Where can you see conservation in action?
While many museums still struggle with putting such a delicate and fragile process out in the open, conservators and visitors alike have been pushing to make this intricate and fascinating process more public. These locations and institutions have attempted to bring conservation out into the public eye in some way, whether for a one-time-only show, or as part of a larger effort to restructure museum-audience interactions.
Royal Museums Greenwich chose to conserve Willem van de Velde the Younger‘s A Royal Visit to the Fleet in the Thames Estuary publically, allowing audiences to view this daunting process in real-time. While they do not have a tradition of doing this with other pieces, they appear open to the idea and could continue to hold public conservation sessions on larger and more accessible pieces.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art frequently shares their conservation findings, writing up articles and blog posts about their processes and discoveries in the studio. While the space isn’t traditionally public, they digitally open doors for viewers to develop an interest in the field and to watch them work. They also post process photos and interesting documentation to their Instagram @metpaintingsconservation.
Het Rijksmuseum is currently busy with Operation Night Watch, where the museum’s most famous piece — Rembrandt van Rijn‘s The Night Watch — is on full display in its main gallery while conservators work to study, document, and conserve the piece behind a specially designed glass chamber. The piece and its specialists are in full view while it undergoes this process, which has been in operation since the summer of 2019. It is the most extensive research project ever conducted on this piece.