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Playing House: Working with Artists

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Lisa Bruno

In the exhibition Playing House four artists, Betty Woodman, Ann Chu, Ann Agee and Mary Lucier, install their own artwork into and around several period rooms on the 4^th floor, activating the space to engage the viewer to think differently about the traditional presentation of domestic interiors. The museum has done these sorts of interventions before but on a smaller scale with Yinka Shonibare and Kiki Smith. This marks the first time that multiple artists are working together in concert.

As a conservator working with each of these artists, the sometimes conflicting working methods and points of perspective were a challenge to manage while remaining flexible. Conservators work within a set of principles, such as light is damaging too many artworks, handling should be kept to a minimum, and the interior environment can often be hazardous to the preservation of artifacts. Conservators need to have great hand skills, have an attention to detail, be creative problem solvers, and above all else, respect the object. Artists work within another set of principles. Everything is significant, details matter, experience must be illuminated, and all objects and materials can be put towards this purpose. Creativity is grand and ever changing and needs continuous feeding.

Do you see how there could be some conflict here?

Many of the period rooms were installed in the 1950’s and 60’s when museum best practices were much less formulated than they are today. The condition of the objects having been on continuous display since that time are often fragile and unknown as museum condition records were not what they are today. The first step in preparing for the installation was to get an overall plan from each artist as to what their intervention into the rooms would be. What did I say about creativity being grand and ever changing? The Curators did their best to wrangle broad concepts from the artists, and the Registrars compiled lists of the items coming and did their best to make sure that everything arrived safely and was accounted for.

Mary Lucier works with her team to film in the Dining Room of the Nicholas Schenck House.

The installation worked a bit differently for each artist. Mary Lucier with a video component needed access to the Schenck rooms well in advance of the other artists. The challenge was to prepare the rooms, and safeguard the collection while having actors, props, and the artist filming within the often cramped and tightly installed space. The plan of what to film was fluid and responsive to events as they happened. This meant that the conservator working with the artist needed to also be fluid and responsive to allow space for creativity while setting appropriate limits and boundaries.

Betty Woodman works with art handlers to install her ceramics in the Hall of the Cupola House.

Betty Woodman and Ann Chu proved challenging in that it was impossible to know which collection objects would work well with the artist’s objects until the artist arrived and began to arrange in each room; Cane Acres, Rockefeller, Russell, Cupola, Worgelt, and two dioramas. The difficulty was assessing on the spot whether a collection object could safely interact with the artist’s object. Is that vase too heavy for this piece of furniture? Is the ceramic cup stable on the period table?

Anne Chu works with art handlers to install her work in the Moorish Room of the John D. Rockefeller House.

Ann Agee’s was the most labor intensive installation. The artist made several pre-visits to the Milligan rooms as part of formulating what she wanted to transform the room into. Discussions about what was and was not impossible to remove from the room were fruitful. The compromises fed the creative process. With this installation, Ann much like a conservator had to be a creative problem solver too.

Ann Agee works with art handlers to install her work in the Library and Drawing Room of the Milligan House.

I think the experience in the end was fruitful for all and that the activations spark new illuminations on your experience.

About Lisa Bruno

Lisa Bruno is the head conservator of objects at the Brooklyn Museum, where she has been working since 1993. She has previously worked at the Art Institute of Chicago, and has had internships at The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and in private practice. She has a Masters Degree in Art Conservation from the University of Delaware, Winterthur Museum Art Conservation Department. She is a Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation.

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Calling Rapaljes, Rapeljes, Raplees and all descendants!

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Lisa Small

Get ready for some surprising encounters when you visit the Brooklyn Museum’s beloved period rooms this February, when several of the rooms will be the site of a group show called Playing House, which I’ve been working on with curator Barry Harwood. Artists Ann Agee, Anne Chu, Mary Lucier, and Betty Woodman will be creating “activations” in several of the rooms by installing their own artworks on and around the existing furnishings. The four artists will create both discordant and harmonious juxtapositions, encourage dialogues between past and present, and alter the visitor’s perception of the rooms and of their own art works.

A future blog post will take a more detailed look at the different projects and a behind-the-scenes look at their installations, but first we want to reach out to our online community on behalf of one of the participating artists, Mary Lucier. She is descended from a Dutch family from the same 17^th century colonial period as the original occupants of the Brooklyn Museum’s Schenck Houses, where her works will be installed. For part of her project, Lucier wants to add a few new branches to her family tree. If you are a Brooklynite from WAY back, Mary Lucier wants to hear from you:

Joris Jansen de Rapalje and Catalyntje Trico and…you?

