Art Conservation: Department Overview

Yeah, I like to see the radiographs. The professors here are always giving. They're available to us at any moment of day or night. And don't forget the art moves. Yeah, because it is a pretty crude casting, isn't it? The students always get more than they ask for. That's the hardest thing to learn. The art moves. Of the four programs in the United States and one in Canada, we are the only program with full-time faculty. We work together to come up with solutions. Not only do you require the science, the art, the craft, and as much history as you can get, you also get to work with scientists. You can tilt this so it's tilted up. We have two scientists. The surface tension is going to drop off. Having that widespread understanding of the ways you can investigate materials offers our students a great advantage. We're unique in terms of the conservation training program, certainly in North America anyway, in having a curriculum stream dedicated only to technical examination and documentation. To have a full-time faculty member devoted to that stream. Yeah, the ink is there. It's not quite that bad. And in addition, right next door we have very good and well-known galleries like the Albright-Knox, the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, the new Birchfield-Penney Art Center, and we also have the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, which is, you know, rivals New York Public Library in terms of the collection it has. Not in terms of size anymore, but historically. And so there's a variety of cultural wealth in Buffalo. With the Albright-Knox, for example, in our paper class, we were able to go over there and examine prints and applying some of the knowledge we learned during the year to what would be a real-life work situation. Training does involve, of course, the hand skills, which we're expecting the students to bring here. We expect a pretty high level of proficiency, I guess, with hand skills. And that way we can teach details of tool manipulation. Melt a little bit on this. We want a student who's curious. We want a student who tries to figure out why things work the way they do. It has a romantic aspect, but you might be surprised at how hard it is to actually do the work. As the students, we're required to be here from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. I often find myself here for 12 hours, maybe, per day. Often on the weekends as well. It takes a great deal of intensity and dedication. What other career are you going to be able to have the opportunity to handle and to care and to preserve for future generations such things of beauty? It's the kind of field that's going to keep you excited and interested for your entire working career, which is a difficult thing to find. Burnout is low because it's always exciting and there's always something new coming along. It came by ship from Sweden. Our problem with it, it's completely saturated with butter and nothing sticks to butter or things that are saturated with butter. It's exciting to see them start off wondering, what am I doing in this field? And then by the time they get to their internship, they're realizing, gosh, two years have gone by and I feel confident and their confidence does increase within that third year. They probably use harsh solvents. That sometimes abrades the original paint. People who are thinking about getting into conservation should come to our open house. I've done some tear repairs in that area as well as filling of the damaged surface and in-painting. It's an exciting program for the students, exciting for the faculty and even myself. These people who come in as students and they leave as colleagues. It's just a marvelous experience.