A Repository for Bottled Monsters: National Gallery of Art painting conservation

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

National Gallery of Art painting conservation

Here's an article that talks about how the National Gallery of Art does painting conservation - "Virgin Rebirth: Technology Helps Humans Work Miracles on a Renaissance Treasure," By Jessica Dawson, The Washington Post Tuesday, December 23, 2008; Page C01. And why should I care you ask? Because the Museum's painting of Philadelphia doctor John Hill Brinton by Thomas Eakins is being worked on in the same way. The painting of the Museum's first curator has been on loan to the Gallery since 1946, but recently has traveled to New York City and Italy for Eakins' shows.

I was down visiting the conservators and curator a few weeks ago when they uncovered some details in the painting that hadn't been obvious before. I told them I'd have no idea what they were and I didn't, but research goes on and I'll let them tell there story in their own time and place.

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Who are we?

Mike Rhode was the chief archivist of the Museum from 1989-2011, and is the founder of this blog. I maintain an interest in the course of the museum, and will be posting relevant information.

The Army Medical Museum was founded in 1862 during the American Civil War. After World War II, a parent-child relationship was inverted and the Museum became part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Since then, the Museum has moved around Washington, stopping for years in Ford's Theatre, and on the National Mall where the building it shared with the National Library of Medicine once stood, until it was demolished in 1968 for the Hirshhorn Museum. For 35 years it was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and now is in Silver Spring, MD.

So what about that blog name?

It's historical. I found it in a quote from one of the former curators. World War II confirmed the Army Medical Museum's primary role in pathology consultation. James Ash, the curator during the war and a pathologist, noted, "Shortly after the last war, more concerted efforts were instituted to concentrate in the Army Medical Museum the significant pathologic material occurring in Army installations." He closed with the complaint, "We still suffer under the connotation museum, an institution still thought of by many as a repository for bottled monsters and medical curiosities. To be sure, we have such specimens. As is required by law, we maintain an exhibit open to the public, but in war time, at least, the museum per se is the least of our functions, and we like to be thought of as the Army Institute of Pathology, a designation recently authorized by the Surgeon General."

After the war, it evolved into the tri-service Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

A Repository for Bottled Monsters

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Tuesday, December 23, 2008

National Gallery of Art painting conservation

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