During the 1600s and 1700s, severe persecution and even massacres by Catholics, forced many Huguenots (French Protestants) to leave Europe for what was then “New Netherland,” an area including Manhattan, Brooklyn, and land farther up the Hudson River. Included in this migration were numerous Dutch families as well, and as they established life in various colonies, they began to intermarry.

The Terpenning family, Dryden, New York area, c. 1895. Sarah Rapalje's 6th and 7th great grandchildren. Photograph courtesy of Drew Campbell.

In 1624, a young refugee couple, both around 19 years old, left Amsterdam aboard the Eendracht, bound for New York harbor. Their names were Joris Jansen de Rapalje and Catalyntje Trico. Upon arriving in New York, they sailed up river to found a new colony, which would eventually become Albany. After hardships and skirmishes with the Mohawks, the Rapaljes decided to return to New York two years later, settling in Wallabout, an area in what is now Brooklyn. They brought with them an infant girl named Sarah, reputed to be the first European child born in New Netherland (1625).

Sarah married twice (once to Hans Hansen Bergen, who died at age 27, and then to Teunis Bogeart) and had a total of 15 children, setting in motion a vast lineage of descendants that includes Humphrey Bogart, Tom Brokaw, Gov. Howard Dean, myself, and possibly you! By now there are estimated to be at least a million descendants of these lines, many of whom may know little about their Dutch/Huguenot ancestry and nothing about the people to which they are purportedly related.

For my “activation” in the Schenck Houses of the Museum’s Period Rooms, I will create a mixed-media video and sound environment that will investigate the subject of cultural identity through a personal exploration of my own ancestry, using recorded performances in situ, references to literature and other historic texts (including various family trees such as the Schencks), and audience participation.

To that end, I am appealing to all Rapaljes, Rapeljes, Raplees, and all descendants (regardless of the name) to send me information that I may use in my museum installation. Please let me know your particular connection or line of descent and please send a high-quality photograph (tiffs or jpegs only please; I can’t use or return original prints) of yourself, your grandparents, family groups, whoever you like, for me to display on the mantel in one of the Museum’s period rooms. Please also indicate that you give me, Mary Lucier, and the Brooklyn Museum, permission to use these photos for this purpose.

Please send all material to marluc@aol.com.

About Lisa Small

Lisa Small joined the Brooklyn Museum in Spring 2011 as Curator of Exhibitions. From 2007 until 2011 she was Curator of Exhibitions at the American Federation of Arts (AFA), coordinating traveling exhibitions such as Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales, and Gods and Heroes: Masterpieces from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Prior to joining the AFA, Small was a curator at the Dahesh Museum of Art, where she organized numerous exhibitions, including Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt and Fantasy & Faith: The Art of Gustave Doré. Small has taught art history at Hunter College and Brooklyn College and has been a member of the art history faculty at the School of Visual Arts since 2008. Small earned a B.A. from Colgate University, an M.A. and an M.Phil in Art History from CUNY, and an M.A. in Arts Administration from NYU.

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Tagged: activation, brooklyn, geneology, intervention, periodrooms, playinghouse
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All Geared Up for a Timely Repair

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Joannie Bottkol

For 19th-Century Modern, which opened last month, the conservation department undertook the cleaning and stabilization of many objects, among them the five-piece silvered bronze candlesticks and clock/thermometer set that forms the centerpiece of the exhibition.

Guilmet Cie (active 1861–1910). Five-Piece Clock Garniture, circa 1885. Silvered bronze, 9 1/4 x 4 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. (23.5 x 11.4 x 11.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Marcus S. Friedlander, by exchange, 2009.49.1-5

The set was created by the French designer Guilmet Cie around 1885. Cie is known to have created other clock garnitures, mostly with nautical themes. This unique grouping, however, celebrates industry and modern mechanization, sporting diminutive models of engineers’ tools (for example, a drafting compass and carpenter’s square) on the bases of the five pieces. Elegantly styled gears, nuts, and bolts feature prominently on all of the pieces within the garniture, but the designer’s penchant for nautical themes was not completely jettisoned in this series, as the metal spheres on three of the five pieces in this set are strongly reminiscent of early diving helmets and submarines.

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Clock face on a diving-helmet-like orb.

Gears of candelabrum before conservation.

Originally, the candle-supporting arms of the two larger candelabra would have been capable of moving up and down with lighted candles in them via graceful, toothed gears. The central piece of the set is a clock which not only once displayed the time and date, but also the temperature in two scales. A thermometer once rose from the sphere of the clock below. The case which held it still remains in place today, and features the Fahrenheit temperature scale on one side and on the other, the Reamur scale- a temperature scale first proposed in 1730 by René Antoine Ferchault de Réamur. The day is displayed in a flat, round metal case on the base, which once rotated to reveal the appropriate number (today it displays “23”), while above this contraption, a canvas scroll operated by small gears turned to display the appropriate month written in French (it is currently set to “Juillet,” or July).

