Video: Conserving Buddhist Art of Myanmar

My name is Leslie Gatt. I am an objects conservator in private practice in New York City. Summer of 2014, I went to Myanmar for Asia Society with the packer for the present show. We worked in many locations throughout Myanmar looking at objects that were expected to be on the checklist for the show. And we examined approximately 30 objects for stability and any work that might be needed to make them stable so that they could safely come to the show. In January of this year, I returned with one of my conservators and worked on a group of the objects that needed to be stabilized before being shipped over. Conservation in the 21st century is both repairing fine art objects or cultural materials, but also preventive work so that cultural materials don't have mishaps or don't become damaged. We work on preventative conservation and then the flip side of that is to try and assess materials that have either had a catastrophic event, they fell off a table, they broke. We repair it using appropriate reversible materials. Conservators strive so that all their work is reversible, so that the conservator 30 years down the line can take apart everything I do today. It will have had no effect on the object and then they can restore it with the best materials that they have, which will be very, very different in 30 years than what we have now. One of the big problems that we've had is something that's called bronze disease. It's actually an unstable copper chloride corrosion that you see in archaeological materials around the world. It's when the copper-based material, metal, is exposed to or has contact with chlorides, which happens in most soils around the world. Most of the treatment work that we've done on this project has been minimal. A few of the treatments that we did in Myanmar were necessary so that the objects could travel safely. One of the most interesting things for me as a conservator in going to Myanmar and examining these objects is that they have not been through the Western art world. These pieces are a product of their society and their culture and they have not been extensively treated. They've been treated as members of an active life. They're in museums and they're up on pedestals, but they have an intimate association with all the people that go to the museum, which is very different than museums in the Western world. It was important to me as a conservator to not make these pieces look like they belong in the Western world. So this is something that helped myself and my staff decide on the treatments. We treated them so that they looked very healthy on their return to Myanmar. .