Gallery Notes Volume 30 Number 3

              GALLERY NOTES
THE MEMORIAL ART GALLERY
OF   THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   ROCHESTER
Vol.   30,   No.   3;
November, 1964
CONSERVATION     MONTH
AS ANY COLLECTOR well knows, acquisition is merely the essential first step.
Equally important to the value of a collection is the careful preservation and, if
need be, the restoration, of the items in it.   Obviously, conservation is a subject
that concerns the private collector as well as the museum.   And accordingly, the
Gallery has scheduled a mixed bag of activities for November combining some of
its own conservation efforts with an exhibition on the preservation of paintings and
a clinic to which Gallery members are invited to bring ailing works of art for
examination.
The springboard for this conservation activity is the annual inspection of the Gallery's collection by the staff of the Intermuseum Conservation Association.   The
inspection, scheduled for the middle of November, coincides with the annual meeting here of directors of the 11 art museums that compose the Association's
membership.   Together these non-profit museums support a conservation laboratory at Oberlin College that undertakes major repairs to works of art, conducts
research in problems of preservation and restoration, and dispatches teams of
experts to member museums to inspect the collections and treat minor ills.
SURVIVING   THE   AGES
The conservation exhibition, which might
be called a horror show with a happy ending,
examines forms of deterioration in paintings
and demonstrates the steps that can be taken
to reclaim them.  Included are 30 paintings
in need of restoration and seven that have
been restored to their original condition. The
complete process of restoration is shown
through a series of color photographs which
were taken during the restoration of two
portraits (one of them shown at right)
ascribed to Ralph Earl.
The exhibition,  entitled " Surviving the Ages:
Paintings and Their Preservation," was
selected from the collection of the Newark
Museum by William H. Gerdts, Jr., Newark's
curator of painting and sculpture.   It is
circulated by The American Federation of
Arts.
Portrait of Mrs. Hyndman
Ralph Earl
GALLERY   OPEN   WEEKDAYS   10   A.M.   TO   5   P.M.—SUNDAYS   2  TO   5:30   P.M.   ADMISSION   FREE