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Candelabrum during conservation.

Thermometer case

Scroll denoting months in French.

Conservation of this complex work began with taking an inventory of which pieces (nuts, bolts, and other decorative elements) were missing, followed by an investigation into whether or not the once moving parts could ever be made to move again. The work was painstakingly polished over the course of many weeks. New pieces were then cast from epoxy in silicone molds to replicate missing parts. The epoxy replacement parts were sanded and painted silver to match freshly polished original parts.

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Making a mold from an existing part.

Removing cast from silicone mold.

Cast parts before sanding and painting.

Sanded, painted, epoxy replacement parts.

Adhering replacement parts in place.

The replacement parts were adhered to the original work using an adhesive that can be easily removed in the future if necessary. Special molding clay was used to hold the painted epoxy pieces in place while the adhesive dried.

The moving parts will not be made to function again, as this would likely mean bending warped or bent pieces back to their original form- an action that could damage or break the already fragile armatures.

If the work eventually begins to tarnish again, the finish will no longer match that of the replacement parts, but our goal is to keep the work in a climate and environment that will prevent or postpone tarnishing. In the meantime, come and take a look at the work, see if you can spot the replacement parts on this very special timepiece, and enjoy the exhibition!

About Joannie Bottkol

Joannie Bottkol is the current Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Objects Conservation at the Brooklyn Museum. She received her Master's Degree in Art History and Conservation from the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. In addition to her recent work at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, she has completed internships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and worked at private conservation studios specializing in modern and contemporary art and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She has also participated in archeological excavations at Selinunte in Sicily and Samothrace in Greece, and worked on conservation projects at NYU's Villa la Pietra in Florence.

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Take a seat…

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Kerith Koss

Starting on December 2nd, that’s exactly what you’ll be able to do in the Museum’sFourth Floor Schenck Gallery—in a handcrafted replica of our 17^th-century, American, Wainscot Chair. The detailed carving, turning and mortise-and-tenon joinery of the original chair were masterfully replicated by Peter Follansbee, a joiner specializing in 17th-century reproduction furniture for over 20 years.

51.158_300.jpg 51.158_replica_300.jpg

Left: American. Wainscot Chair, second half 17th century. Painted oak, 48 1/8 x 26 3/4 x 23 1/2 in. (122.2 x 67.9 x 59.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Memorial Fund, 51.158. Right: Replica chair created for the Brooklyn Museum by Peter Follansbee, joiner.

Mr. Follansbee visited the Museum in March of this year to examine the chair and take measurements. His goal: accurately recreate the work of 17^th-century craftsmen, whose techniques can be observed on the chair in details like original handmade pins and joiner’s marks on the legs.

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Detail of original hand carved pins and joiner’s marks from the original.

Details of the replica chair during construction at Peter Follansbee’s workshop. Images courtesy of Peter Follansbee.

While Mr. Follansbee started replicating the chair, conservators began an examination to determine the original paint scheme. Although many of these chairs are now painted black or other dark colors, it is unlikely that this was done by the original craftsmen. We wanted the completed replica chair to accurately reflect what the original would have looked like before centuries of use.

Several paint samples were taken from various locations on the chair and made into cross-sections. Cross-sections are an important tool for conservators, allowing us to view the different paint layers and coatings and the order in which they were applied to the surface. Paint samples are mounted in resin, polished and examined with a polarized light microscope.

The cross-sections revealed that the chair had received several applications of paint and varnish. The earliest paint layers appeared to be a bright red and a darker brown followed by multiple applications of the black paint. Red paint was also observed underneath the black paint on the surface of the chair. Natural resin varnishes, which appear green under ultraviolet light illumination, are also visible as later applications in the cross-sections.

Left: Detail of paint cross-section in visible light from the back of the chair showing the lowest red and brown paint layers, followed by multiple layers of varnish and black paint. Right: Detail of paint cross -section in ultraviolet light from the back of the chair showing the lowest red and brown paint layers, followed by multiple layers of varnish (which appear bright white/green) and black paint.

According to Chief Curator, Kevin Stayton, and Curator of Decorative Arts, Barry Harwood, these chairs could have been painted or left unpainted after manufacture. In addition, painted surfaces may have been applied shortly after construction but not by the craftsmen who built them and reflect the history and use of the chair. Although the earliest application of paint is red, it could not be determined when this layer was applied.

