Suppose you work for a large museum with 10,000 pieces in its collection. Where do you safely store your valuable museum pieces? And how do you make sure you don't lose anything, that nothing gets damaged or broken? The Groninger Museum entrusts its collection to the expertise of Jenny Kloostra, curator of collections. In a lecture, she talked about her daily work and opened our eyes to what could actually go wrong: if the museum were not prepared for everything (except the zombie apocalypse).
YOUR ARTWORK IS LOST
Whether it’s a bicycle key, remote control or potato peeler, everyone loses something from time to time. But losing a unique museum piece is something that will keep you up at night. Yet every major museum, with thousands of large and small pieces under their care, loses a work from time to time. So it is with good reason that the Groninger Museum's 50,000 objects today bear 50,000 numbers. Furthermore, someone is working nonstop to turn over object after object, shelf by shelf, checking numbers, then checking to see if the object is in the records system, and then listing the specific shelf and location. But no matter how meticulously this work is done, it is still a collection that is actively used.
And as bad as it is to lose something, you are even happier when you find it again: after the museum had to reluctantly admit to having lost a figurine of a dog that was no larger than five centimetres, they found it in the attic of an estate to which some items had been loaned.
DAMAGE TO YOUR EXPENSIVE CANVAS
The devil is in details, and this is especially true when you are handling valuables on a daily basis — And even more so if you transport them. Jenny Kloostra: ‘When you start transporting something you have to deal with vibration. And when you're dealing with vibrations, sometimes things come loose. And what you would never want is for a stray nail to damage a canvas.’ To prevent these ‘little’ mishaps, Kloostra and her depot colleagues are constantly engaged in preventive conservation. For example, reinforcing the framing of paintings is important to prevent ‘flapping’ canvases: which is not only beneficial to the paint layer, but also allows paintings to be loaned better. And the latter is important to ensure that your collection items are on display as often as possible, not only in your own museum, but also outside it.
A VISITOR KNOCKS YOUR PORCELAIN OVER INTO SMITHEREENS
You can go to great lengths to protect a work of art in transit, but what do you do if a visitor to the museum accidentally bumps into a vase and it shatters into tiny little pieces? It happened to the Groninger Museum in 2014. A man was taking photos of the Jaime Hayón-designed information centre and walked backwards into an 80 kilo vase. Does the idea of a work of art in a thousand shards make the hairs on your neck stand up? Then you can at least rest easier knowing that the guilty party does not pay for the damage themselves: the museum is insured against accidents. When a piece is purchased, the replacement value is determined, and after an accident, it is determined whether a similar work will be purchased as a replacement. ‘In the case of the vase, that was lucky,’ says Kloostra, ‘Jaime Hayón is still very much alive.’ The Madrid artist created a new vase, this time painted with images of the incident.
YOUR ANTIQUE PAINTINGS 'CRY TAR'
Curators and conservators must not only prevent new damage to works of art. Mistakes made during the manufacturing process or in previous repair attempts are also part of the job. For example, in the 19th century, paintings often used a primer containing tar. One hundred and fifty years later, tar droplets creep out through the paint: ‘The paintings “cry”,’ according to Kloostra. Paintings have also sometimes hung in rooms where smoking was common, and the varnish layer must be removed to bring back the original colours.
People also change their minds at times about proper restoration methods. Nothing causes a conservator to grit their teeth like the work of a colleague from 50 years ago. One example is when a painting has an additional support canvas behind the original canvas, attached with wax. The support canvas was ironed on, which flattened the paint on the front and made it shiny. This kind of action cannot be reversed, but the policy has changed: nowadays as little modification as possible is done to the painting itself and this can always be reversed, in case the generations after us get other ideas.
THE CANAL WATER FLOWS INTO THE EXHIBITION ROOMS
Praise for the Groninger Museum building has been sung many times, but a museum as an island has one major drawback: what do you do when the water rises? On a few occasions, the water in the canal got so high that it threatened to flow in through the lower windows. In the event of such a crisis, a museum's ‘Collection Emergency Plan’ goes into effect. It is similar to a corporate emergency response plan, but for art. In January 2012, the bottom floor had to be cleared in a hurry in the evening. Several exhibitions, including Azzedine Alaïa's fashion exhibition, were moved to a higher floor or the tower. The result was organised chaos, but all the pieces were spared.
Text: Annejet Fransen & Minke van der Velde