Response to Dr. Montagna’s article in LodeSTAR

Mark Rabinowitz
Conservation & Sculpture Co.

I read with interest the essay in the last issue of LodeSTAR from SOS! on the recent history of outdoor monument conservation in America. As you well know, I am both a strong supporter of this effort and a long-time admirer of Dr. Montagna’s part in it. While I agree that it is appropriate at this point to look back over this history with both pride for successes and concern for the lasting effects in the future, I must disagree with the direction that Dr. Montagna took in his article. It seems to me that his focus, concern for the failure of treatments over time, should be directed to issues of management and follow up care relevant to owners. Instead he chose to review controversies over treatment methods that I fear will only continue to muddy the waters and lead to the further confusion among your audience as to the questions they should be addressing when they seek to treat their sculptures.

As you know, I am a conservator who has been working on outdoor sculpture since 1987. During that time I have treated or assessed hundreds of monuments. Much of this work has included both maintenance and re-treatment of previous conservation treatments, either originally performed by myself or by others. I have had the opportunity to observe the effects over time of most of the currently common practices in outdoor sculpture conservation, including having had to reverse and redo failed treatments. Much has changed in the field of outdoor monuments conservation during the last 10 years but little of that change is reflected in the literature. I would like to share what little my experience has taught me. Like the article, I will refer here only to the treatments of bronze monuments.

The 1980s resulted not only in a renewed interest in treating outdoor monuments but also in establishing certain controversies about the appropriateness of various treatments. These controversies were played out in conferences and publications that still constitute the body of literature on the field, much of it cited in the article’s bibliography. Despite the vehemence with which these arguments were presented, and the scientific studies that were undertaken to support them, they tended to fall out in ideological rather than practical lines. Early on there were adherents to the “corrosion is corruption, the most long-lived treatment is best” perspective who felt that, as Dr. Montagna states, any surface corrosion had to be removed. This goal was intended to guarantee proper adhesion of the protective coatings by following manufacturer’s recommendations for surface preparation as well as facilitating restoration of the objects original patina.

This group was attacked with much heat by the followers of the “maximum reversibility, less is more” axiom who felt that the others were too interventionist and who preferred what they stated was a more ethical, hand’s-off approach. Certain materials and techniques used in treatments were tied to either of these camps and Dr. Montagna’s article sites their disputes continuing to echo through the field to this day. Regrettably, much of the issues that were disputed turn out to be off the point, to wit: what the long-term results of the treatment are once the scaffold was down and the parties have left. I believe this was partly due to fundamental misunderstandings about the differing roles of conservator and curator that should be cleared up if we want to move the discussion forward.

Conservators work at determining causes and effects of deterioration and recommending or performing treatments for them. Consequences that may result from our work, such as additional maintenance requirements or questions of appropriate appearance, are matters for owners, curators and art historians to address with the information that conservators provide them before selecting and applying treatments. This simple clarification of responsibility remains remarkably un-addressed in the dialectic of the literature and in this article. Curators and owners must assume their responsibility for their part instead of confusing it with that of the conservator’s just as conservators should not make inappropriate claims for the ethical values of certain treatment types independent of the specifics of the sculpture and its management plans. Conservators should select from a variety of possibly appropriate treatments that are developed with the owner to fit the specific object and its management goals.

I must question the article’s focus on treatment methods and the unstated but clear preference for the walnut shell-hot wax treatment regiment, the choice of the “less is more” faction. A treatment that is guaranteed to fail without at least biannual renewal, as “hot wax” treatments have proven to, can hardly be an appropriate choice for a monument where no plans or funds for the required maintenance exists. Can it justifiable be called the least invasive approach if it requires such frequent re-treatments which will result in degradation of both the appearance and surface of the sculpture if not applied? Additionally, anyone who has tried will tell you that it is a practical impossibility to reverse a hot wax treatment, despite the claims of its proponents. The majority of walnut shell-hot wax treatments that I have seen fail tend to turn black quickly, become increasingly insoluble and rapidly develop bright green areas of active corrosion on upper surfaces when the wax is lost. Is the material lost to later corrosion when the treatment fails somehow better than that lost to over-cleaning during treatment, the complaint lodged against the glass bead peening method that was the other pole of the debate? And since there are methods that do not over clean bronzes and still provide long lived protection, why not prefer those if one wishes to make a generic recommendation? I don’t understand why one should hold such a preference as each monument’s unique conditions will always require unique solutions.