Following a discussion between conservators, curators and Mr. Follansbee, the replica chair was not painted. We hope that the contrast between the natural and wonderfully hand carved oak of the replica and the patinated original will highlight the intricacy of the handcrafted details, create a closer representation of the chair’s original appearance and accentuate the historic changes that objects such as the Wainscot chair can undergo before entering the Museum’s collection. The replica chair has been coated with oil & turpentine to protect the wood so that it can be appreciated by Museum visitors.

About Kerith Koss

Kerith Koss is the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Objects Conservation at the Brooklyn Museum. She received her Master's Degree in Art History and Conservation from the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Before joining the Brooklyn Museum in 2008, she was a Smithsonian Post-Graduate Fellow at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Over the course of her conservation training, she has completed internships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Field Museum in Chicago and the Shelburne Museum in Vermont and has assisted in hurricane recovery efforts at several local museums on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.

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Italian Design on Display

Posted on October 1, 2008 by Barry R. Harwood

Newly on view on our 4th floor: Italian Post-World War II Design

The Brooklyn Museum has been at the forefront of collecting Italian twentieth century design since the mid 1950s. One pivotal event made consumers in the United States aware of the diversity and accomplishments of modern Italian design and initiated the collecting of this material at the Museum—the exhibition Italy at Work, which traveled to twelve venues between 1950 and 1954. The exhibition was initiated by the Art Institute of Chicago in partnership with two organizations devoted to the promulgation of Italian design, Handicraft Development Incorporated in the United States and its corresponding institution in Italy, CADMA. Italy at Work included hundreds of objects by more than 150 artisans and manufacturers and featured furniture, ceramics, glass, textiles, metalwork, jewelry, shoes, knit clothing, and industrial design. The exhibition opened at the Brooklyn Museum, and at its conclusion, when the objects were dispersed among the host institutions, the lion’s share, more than two hundred items, came to the Museum.

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Carlo Mollino (Italian, 1905-1973). Table, circa 1949. Made by F. Apelli and L. Varesio, Turin. Laminated wood, glass, brass. Gift of the Italian Government, 54.64.321 a-c.

Some of the objects on view here have not been seen since 1954 when Italy at Work closed, such as the mosaic by Gino Severini and the table by Paolo di Poli. In addition, some of the more recently acquired works are having their debut Museum installation here as well, such as the chairs by Alberto Meda, Ettore Sottsass, Jr., and Joe Columbo.

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Ettore Sottsass, Jr. (Italian, b. Austria, 1917-2007). “Casablanca” Cabinet, designed 1981. Manufactured by Memphis. Milan. Wood, plastic laminate. Gift of Furniture of the 20th Century, 83.104.

About Barry R. Harwood

In 1988 Dr. Harwood joined the Brooklyn Museum and now oversees its highly regarded Decorative Arts holdings. Among the exhibitions and installations he has organized are From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith, on view through May 2009, The Furniture of George Hunzinger, Tiffany Glass and Lamps at the Brooklyn Museum, Twentieth-Century Design from the Permanent Collection, The Aesthetic Movement, and was a co-curator of American Identities: A New Look. The recipient of a BA from Brandeis University, Dr. Harwood was awarded an MFA from Princeton University, where he also received a PhD. Since 1991 Harwood has been Adjunct Professor at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum/Parsons Masters Program in the History of Decorative Arts. He is the author of numerous scholarly publications, such as the catalogue The Furniture of George Hunzinger: Invention and Innovation in the 19th-Century, for which he received the Publication and Exhibition Award from the Victorian Society in America, Metropolitan Chapter. Barry was a charter member of the Pee Wee Fun Club.

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Recent Blog Posts

Playing House: Working with Artists
In the exhibition Playing House four artists, Betty Woodman, Ann Chu, Ann Agee and Mary Lucier, install their own artwork into and around several... read more.

Calling Rapaljes, Rapeljes, Raplees and all descendants!
Get ready for some surprising encounters when you visit the Brooklyn Museum’s beloved period rooms this February, when several of the rooms will... read more.

All Geared Up for a Timely Repair
For 19th-Century Modern, which opened last month, the conservation department undertook the cleaning and stabilization of many objects, among them... read more.

Take a seat...
Starting on December 2nd, that's exactly what you'll be able to do in the Museum's Fourth Floor Schenck Gallery—in a handcrafted replica... read more.

Italian Design on Display
Newly on view on our 4th floor: Italian Post-World War II Design The Brooklyn Museum has been at the forefront of collecting Italian twentieth... read more.

Read all Decorative Arts blog posts