April 3, 2018
To test terracotta using TL dating, conservators take a powdered sample from an unobtrusive area of the object using a high-speed drill. Due to the fragile nature of these objects and the risk of causing damage through improper technique, only an experienced conservator or trained sampling agent should collect the sample. We reached out to…
August 7, 2017
June 15, 2017
Ainslie Harrison and Casey Mallinckrodt We (VMFA conservators Ainslie Harrison and Casey Mallinckrodt) recently travelled to Washington DC with the VMFA’s Yoruba Ogboni Society Plaque (#2000.97) to consult with Dr. Carla Dove in the Feather Identification Lab at the National Museum of Natural History. Dr. Carla Dove generously agreed to take a break from her…
March 10, 2017
The research on the African Collection being carried out as part of the recently awarded Andrew W. Mellon grant is continuing to produce new insights into the objects in our collection. For example, as part of a comprehensive study of the Ethiopian crosses in our collection, 19th to 20th century hand cross (#2015.319) has undergone a…
September 6, 2016
Our names are Keisha Horne and Sydney Johnson, and we were the Andrew W. Mellon interns in Objects Conservation at VMFA during summer 2016. Both of us are recent college graduates—Keisha from James Madison University and Sydney from Virginia Commonwealth University—with bachelors’ degrees in art history and a strong interest in objects conservation. We wanted…
July 11, 2014
Reprinted from the WUDPAC (Winterthur) Class of 2016 blog with permission from Lauren Gottschlich. The summer work projects are in full swing. This summer I am at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond, VA. The museum sports a wonderful encyclopedic collection as well as a picturesque Sculpture Garden. The art covers cultures and…
July 16, 2013
Conservation is one of many essential activities happening at VMFA. While you may be aware of some of the museum’s high profile projects, such as the removal and realignment of Caligula’s head or the discovery of condition changes and intentional artistic alterations in John Singleton Copley’s portrait of Mrs. Isaac Royall in the American galleries,…
February 26, 2013
Nearly two-thousand years after his brutal assassination by members of his own bodyguard, Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (popularly known as “Caligula”) has lost his head yet again in an operation performed over the course of several months at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The operation was performed on a full-length marble statue…
December 17, 2011
Conservation staff prepares a 16th century Flemish tapestry, Two Scenes from the Life of Christ, for display in VMFA’s medieval galleries. Kathy Gillis, Head of Sculpture and Decorative Arts Conservation, and Jennifer Bridges, Conservation Technician, are carefully securing a backing for protection of the tapestry while on display. The installation is planned for December 15,…
April 5, 2011
In 1967 the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts acquired a monumental statue of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus. The statue had once belonged to the famous 17th-century Italian collector Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564–1637), who displayed it with his extensive collection of ancient art. But in the late 1960s, scholars questioned whether any or all of the…
