What Is an Art Conservator? — The Work of Caring for Art's Past and Future

Introduction

Have you heard of the profession of conservator? If you love art, you have probably come across stories about restoration — like an overseas project to restore a famous painting. Yet we rarely get to learn what restoration really is, or what kind of profession a conservator really has. In this article, having studied the conservation of Western paintings in both Japan and Italy, I will give you a brief introduction to the field.

What Is Art Conservation?

First, what is the conservation of an artwork? Conservation means carrying out treatments so that a work returns as closely as possible to its original state, and passing it on to future generations in the best condition we can. In Japanese it is called by terms such as shūfuku (restoration), hozon shūfuku (conservation), or "conservation."

A conservation treatment includes, for example, cleaning (removing dirt and grime), filling in losses (areas that are missing), and consolidating parts that have deteriorated. We carry out these treatments while weighing several perspectives at once: the aesthetic, the historical and the passage of time, and the question of what is original.

Categories of Artworks

So, what counts as an artwork?

• Paintings: oil paintings, panel paintings, and so on
• Sculpture (also called three-dimensional work): bronze, marble, and so on
• Crafts: lacquerware, dyed textiles, and so on
• Works on paper: watercolors, prints, old documents, and so on

There are many categories like these. Take sculpture alone: bronze and marble deteriorate differently and are treated differently, so every situation varies. Works in the categories above are the kind you see in museums, galleries, and private collections.

In addition, the following — which are classified under other academic disciplines — sit right alongside art conservation:

• Architecture: buildings and structures
• Archaeology and history: burial mounds, castle ruins, archaeological artifacts
• Folklore studies: folk cultural properties

What's more, artworks from the modern and contemporary eras onward are made with every imaginable material and technique, so keeping up with them is also a major challenge for the conservation field going forward.

Today's Guiding Principles in Conservation

In conservation today, there are several guiding principles for carrying out a treatment, such as:

• Preventive conservation
• Using reversible materials in a treatment
• Treating in a way that lets you tell the original parts apart from the restored ones
• Ensuring the work's materials and the materials used in restoration are compatible
• Carrying out the minimum necessary treatment

What does the third principle mean, for example? When "inpainting" (filling in missing color) is done on an oil painting, oil paint was used in the past, but today watercolor is used. Why was the material changed? Because by deliberately using a different medium, conservators of later eras can tell which areas were restored and which are original. Being able to tell them apart means a future conservator can clean only the parts inpainted with watercolor, without harming the original.

Because a work is a physical object, no matter how fine the restoration, it will inevitably deteriorate. There is no treatment that remains effective forever; in a few decades it will be restored again. To carry out a treatment while thinking not only of the present but of the work surviving across spans of centuries — that is what the work of conservation is.

What Does a Conservator Actually Do? Expertise and Skills

What Is a Conservation Treatment?

So, what is a conservation treatment like?

First, before beginning a treatment, we examine the condition of the work. Beyond the naked eye, we sometimes carry out scientific investigation using infrared, ultraviolet, and the like, which calls for the skill to operate that equipment and the knowledge to interpret the data. In reality, many workshops have no such equipment, and the project's schedule and budget determine what kind of data we gather. For a famous painting held by a national museum, scientific investigation is common, since the work may later be shown in the media or written up in a detailed report.

Once we understand the condition, hear the owner's wishes, and — depending on the case — work together with specialists in other roles such as curators and art historians, we decide the conservation policy and the sequence of treatments, and begin the work.

The main tasks, in the case of an oil painting for example, are:

• Consolidating the support (the canvas, panel, and so on)
• Cleaning
• Filling losses with putty and inpainting them
• Applying varnish
• Restoring the frame

The job runs all the way through to writing a report and delivering the work. The condition of works varies enormously, and no two are alike, so you need the skill — built through experience — to handle every kind of deterioration.

What Knowledge and Skills Are Needed?

So, what knowledge and skills do you need in order to do conservation work? They include:

• The causes of deterioration in artworks
• How to decide a conservation policy
• How to carry out conservation treatments
• The storage environment for artworks
• How to do documentation
• Knowledge of materials and making techniques
• Science
• Art history
• The history of restoration

A wide range of knowledge like this is required.

