Stephen Bonadies Interview Transcript
Photo: David Stover © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, August 2013
Stephen Bonadies joined the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 2009 and is currently Deputy Director for Collections and Facilities Management. Previously he was at the Cincinnati Art Museum for 27 years where he served in various roles as Chief Conservator, Director of Museum Services, Deputy Director, and Interim Co-director.
C: Could you tell us a little bit [about yourself], what your name is and what is your specific job at the VMFA?
SB: Stephen Bonadies, I’m Deputy Director for Collections and Facilities Management. And in this position, I pretty much oversee the back end of the house, the nuts and bolts of the operation; including conservation, registration, exhibition design, and production, image resources, buildings and ground, security, and I.T. I think that’s it.
C: That’s quite a lot. What items in the room are the originals and which ones were reconstructions?
SB: Pretty much everything in the room is original, except for the ceiling and some of the molding at the upper portion of the room. Originally, the room had been installed in the Worsham Mansion, (Worsham- Rockefeller Mansion), on the east side of Manhattan. When it was de-installed, some of the elements where it was directly painted on plaster or formed out of plaster could not be disassembled and relocated. Those were done in the 1930’s I think, when it was transferred from the original room to the Museum of the City of New York. Otherwise, the carpet was I think redone in the 50’s and had to be replaced because it had just deteriorated. Also some of the upholstery fabrics have been replaced as well. But essentially the furniture, all the wood molding that you see for the most part is original, as well as all of the wall coverings (the lincrusta) are all original. As well a most of the furnishings in the room are all actually period to when Arabella Worsham had the room. There are a couple of Rockefeller pieces in there, but for the most part the furnishings are from Arabella Worsham.
C: Which of the items had to be conserved or restored? You mentioned the carpet…
SB: Well the carpet had to be replaced completely and was rewoven. For the preparation for reinstalling the room, all the wallpaper, all the wall coverings, and all the lincrusta had to be both cleaned and repaired because there were holes and missing sections that had to be backed and stabilized. We also had to clean the ceiling. The ceiling is actually canvas painting that was de-installed from the museum of the City of New York and was just black with soot and so that it needed to be cleaned before that was reinstalled. In addition, we had the carpet cleaned as well as- and this was actually just leading up to the reinstallation of the wooden elements of the room- all of those pieces had to be cleaned as well, surface cleaned to remove a lot of the accumulated grime. There really wasn’t too much in the way of what I’d consider repair because it was actually in pretty remarkable condition.
C: Someone said something to us about using Q- tips, what did that mean?
SB: Well in a way it’s very tedious work, because we had to clean just the surface we didn’t want to take sponges and start wiping away like this. What we do is typically work area by area and keeping a very controlled situation- we can’t flood the surface with water and it’s really a matter of controlling the materials that we’re using for the desired effect. You know, always working in small increments. Sometimes larger Q- tips, but we’re still using Q- tips.
C: How was [the room] transported to the VMFA from the Museum of the City of New York?
SB: When I first arrived, Alex Nyerges (our director) told me about this project. At this point the room had already been de-installed in the Museum of the City of New York, so it had all been crated or boxed up. It was in fifty million pieces essentially. The first thing we did is we went up tp New York to have them open up some of the crates that were stored in the warehouse at that point. We had to open up some of the crates to inspect and get a sense of the condition. Fortunately the Museum of the City of New York did very good documentation. They actually had an architectural conservator involved with the de-installation of the room so we had very good drawings that helped in terms of cataloging all the different elements of molding, and every aspect of the room. So that was valuable in terms of its re-assembly but we never had the chance to see it in terms of its original location by the time I was involved. At that point it was crated and once the de-accessioning on the behalf of the Museum of the City of New York and our accessioning of the room and the commitment of the funds necessary to conserve and reinstall , then we could start negotiating the shipment of the room down from New York to Richmond.
C: What was the most challenging thing about getting the room in?
SB: You know, probably figuring out the overall dimensions and essentially determining the footprint that the room was going to occupy. Because it was going into the new wing, we essentially had a large space to work in, and we had to make sure that we were able to construct an appropriate sized room in which to re-install the bedroom. And often times, even though we had good drawings and dimensioned drawings and documentation, it’s not until after you start the process of laying out a wall do you actually know for sure if it is going to fit where you wanted to fit. We had to actually construct a 2×4 framework in which to hang all of the molding and elements of the room on. So essentially we constructed the room from that perspective.
C: Are there any special [conservation guidelines] about the room, such as temperature control or a certain amount of space around things?
SB: Essentially, for what we consider the environmental and lighting controls we used the same standards that we do for the rest of the collection. Some of the elements would be considered light sensitive such as the wallpaper and some of the furnishing fabrics, and so there what we did was that we reduced the illumination in that gallery. From the temperature and humidity perspective, we employ the same standards that we have for the rest of the collection which is about 72 degrees Fahrenheit and we try to strive for a relative level of humidity at approximately 50% year round.
C: Speaking about the lighting, we know there are the beautiful windows in there and that lighting is obviously not natural light. So how was that set up?
SB: That was an interesting aspect of the project, and we worked very closely with our lighting designer Lee Weaver at that point on the project because we had to determine what time of day were we trying to recreate. We tried to do an afternoon, and thinking of the room’s original exposure wanting to suggest daylight in the windows. Certainly we were going to make use of the existing light fixtures but we also had to create ambient light as well. Through the introduction of light through windows, there what Lee I think ingeniously developed was a series of LED panels that are actually installed behind the windows ( or what would be considered on the outside of the windows) to give that sort of soft glow of daylight.
C: How does the room correspond with the rest of the American Art exhibit, how is it tied in?
SB: Its very part of the parcel of that period, and what I think is great about the room is that it really shows how someone would have lived at that point in time. The end of the 1900’s this is what would’ve been typical of a certain well to do family and most of the artwork in the adjacent space again relate back to that period.
C: As far as acquiring the piece, did the VMFA have to pay for it or was it received as a gift?
SB: It was essentially gifted to us from the Museum of the City of New York. We had to assume the responsibility of paying the shipment costs and committing to reinstalling the room. There were two rooms that were de-accessioned at the same time. The room that we acquired which is the bedroom and then the adjacent dressing room. The dressing room went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and they are actually in the process of working on installing their room now. Their curator has been down to look at what we’ve done and we’ve had pretty good conversations with them.
C: The last question, is there any kind of special information that you might know about the history of the room or about Arabella Worsham that we wouldn’t know?
SB: Well Susie Rawles is the expert on Arabella Worsham. I think what is interesting and what intrigued me was that when Rockefeller purchased the house from Arabella Worsham, he did an inventory of the contents of the entire house upon his purchase. He took very detailed notes, and so as a result we have good documentary evidence to refer back to in terms of what were the contents of that room at the time of his purchase. That way we know for sure that many of the pieces that we’re showing in that room were indeed dating back to Arabella Worsham’s time.
Explore More:
Story of the Worsham-Rockefeller Bedroom
Inside the Worsham-Rockefeller Bedroom
Conservation of the Worsham-Rockefeller Bedroom
Worsham-Rockefeller Bedroom: Interview with Curator, Susie Rawles
Worsham-Rockefeller Bedroom: Interview with Deputy Directory, Stephen Bonadies