Turning back time: old art restored

Senior Madalyn Morse used to sit in Woodburn 100 and stare at the murals instead of paying attention to her professor’s lecture.

However, this July, Morse found herself once again in Woodburn 100, but this time perched on top of scaffolding, painting and restoring the famous works of art.

“Sitting on top of the scaffolding all day was a struggle,” Morse said. “I didn’t expect the physical challenge.”

Morse worked alongside Margaret Contompasis, head of the IU painting conservation at the IU Art Museum, and two other students for five weeks to restore the Thomas Hart Benton murals in the Woodburn classroom.

Benton originally painted many murals for the Indiana Hall at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. After the world’s fair closed, the murals were moved to a horse barn before Herman B Wells convinced the state of Indiana to donate 22 of them to IU in 1940.

Since their installation, the murals have only been cleaned and restored once in the 1980s. Morse said she was shocked by how dirty the murals were and had to use a vacuum to remove almost 30 years worth of dust.

“There was a lot of built up grime,” Contompasis said. “I’ve removed chewing tobacco, soda, you name it. They’ve also had a little bit more mischievous action from students as well.”

The two murals, located in Woodburn Hall, have been objects of controversy and vandalism in the past because they contain images of the Ku Klux Klan. However, the damage and dirt weren’t the only challenges in conserving the murals.

Benton used an egg tempera mix of paint, and because of the unstable environment, it began shrinking and curling off the back of the mural like a ship’s sail.

“This is pretty much the worst environment for a painting,” Contompasis said, gesturing to the empty Woodburn 100 classroom. “It goes from this to being filled with 400 students with their breathing and heat, and the humidity just sky rockets. Then it will go back to being cool and empty.”

As a result of these hourly temperature changes, large portions of the mural had to have paint reattached and be “inpainted,” or touched-up using special conservation paints.

During the conservation work in the 1980s, the paint was consolidated using wax. But that procedure didn’t withstand the temperature changes in Woodburn, and Contompasis and her team of students used a different method: fish bladders.

The dried fish bladders from sturgeons were added to hot water to create a gelatin known as Isinglass. The Isinglass was then spread carefully over sheets of tissue paper to be absorbed by the paint and adhere it to the back of the canvas.

Once the paint was reattached, the team started the last step of inpainting, or painting on the original work where paint has flaked off or is missing.

Painting conservators use a special brand of paint that is completely removable, but has a special life span of 100 years.

“It was nice to know that the paint was removable,” senior Krista Grant said. “Anything we do, if it looks bad, can be removed.”

The key to conservation is that all work must be detectable so that people know it is not part of the original, Contompasis said. Scans like UV lights and other methods should be able to easily detect the conservation work.

When Morse first started working for the conservation lab, Contompasis took her around the art museum with a UV light to show her where conservation work had been done on the other art pieces.

“These murals that are so important to IU and Indiana just had huge layers of dust on them,” Morse said. “The best part is now seeing how beautiful the colors just really are.”

Grant echoed Morse’s love for conservation.

“I like the idea of fixing what came before and saving it for the future,” Grant said. “You’re around beautiful works of art all the time, so it’s not your average desk job.”