Science in art

This program opens with photos of famous American art museums and comments on their preservation demands. Lynn Poole shows an Egyptian bronze statuette that had become disfigured by bronze disease. Johns Hopkins chemistry professor Dr. Alsoph H. Corwin helped to develop a technique to reverse the corrosion on pieces like this and to restore the corroded coffer of the Dead Sea Scrolls. John Kirby, of Baltimore's Walters Art Gallery conservation department, briefly describes the Walters' collection and the job of the museum conservation staff. A film shows the conservation studio's equipment and procedures, such as the successive steps in relining the canvas of a painting. Another film shows how the wax immersion process reinforces and preserves deteriorating wood sculptures. Elisabeth Packard, also on the Walters staff, shows an example of the nineteenth century practice of piecing together unrelated fragments of sculptures and explains how conservators try to recognize and reconstruct the proper form. Mr. Kirby displays an ivory figurine from Crete whose fragments were reconstituted with gelatin and metal rods. Miss Packard discusses how paintings and other artwork are x-rayed and the damages, repairs, alterations, and brushwork that are discovered. Mr. Kirby demonstrates professional cleaning and restoring of a painting. Mr. Poole shows a painting of Maria Salviatti by Pontormo that was x-rayed and restored to reveal a child painted over by the mother's skirt. Miss Packard demonstrates retouching a painting to fill in breaks in paint by "in-painting," as opposed to "over-painting," which conceals the original paint. Mr. Kirby concludes by revealing two portraits beneath a painting of a lion presumably by Jericho to illustrate the mysteries conservators must solve.