CONSERVATION
Protecting and Preserving the Collection
The Department of Conservation is responsible for the preservation of The Museum of Modern Art's collection. The department was established in 1958 in response to a fire at the Museum and was initially devoted to painting conservation. Since then, the department has grown to include staff and facilities dedicated to preserving works on paper, sculpture and objects, photography, and time-based media. The department also houses a scientific research section devoted to both study of the collection and development of new materials for conservation. Films are stored and conserved at the Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center.
The Conservation department also advises on environmental controls and needs, special exhibitions, and travel, packing, and installation requirements. These activities form an overall preventative program, which seeks to maintain the collection for future generations. Conservators and scientists in the department are actively involved in scholarly research related to exhibitions and collections at the Museum.
Selected Projects
Highlights of some of the work being done by MoMA's conservation team.
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MoMA’s Jackson Pollock Conservation Project focuses on masterworks by Pollock.
Le Corbusier Kitchen Conservation
Dismantle, Reconstruct, and Conserve
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Learn About Conservation
Selected multimedia resources about the MoMA Collection
Audio
- Conservation of Jackson Pollock's One: Number 31, 1950. 1950
English,
Deutsch, Español,
Français, Italiano,
Português,
日本語, 中文
- Conservation of Vasily Kandinsky's Panel for Edwin R. Campbell No. 2
English, Deutsch, Español,Português, 日本語, 한국어, 中文
- Conservation of Henri Matisse's Dance (I)
English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, Português, 日本語, 한국어, 中文
Websites
Terms and Techniques
An extensive list of conservation terms can be found on the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website CAMEO (Conservation and Art Materials Encyclopedia Online).
Emulsion
An emulsion is a combination of two or more liquids that do not blend easily on their own, such as oil and water. A common example of an emulsion is a vinaigrette salad dressing, in which you might use egg yolk to keep the vinegar and olive oil from separating. Similarly, painters can use egg yolk to emulsify oil paint and water.
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Enamel
Enamel paints are household and automobile paints that are formulated to be very fluid. They are typically opaque and rich in pigment, since they are designed to cover a surface in a single coat of paint. Enamels can use an array of different binders that include alkyd (a modified linseed oil), acrylic, latex, and oil. Abstract Expressionist artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning were among the first to regularly use enamel paints in making works of art.
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Stain
A stain is a thinned paint made with a considerable amount of solvent. Stains are absorbed into the canvas, rather than remaining on its surface.
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Palette Knife
A palette knife is a type of spatula typically used to mix paint on the palette. It can also be used to apply paint directly on the canvas and to remove it from the canvas.
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Paint
Paint is most often a combination of pigment, binder, and solvent. Pigment is the colored portion of the paint. It is often a finely ground material that is either found in nature or artificially produced. Binder holds the individual grains of pigment together. In oil paint, the most common binder is linseed oil, which typically dries to the touch in about one week. The binder in most acrylic paint is an acrylic resin; the binder in watercolor paint is a natural resin called gum arabic. Solvent is a liquid that thins the paint. The most common solvent in oil painting is turpentine. Water is the solvent for acrylic emulsion and watercolor paints.
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Turpentine Burn
A turpentine burn is made by soaking a rag in solvent and scrubbing the canvas directly. This technique removes paint and leaves a stain on the canvas.
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Tint, Shade, and Tone
In painting, a tint is a color plus white, a shade is a color plus black, and a tone is a color plus gray.
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Viscosity
Viscosity is the thickness of a liquid. Low-viscosity liquids are very fluid (such as water) while high-viscosity liquids are quite thick (such as molasses). The viscosity of oil paints is usually reduced by adding binder (such as linseed oil) and/or solvent (such as turpentine). At a lower viscosity, paint can be brushed onto the canvas more freely and quickly.
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Conservation Areas
The conservation of MoMA's collection is done by multiple departments which often collaborate on mixed-media projects. Find out more about each of these expertise areas.
Media
The conservation of technology-based works like video-, audio-, and computer-based art are the responsibility of the media conservators at MoMA, the newest conservation section at the Museum.
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Painting
Painting conservators work mostly on paintings in the collection, mostly from the Department of Painting and Sculpture, which range from traditional oil painting on canvas to experimental paint media used by contemporary artists.
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Paper
Paper conservators care for collections in the Museum that are principally paper such as drawings, prints, books, and posters, as well as some ephemera in curatorial collections.
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Photography
Photography conservation is responsible for the preservation and conservation of photo-based works in the collection of the Department of Photography as well as all the other curatorial departments that have photos in their collections.
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Science
Scientific research at MoMA is dedicated to analysis and research related to the Museum's collections. This includes identifying materials that artists use in creating their work, conducting research to better understand and store the collection, and to develop new materials for conserving works.
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Sculpture
Sculpture conservation is responsible for a very wide range of objects in the collection, from bronze sculpture to plastic design objects to kinetic sculpture and beyond.
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If you are interested in reproducing images from The Museum of Modern Art web site, please visit the Image Permissions page (www.moma.org/permissions). For additional information about using content from MoMA.org, please visit About this Site (www.moma.org/site).
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