All posts in American Art

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ASK and Young Museum Visitors: On the Hunt

Sometimes we plan and execute ASK-related projects on a long timeline, but occasionally a project will happen organically and almost take us by surprise. Using…

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What happens when you put ASK on a kiosk? You learn a few things.

One of the questions we’ve had since the beginning of the project was if ASK is appropriate for a mounted kiosk of some kind. We…

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Is Bigger Better? Some Most-ASKed About Artworks

In a recent conversation with colleagues from the Peabody Essex Museum, Sara and I fielded a question that frequently arises: which works of art do…

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Replicating a 19th Century Statue with 21st Century Tech

My first exposure to the world of 3D printing took place in 2009 approximately 500 feet under the Earth’s surface in a former missile silo…

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Youth and Beauty iPad Kiosks

Proving a Point with Google Images

When most of us think about the roaring twenties, we envision scenes of flappers cutting loose on the dance floor, bustling cities filling with new…

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Trinity Church

On-the-Road Research, or What Curators Do On Their Summer Vacations

One of the projects I’ve been working on is Fine Lines: American Drawings from the Brooklyn Museum, an exhibition of about 100 of our pre-1945…

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View of American Identities galleries with works by Feke and Williams

The British Are Coming!

This portrait by the British painter Thomas Hudson has just been added to American Identities, the installation of the Museum’s world-renowned collections of American art….

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Remembering Penn Station

New York history buffs will be interested to know that this month, September 2010, marks the 100th anniversary of the opening of Penn Station. No,…

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Architectural Fragments from Coney Island’s Steeplechase Park

On June 19, Coney Island will celebrate the beginning of summer with the annual Mermaid Parade, a colorful and highly unique procession of costumed mermaids,…

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The First Harvest in the Wilderness

Valerie Hegarty’s evocation of Asher B. Durand’s 1855 painting The First Harvest in the Wilderness in her benefit print for the 1stfans program adds another…

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Pictures! Pictures! Pictures!

Today we’re launching the next installment in the Brooklyn Museum Collection on the Web—more than 4,000 images from the Libraries and Archives will join the…

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Contemporary Take on Landscape Painting

Valerie Hegarty (American, born 1967). Fallen Bierstadt, 2007. Foamcore, paint, paper, glue, gel medium, canvas, wire, and wood. Gift of Campari, USA , 2008.9a–b. Photo…

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Steeplechase, Luna Park, and Dreamland

The history of Coney Island from the 1890s and through the first decade of the 20th century is very much the history of three successful…

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Coney Island & Entertainment

Coney Island has a long history as a place for entertainment. Even before the creation of the three great amusement parks around 1900, the area…

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Newly on View: Herald Tribune Owls

The next time you enter the Grand Lobby of the museum, make sure you cast your eyes upwards. In one of the openings in the…

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Goodbye Coney Island?

Last week we finished the installation of the small photography show Goodbye Coney Island? in the Luce Alcove on the fifth floor of the Museum….

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How do you light Light?

A major factor influencing Brushed with Light‘s design was due to the delicate nature of watercolors themselves. Because the works are light sensitive it is…

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Conserving Watercolors: Under the Microscope

In my previous post, I discussed how an adhesive introduced with an ultrasonic mister can be used to stabilize paint layers. Now you can see…

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Conserving Watercolors: Misting to Stabilize Paint Layers

In preparation for the Museum’s current exhibition, Brushed With Light, conservators in the Paper Conservation Department examined over ninety watercolors. It was great to work…

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Luce Visible Storage Panoramas Coming Soon

Jook Leung from 360VR came in today to shoot a few panoramas of our Luce Visible Storage area. These should be on our website within…

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Time to Clean the Pegasi!

Over a few days each summer the object conservators and the conservation summer interns get to venture out to the sculpture garden to treat the…

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Being Green

Lisa is on vacation this week, so I’ll be updating the blog in her absence. We apologize to everyone who came out to see our…

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Primer is Complete

The primer is complete. See the video! It is too humid today to apply the topcoat, and thundershowers are expected later this evening. Tomorrow is…

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Painting Continues

The painting continues. The sculpture has approximately 250 square feet of surface to paint. The progress is good. The winds are less strong today and…

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Painting has Begun

Now that the repairs to the metal skin are complete, the team from UHP Projects. Inc. (Ultra High Pressure Projects) is back and have started…

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Support for Conservation Projects

Many of the multiple layers of failing paint found on the statue contained heavy metals, such as lead, which was a common ingredient in paint…

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Conservator’s comments

Lisa has been giving you a wonderful overview of the on going process. I will confine myself to details specific to the work. Works of…

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A Closer Look at Materials

The repairs to the skin are working. The newly galvanized steel patches are riveted, and then welded in place. It’s not raining today, enabling the…

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Working in the Rain

It is not fun working in the rain. The team from Conservation Solutions continue the work on the statue, despite the numerous, and often heavy…

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What is an Art Conservator?

Now that the exterior paint removal is complete, the more tedious, but very important work of prepping the interior surface of the statue has begun….

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The Metal Repair

The staff at Conservation Solutions, Inc. are beginning to make the structural repairs to the metal skin. Most of the holes in the object are…

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The Metal Construction

As of this past weekend, the layers of flaking paint were removed, making it possible to finally see the underlying structure and methods of manufacture….

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Conservator’s comments

The paint removal is complete on the exterior. This has revealed how the fabricators overcame the difficulties of working with sheet steel in forming intricate…

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Conservator’s comments

As the paint is removed, the artistry that went into the fabrication of the sculpture becomes more apparent. One can not discern the effort that…

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The Paint Removal

The paint layers on the statue are unstable, making it necessary to remove them entirely, for the preservation of the object. The surface has always…

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Conserving the Statue – Setting Up

The Museum’s replica of the Statue of Liberty had been on top of the Liberty Warehouse on 64th, and Broadway since it was made around…

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