MoMA conservation zoom meetings with Kate Lewis

By taking all the art courses that I find, conserving a piece of art is a very difficult process, and without super careful care, the artwork can be destroyed very easily. When a piece of art is ruined, it is super hard to recover it. So when I hear the news that we are zooming with Kate Lewis, who works at MoMA conservation, I am super excited to meet with her. From the conversation we had with her, I definitely find that art conservation is an important place to have in the art world, and it is taking a very important role. 

Kate Lewis mentions that doing maintenance and working their way around galleries is always existing in MoMA; all the works of art need an eye on them to prevent dusting on them. From her introduction, I further realized that conserving an art piece is very difficult. She also shared the moment that the conservator is checking on the dust; the conservator is using specific tools to check the dusk level, and steps are proceeding with patience and extra care. I see dust check is a slow and technical process, so if a painting needs to be treated at the MoMA conservation, it should also be very difficult for conservators. 

Lewis gives out a piece of glasswork that comes into the MoMA conservation studios, and there was a crack on its conceptual piece. From the day it is into MoMA, conservators take two years to kind of work out how to treat the artwork. Then, treat it with a tiny step by step while talking to specialists. From her description, I see how treating a piece of artwork is a very slow process, and it is all treated with care. 

Lewis also mentions that nowadays, color photos are the most difficult material or medium to conserve because nobody right now prints any digital photos. When it comes to conserving all those color prints, there is no better way than placing them in a dark room with low temperatures around 40-50 F to slow down the process of aging. 

From the conversation that we had with Kate Lewis, MoMA conservation extends my knowledge around conserving artwork and extends my understanding of how to treat an artwork, which is a very difficult and slow process. Lewis let me think that the idea of conserving artwork should be widely passed on to every citizen. When the message is being passed on, when people are touring an exhibition, they are more aware of the challenging process if they destroy the artwork. Under this circumstance, museums have a better chance of conserving art.