters draw the eye, but so do the intricately decorated ceilings and pillars that frame them – all painstakingly recreated after being painted over in the post-war years. In the halls flanking the grand gallery, the decoration is more modern. British artist Richard Wright, a former Turner Prize winner, has dusted the ceilings with almost 50,000 stars, hand-painted in a swirling, shifting constellation. It all serves to set up the Rijksmuseum’s biggest star – Rembrandt’s Night Watch.
The museum is newly illuminated by 3,800 individual LED lights, which lack the paint-destroying heat and UV rays of incandescent bulbs. They were installed by Dutch lighting specialists Philips, who also claim the LEDs enhance the viewing experience. “Incandescent lights focus on ambers and reds,” says the company’s chief design officer, Rogier van der Heide. “The LED adds a beautiful return of the blues and greens. The cooler colours are clearer… So we get to see the full beauty of the colour spectrum.”
Full article here. See also our Kyoto National Museum under renovation feature.
Entrance to the Seahenge Gallery at Lynn Museum, Norfolk
On a recent visit to the Lynn Museum in Norfolk to see the Seahenge Gallery, it was noticed by our American friends, Bucky and Loie, that in each of the trunks that make up the circle there is a wedge-shaped cut extending the whole width of each trunk, and one or two inches into it. Bucky writes that, “Loie noticed a horizontal band of discoloration on one timber. When she pointed it out to me, I started looking at all of them and finding similar bands, at different heights. At first, I thought they might be strips of metal helping hold the timbers to the support posts: there was a tiny bit of space between some of the bands and the wood, as if the bands weren’t tight. Looking at the bands from as close to the timber sides as was possible, it was soon apparent the bands were not connected to the metal posts: light was visible between them. So the bands were in or on the wood. I soon saw that where the bands met the sides of the timbers, they continued around the sides. And the continuations were all triangular. It became apparent that the only explanation for all the different aspects we had noted would be horizontal wedges cut into the wood, and then inexpertly filled with some kind of painted putty.”
The cuts had indeed been filled and in-painted so, in the subdued lighting of the Gallery, they are not easily seen (which actually contravenes accepted conservation practice as restorations should be clearly visible). Staff on the reception desk at Lynn Museum didn’t know what the cuts were (and hadn’t even noticed them before) but after telephoning one of the museum curators it appears that English Heritage’s original intention was to leave the circle in situ to naturally degrade. In order to get as much information as possible before that happened however a wedge was cut out of each timber (not just the infamous chainsaw chunk from the central bole) for dendochronological cross-dating. English Heritage’s decision to leave the circle in situ was then reversed and all the timbers were subsequently removed for safety and conservation (now unfortunately with slices taken out of them – slices which subsequently needed to be filled in and ‘restored’).
Inside part of the wooden circle
Other observations at the Seahenge Gallery were that not all the timbers from the circle are on show - the rest are in storage at the Museum with no plans to bring them out for display. This is strange because there appears, actually, to be enough room in the Seahenge Gallery to display them all if things were rearranged. The large (and excellent) illuminated photo of the sea actually dissects the Gallery and if this were moved to a side wall the rest of the circle could probably be displayed (ingress and egress to and from the circle being made possible by having the two halves positioned slightly apart).
The central bole
What is really disappointing at Lynn Museum’s Seahenge Gallery is the position of the central bole; it stands in its own case outside the circle, against a wall (so one cannot walk round it) and next to a door which is often open and which reveals another gallery with some kind of fairground attraction in it - very disconcerting, not to mention distracting the visitor’s attention from the central bole and the rest of the Seahenge Gallery.
The Heritage Trust would like to see all of the circle displayed, the bole repositioned within it, and the door to the other gallery either screened off or fitted with a self-closing mechanism. Other suggestions we would like to make are that the replica cast of the smaller bole is removed (it is not a cast of the Seahenge bole anyway but of another one) and a mirror fitted to the ceiling of the case in which the Seahenge bole itself stands (so that its top surface can be seen from below).
