Effort to Diversify Unearths Trove of Treasures
Conservation center reaches out to black colleges for interns, finds extraordinary art

Like many inspiring discussions, this one wasn’t on the agenda. Trustees at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center in Massachusetts met several years ago and casually talked about how to diversify the conservation profession while building support for the field. Now that chance discussion, led by former WACC director Gary Burger and trustee Jock Reynolds, has evolved into a unique internship program for minority students, the conservation of nearly 1,400 works of art, and a novel exhibition of a previously untapped body of American art.

By joining with six historically black colleges and universities, known as HBCUs, WACC found a way both to bolster the visibility of conservation and to make conservation an attractive career choice for minority students. The exhibition, “To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” opened to rave reviews at the Studio Museum in March.

Drawing its works from the collections of the six partner schools—Clark Atlanta University, Fisk University, Hampton University, Howard University, North Carolina Central University, and Tuskegee University—the show highlights such artists as Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, and Arthur Dove. Funded primarily by AT&T and Ford Motor Company, it is the first major exhibition to draw national attention to the little-known but extraordinary collections of the schools, while at the same time highlighting the role of conservation in saving them for the future.

“[The exhibition] brings together many artists and ideas, spanning more than 150 years,” said Dr. Richard J. Powell, chairman of Duke University’s art and art history department. “And through the conservation of this rich and diverse legacy, it preserves this area of American visual culture for generations to come.”

Out of obscurity
Like conservation, which is typically relegated to out-of-the-way laboratories, the art from these collections has rarely held the spotlight. In fact, because of lack of funding and resources, the works have often been kept in storage.

“The thing to remember is that these works are not very well known simply because they’ve not been in a condition to be exhibited before,” said Burger, a former Heritage Preservation board member who left WACC in 1997 to become director of arts and culture programs at the Knight Foundation. The idea, he said, is to draw attention to the rich art of these unknown collections and to inform administrators that conservation funding is essential to the survival of such irreplaceable cultural resources.

At the Studio Museum in Harlem, where the exhibition will remain through June, the conservation process is highlighted with the largest object in the exhibition, a mural by Charles White called Progress of the American Negro. The painting was unknown until a conservator fortuitously stumbled across it as he surveyed the collection at Howard University.

“It was found unstretched and folded up in a corner,” said Onika Abraham, a spokesperson for the Studio Museum. “The conservation work made such a dramatic change.” On display with the newly conserved mural are photographs of the painting before and during conservation, as well as a glossary of conservation terms. A video produced by WACC plays on continuous reel and shows the conservators and interns treating the artworks.

Because of space limitations, the Studio Museum was unable to highlight the conservation of the other artworks. Tom Branchick, who succeeded Burger as director of WACC in 1997, is hopeful that some of the larger institutions to which the exhibition travels will have enough space to enhance the focus on conservation.

“Of course, we’d like to generate more didactic labels explaining the treatment process at the next venue,” Branchick said. He expects that at the Addison Gallery, the exhibition’s next stop, organizers will target 20 or so works that underwent complex treatment and elaborate on the process of their conservation.

An idea blossoms
This multidimensional program was borne of the determination of Burger and Reynolds, yet without the collaboration of a number of people and institutions it would never have germinated.

In 1995, Burger was struck by the critical and popular success of a few exhibitions featuring conservation—particularly the “Altered States” exhibition organized by Mount Holyoke—and he thought WACC might be able to amplify the public’s growing interest in the field.

Then, at a WACC board meeting, Burger and Reynolds were tossing the idea around when Reynolds, now the director of the Yale University Art Gallery, remembered that his friend, Richard Powell, had studied the collections of several HBCUs and was impressed with their tremendous depth and quality. But he recalled that many of the artworks were in such poor condition that they couldn’t be exhibited—a realization that signaled to Burger and Reynolds that they were on to something. Powell agreed to co-curate the exhibition with Reynolds, and he employed his vast knowledge of the rich collections to forge partnerships with the six HBCUs.

As the project developed, conservation-training remained a central component. Burger, Reynolds, Powell, and Branchick decided that the best way to attract students from these universities to the field of conservation was to give them hands-on experience with important works from their own schools.

Branchick and Powell traveled to the participating HBCUs to look at their holdings. They targeted artworks and prioritized them based on what needed to be treated immediately. Although they kept in mind which pieces would be good for the traveling exhibition, based on their historical significance and the stature of the artist, Branchick stressed that “there were a number of pieces that were conserved that weren’t slated to be part of the exhibition. But if they weren’t treated, we knew they wouldn’t survive.”

Working with the twelve student interns, WACC conserved more than 1,400 works—150 of which are included in the exhibition. The students were given detailed instruction on conservation and collections care and focused on practical skills and techniques like mounting, housing, storing, and organizing the artworks.

Because the paper collections at the six schools were in the most trouble, the program stressed skills specific to prints, drawings and photos. When the internships were over, students returned to their institutions to use their new skills to serve their collections during the academic year.

“The intent was to see whether we could attract these kids to the profession,” Branchick said. And the strategy appears to be working. Although most of the interns won’t matriculate until next year, at least one who graduates this year is pursuing conservation as a career.

Photo Credits: Negro Woman by Elizabeth Catlett (1956), wood and onyx. Courtesy Collection of Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries.

Man with Brush by Frederick C. Flemister (1940), oil on canvas. Courtesy Collection of Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries.