Technology and the Arts

AW partner Jane Brennom sent me an interesting article about the collaborative efforts between the Chicago Art Institute and the engineering school at Northwestern. The joint project is now offering services to museums across the country and has recently obtained a $2.5 million grant from the Mellon foundation to promote the initiative.

Some of the discoveries and processes used are pretty amazing, and can certainly assist in conservation and authentication efforts.

Since the start of the joint program, the collaboration has discovered the following:

• Bathers by a River by Henri Matisse. (Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection, 1953.158.) Imaging technology developed by the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science was used to colorize archival black-and-white photographs of the painting’s early versions, providing insights into Matisse’s working methods and the development of this masterpiece over time.

• For to Be a Farmer’s Boy by Winslow Homer. (Gift of Mrs. George T. Langhorne in memory of Edward Carson Waller, 1963.760.) Conservators discovered that the painting’s sky was originally painted in unstable red and orange colorants that have almost completely faded. Work by a team of Northwestern chemists to determine the original colors was included in the 2008 exhibition Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light.

• Sketch of Margaret Sloane (see image), Looking Right by Mary Cassatt. (Gift of Laura May Ripley, 1992.158.) A research team removed tiny colored specks from this pastel study and examined them using a highly sensitive technique called surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. Researchers were able to detect and identify organic pigments that could be matched to pastel sticks in Cassatt’s paint box.

• A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884 by Georges Seurat. (Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, 1926.224.) The luminous yellow began to change within years of Seurat’s completing the painting, but no one knew why. Scientists determined that exposure to a humid climate and burning coal caused the darkening of the zinc yellow pigment Seurat used.

• Head of a Woman (Fernande) by Pablo Picasso. (Estate of Pablo Picasso/ Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York.) The Art Institute’s current Picasso and Chicago show includes a study analyzing the metal alloys of modern sculptures. Having determined that many of the Picasso sculptures are made of high-zinc brass alloys, a research team was able to trace many of the unmarked works to the Valsuani foundry in Paris. Fernande is different; it has a low-zinc bronze composition more typical of sand-cast sculptures. The search for its unknown casting foundry is one of the open questions the new Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts hopes to address by broadening the alloy research to collections in other museums.

The McCormick Northwestern Magazine reports

While staff at the Art Institute explore engineering methods that may enhance conservation and art history, researchers at Northwestern learn about critical problems in conservation science. “The entire University benefits by being engaged with one of the finest art museums in the country,” Faber says, “and it’s good for students to see how they can use their technical backgrounds to work on atypical problems.”

Arts-related research has also sparked findings in other, unintended areas of study. In one ongoing project Faber; Kenneth Shull, professor of materials science and engineering; and Linda Broadbelt, Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, have been studying the composition of house paints Picasso used in some of his works. The three are developing tests to understand the physical and mechanical properties of a similar paint system: an indentation test, which involves pressing on the paint to test its response, and a “quartz resonator” test, in which researchers coat paint onto a vibrating piece of quartz to analyze its nanoscale structure. If paint samples that behave like Picasso’s house paints can be developed, they can be used to test methods for cleaning the artwork.

The research has led to unexpected discoveries. “The focus is on paint, but there is an opportunity here to develop characterization methods for a variety of protective coatings and to learn how they degrade,” says Shull. “These oilbased materials, which are important to the art community, are also sustainable materials that could have tremendous value elsewhere.” Shull is currently investigating the application of the techniques in creating dental fillings.

For the Art Institute’s current Picasso and Chicago show (through May 12), researchers traced some of Picasso’s modern bronze sculptures to a specific foundry in Paris by using emission spectroscopy and x-ray fluorescence to determine the chemical composition. The researchers included David Dunand, the James N. and Margie M. Krebs Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.

Since the Northwestern–Art Institute collaboration began, the partnership has been supported by the Mellon Foundation with additional grant support from the National Science Foundation. In January the Mellon Foundation announced the sizable grant to establish NU-ACCESS for six years. Casadio and Faber direct the center, which serves as a collaborative hub, facilitating interdisciplinary research partnerships in art studies and conservation on a national scale.

Museums and cultural institutions will be asked to submit proposals for the study of objects in their own collections or for object-inspired research. Faber and Casadio expect three to five major projects and up to 10 minor projects to be carried out each year.

Source: McCormick Northwerstern Magazine