There are times when a hot wax treatment is the best treatment choice for a bronze. There also are cases that call for only cold applied wax, or Incralac or other lacquer over modest cleaning, or glass bead peening and re-patination or painting, or gilding or even no treatment at all. None is right in all cases. Conservators may propose various appropriate treatment methods that should be selected together with the curator depending on all of the criteria which effects the work, including the sculptor’s original intentions for appearance. Rather than becoming consumed with details of treatment methodologies, with the concomitant theoretical prejudice for one particular regiment over any other, shouldn’t owners be more concerned with the matters that are in their purview such as appropriate appearance and maintenance plans? If they concentrated on developing their understandings of those crucial items they could better understand and select methods that match their circumstances. Conservators can then direct their own efforts toward appropriate methods of achieving these goals.

This is why I never respond to Requests for Proposals for treatments that do not include the curator’s directions on appearance and maintenance plans. It seems pointless, not to mention wastefully time consuming, to propose a variety of possible treatments if the owners don’t assume their responsibilities for these areas. In addition I find that preferences for particular treatment types may already exist in owner’s minds, partly due to the focus in the literature that regrettably this article perpetuates, which is often independent of any logical association between the treatment methods and their goals.

Another area of confusion that I feel should be clarified is that of the difference between bronze and sculpture. In almost all cases, bronzes are cast representations of sculptures and problems with bronze may not be the same as problems with sculptures. Except in the rarest of instances, sculptors make sculptures and foundries make bronzes. That’s why they both sign them. To respect the sculptor’s original intent, we must remember that the bronze is supposed to make permanent the sculptor’s design which was usually made first in clay or plaster. A sculptor who labored hard to produce lifelike lacework or chain mail on a figure would be hard pressed to appreciate the value of a wax treatment that fills up all of the voids and hides the detail he or she created, whatever the supposed theoretical value for the bronze. Conversely, that same wax treatment may be the best way to reproduce a previously meticulously polished surface that has become pitted through corrosion without reworking the surface and removing irreplaceable material. But if the owner cannot guarantee the necessary maintenance to keep up that wax surface and it will prejudice later re-treatment, what is the value of applying it? Wouldn’t a lacquer treatment that is more easily reversible and will preserve the bronze for 10 or 15 years or more without follow up care be more appropriate than the fleeting appearance of the wax treatment? Even no treatment at all pending the development of an appropriate maintenance plan might be the better choice. Whatever it is, it is a choice for the owner, not the conservator who can recommend the values of all available treatments including their relative life spans with and without maintenance.

SOS! has assisted many owners in making these decisions by separating the process of assessing their sculptures from that of treating them. This separation mirrors the process now generally in place in the New York City Parks Department for its monument’s treatments. They first select conservators through competitive bids to evaluate, assess, research, develop and propose an appropriate treatment methodology for each monument, including appearance and maintenance plans that are prepared with the curators. The result of this study is a contract document, similar to architectural plans and specifications, that lists all expected procedures and methods to be performed. Other conservators then bid on the specified treatment, clearly knowing what they will be expected to deliver. Naturally, the contract must allow for contingencies that will develop as the treatment proceeds. This process also can avoid inappropriate treatments performed by unskilled practitioners through both pre-qualification requirements for bidders and specifications of the treatments. I have been on both sides of this process, as developer of the recommendations and as performing conservator, and it is a much more open, simple, fairer procedure that leads to better understood results than the RPF process.

Undoubtedly, the struggle for the next 25 years will be to develop institutions with the means, knowledge and will to maintain the gains in care of public collections that have been achieved over the last 25. This is a challenge for curators and owners. Conservators can serve this development better if owners understand the responsibilities that fall to them as guardians of our public sculpture heritage. It is inappropriate to direct their concerns towards particular treatment methods rather than to the issues of management that they should be addressing. One hopes that we could then jointly dedicate ourselves to achieving results that are long term successes instead of failures, even graceful ones.

See Dennis Montagna's response to this letter.