Money to do these things is always a problem of course but perhaps an appeal could be launched to assist in fundraising. A dedicated collection box at the entrance to the Seahenge Gallery might be installed for this purpose. The collection box at the British Museum for example asks for a £5 donation from those who can afford it; a similar request at the Lynn Museum does not seem unreasonable given that it would help towards aiding the full, and proper, display of this unique monument from our ancient past.
Replica of the carved whetstone, and its decorative stag finial, from the Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, England
Image
©
The Heritage Trust
The replica above can be seen in the National Trust museum at Sutton Hoo, along with other replicas from the ship burial and a reconstruction of the wooden burial chamber. The whetstone is too big to be functional and may have served as a ceremonial sceptre. Originals from the burial are now in a dedicated gallery at the British Museum.
For further information on the Sutton Hoo Museum, the burial mound, guided walks and opening times, visit the Sutton Hoo National Trust website here.
A Meiji Period wooden shop sign (36cm x 30cm approx) in the shape of a bottle
The sign is carved with the hiragana character す (su) meaning, in this context, vinegar
Private collection, Great Britain
Hitachi Europe Ltd, and Hitachi Solutions Europe Ltd, announced last week that it will donate £120,000 to the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures. The donation will directly finance the Sainsbury Institute’s development of an online and interactive English-language educational website. The website will enable school children across the world to learn about Japan’s rich history and interact with its numerous archaeological treasures.
The Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures based in Norwich, England reports that -
The role of history in education is currently in the headlines in the UK, as the future direction of how children are taught about the past is debated as part of the current government’s education reforms. With the sponsorship of Hitachi Europe and Hitachi Solutions Europe, the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures will develop a new online resource which will provide unprecedented access for school children in UK and other English speaking countries to some of humanity’s most significant but woefully under-appreciated cultural heritage, the historical and archaeological treasures of the Japanese archipelago. This resource will enable students across the English-speaking world to compare their own history with that of Japan.
More here.
The Neschers antler showing the engraved head and front legs of a horse. Image credit NHM
Past Horizons reports on the 24 March the rediscovery of a 14,000 year-old engraved reindeer antler that had lain all-but-forgotten since 1882 in London’s Natural History Museum -
The engraving consists of a partial horse figure, produced some time in the Palaeolithic, towards the end of the last ice age around 14,000 years ago. In the 1800s very little was known about the early history of humans, so the significance of discoveries like the Neschers antler went largely unrecognised at the time and it was some decades before cave art was to be accepted.
The antler was put on display and mentioned in a Museum gallery guide, but its scientific importance was not recognised. It was eventually returned to the storerooms until 1989 when it was rediscovered by mammal curator Andy Currant and placed in secure storage. Despite this, it again remained unstudied and forgotten until an audit of possible worked bone and antler in the fossil collections began in 2010-2011. This was when its true scientific importance became apparent and finally, over 160 years after its discovery, a full description is now being published.
Museum human origins expert Prof. Chris Stringer, part of the research team says, “the remarkable story of this forgotten specimen shows how careful study and detective work can belatedly give an important relic the significance it deserves.”
Full article here . See also our earlier feature on the Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind at the British Museum.
Gold and niello panel with Anglo-Saxon animal interlace
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is today one huge step closer to creating a permanent home for its Staffordshire Hoard display after the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) announced it has awarded the venue £704,500 towards the creation of a Staffordshire Hoard Gallery.
First objects from the Staffordshire Hoard went on temporary display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in September 2009, two months after the Hoard was first discovered in a Staffordshire field. Objects from the Hoard have been on continuous display at the venue since March 2010 and have attracted more than 590,000 visitors from all over the world since then. However, there is not currently a permanent gallery for the Hoard at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.
The HLF award represents significant progress in the campaign to raise the funds needed to create a permanent gallery for the Hoard. The proposed gallery will showcase approximately 300 items from the 7th century treasure trove and will interpret the story of the Hoard and its context within Anglo-Saxon history and culture. Visitors will be able to immerse themselves in the story of the Staffordshire Hoard, from the creation and original use of the items within it to the thrilling story of its rediscovery and conservation.
More here.