That said, if someone builds a career by entering a workshop directly rather than going to a conservation school, they gain plenty of hands-on experience but have few chances to acquire scientific knowledge. In such cases, some conservators learn one-off pieces of knowledge from their workshop master — "for this type of dirt, dissolve this solvent in water at such-and-such a percentage and it will come off" — and keep using that method for good. That is one approach, and it is not wrong, but with narrow, isolated knowledge alone you cannot adapt.

Why did this part of this work break? What treatment would be better? What method of storage would prevent the same deterioration? How do you pursue better work along these lines? Not by finishing the job through the repetition of a single method, but by learning from new research on treatments by other conservators and scholars, while building broad knowledge and experience — this is the theory generally held in the modern conservation field.

Do You Have to Be Able to Paint?

In fact, there are quite a few conservators who cannot draw or paint. The ability to paint is not essential, but in inpainting — one of the important treatments — those who can paint do tend to be better at it.

What does a conservator who is not good at inpainting do? Of course, being able to do every treatment well on your own would be best. But treatment is not only inpainting. Some people are strong in science and specialize in the field of conservation science; others specialize in a single treatment, such as cleaning. Focusing on what suits you and growing it into a strength is not a bad path. After all, conservation is often done as a team, and there are delivery deadlines, so a single treatment is frequently entrusted to whoever can do it quickly and accurately.

How Do You Become a Conservator?

So, how do you become a conservator? Conservators each have different careers, and there is no set roadmap that says "do this and you'll become one." Even so, it is not something where you can say "I'll open my own studio starting today"; first you have to learn and gain experience somewhere. There are two kinds of places to learn:

• Studying at an educational institution with a conservation curriculum (an art university or a specialized school)
• Learning in a conservation workshop

As things stand in the field, the major route for those with no experience is to start at an educational institution. But going to one — or several — institutions does not by itself make you a conservator.

• People who finish an art high school, then a specialized school, then go on to university
• People who go from an undergraduate degree to a master's or doctoral program
• People who intern at a workshop and then re-enroll at a university
• People who graduate from a Japanese university and then study abroad

and so on — people who study for a decade or more are common. On the other hand, there are also those who, with no experience, seized the chance to apprentice at a workshop and stayed in the field that way.

If you simply want to peek into the world of conservation, taking a short course at a school or workshop is a fine idea. But for someone who wants to make it their lifelong profession, short courses alone are not enough. Even after becoming a professional, this is a world where many people keep attending short courses and academic conferences at places such as national museums, in pursuit of better technique. It is best not to assume it is something you can master in a short time.

Studying at a School: Pros and Cons

Pros

• You can learn both theory and practice

Note: Some institutions teach only classroom theory, so before enrolling you need to look closely at the curriculum. At an internship or a workplace, you cannot get any work done if you cannot already do the hands-on tasks. Within the field, it is often said that if you are going to a school anyway, a place with plenty of practical training is best.

• You have the chance to gain knowledge broadly, from many people, more so than at a single workshop
• Some institutions offer classes where you run experiments with equipment, giving you a chance to learn scientific knowledge (you can almost never learn science at a workshop)
• Even if you do not end up becoming a conservator, the academic credential remains

Cons

• It costs tuition
• It takes many years to finish your studies

Training in a Workshop: Pros and Cons

Pros

• You can learn through practice right away
• You may be able to learn while earning a salary
• You see the real side of the job that you could never know as a student

Cons

• You have few chances to learn classroom knowledge — conservation theory, science, art history, storage environments for artworks, and so on
• When carrying out a treatment, you have few chances to learn deeply why, scientifically, that treatment is done and what effect it has
• A school is an open system that anyone can enter if they pass the entrance exam, but a workshop is not
• At some workshops you are only ever allowed to do the same task

Are There Jobs?

Compared with the number of graduates from educational institutions, the number of job openings is quite small.

• At a workshop with a long history, the family's children often take it over
• It is a field where work is frequently passed along through introductions
• The more experience you have, the easier it is to land work
• Once you secure a post, it tends to be a job with no retirement age

For these overlapping reasons, it is a hard field for young people with little experience to compete in.

In Closing

This time, I introduced what restoration is and what kind of work a conservator does. News about restoration appears in the media now and then, but it is a field whose reality is little known.

And yet there are people who have a painting at their family home but do not know how to preserve it, and people who want to buy art. When you travel, too, you are surely seeing artworks somewhere — every classical work in a museum or a church has been restored. Even the bronze sculpture at your nearest train station may well have been restored. The world of conservation is closer than you think, and it is important, irreplaceable work.