Every year on or around May 18, museums around the world celebrate International Museum Day, a day that focuses on museums and the role they play in our ever-changing society. This year’s International Museum Day theme is “Museum and Memory,” which reflects beautifully the role of museums. The NCMA’s collection—like that of every museum—preserves the memory of cultures and people, past or present.  By visiting the permanent collection galleries of West Building, you can discover these cultures and eras, and create your own memories as well.

The NCMA is celebrating International Museum Day on Wednesday, May 18, with free admission to 30 Americans, a superb exhibition presenting the works of contemporary African American artists, and a free screening of Purvis of Overtown, a documentary on contemporary artist Purvis Young, an icon of Black culture whose work is featured in 30 Americans. East Building will be open until 8 pm for those attending the screening and visiting 30 Americans.

This year during International Museum Day a special focus is also placed on Africa and highlighting its important cultural contributions to the world. Come celebrate International Museum Day and African heritage at the NCMA on May 18! Visit the African collection in West Building until 5 pm (and as the NCMA’s unofficial spokesperson for IMD, I can make a shameless plug for my own galleries—Egypt is in Africa, so take a look at the ancient Egyptian galleries as well and marvel at the long history and cultural diversity of this fascinating continent). 

Happy International Museum Day to all!

In honor of this year’s theme “Museum and Memory,” we want to hear about your most  memorable NCMA experience. Share a story or a photo on our Facebook wall by May 18 and we’ll randomly select one person to win an NCMA prize pack.

For the first time ever at the North Carolina Museum of Art, all four volumes of John James Audubon’s The Birds of America are currently on view.

Believe me, this has been a long time coming. From the transfer of the portfolios from the State Library to the Museum in 1974 to the five-year conservation and restoration program of 2002–2007, this migration has been worthy of a National Geographic documentary.

In the past the Museum has had the ability to show only one volume at a time, in a single case, because of a variety of physical, spatial, and conservation–related restrictions.

The Restrictions

1. Size of the books: really big. Each page is 40 by 26 inches. Not for nothing are they known as the Double Elephant Folios.

2. Size of the case: again, really big—73 inches long x 53 inches deep x 40 inches tall, including the protective glass hood.

3. Limited viewing. Only one page in one volume could be displayed at a time because of light restrictions.

4. Turning the pages—once each quarter—required:

• 8 people from 3 departments.
• 8 suction cups used by 4 strong people to remove the protective glass hood.
• Constant repair of the protective glass hood due to seam breakage during each opening.
• Extreme difficulty in closing the case due to a less-than-precise closure mechanism.

5. Size of the room: tiny. Less than 100 square feet—and it was really just a passageway between contemporary art galleries. In sum, there was no real gallery for the birds to roost in.

The Solutions

1. A dedicated gallery! The new 700-square-foot space allows all four volumes to be shown simultaneously. There are new in-gallery education panels and a reading area, and we can control light levels because the space is not a passageway.

2. New cases—four of them!—one for each volume. They’re each the same size as the old Audubon case, but with greatly improved construction. Pneumatic lifts allow art handlers to open the glass hoods with the greatest of ease (no more suction cups). Pullout decks give greater physical access to the books for safe page turning. And the cases close with a one-handed gentle mechanism and a self-locking system.

That’s right. Thanks to modern technology, what used to take eight people now takes only two or three. Our new cases, made by Glasbau Hahn of Germany, are the crème de la crème of museum casework and a capital investment that will last a lifetime. Unlock with a key, lift open the hood, pull out the deck, turn the page, add a new label, and close the case. It’s that easy. It now takes more time to coordinate the three people with a key than to get access to the book. Our work is more efficient, and the Museum can show more birds than ever before.

One word of caution for visitors to Audubon: you’re being watched. The new gallery is under surveillance by a few feathered friends on loan from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, so be warned—unless you foresee an Alfred Hitchcock moment in your future, please don’t touch the birds.

Not only did we create an Ethafoam mummy to support the various pieces of  the Gilded Mummy Covering, but we also had to make a special mount for the mummy so it could stand upright. This mount for the mount—Golden Boy’s guts, if you will—is hidden inside the Ethafoam body and was made right here in the carpentry shop (just like his mummy body was made in the conservation lab).

When Stacey made the mummy form, she carved a long, narrow space in the middle of the body, from Golden Boy’s feet to his chest. A long, threaded rod (7/8-inch diameter) was inserted vertically in the body (think of it as Golden Boy’s spine) and secured underneath the base. This keeps the mummy upright and stable. However, this was not enough. A 5-by-5-inch cavity was created in his chest so that the rod could be attached to a brass plate with a flange that had also been inserted in Golden Boy’s body. From this flange, two thin brass threaded rods (3/8-inch diameter) were screwed horizontally to the backboard of the case. You can imagine those as Golden Boy’s innards. Or maybe his heart.

The hole in Golden Boy’s chest is cleverly hidden by his gold pectoral. When we installed the Gilded Mummy Covering, we simply removed the pectoral and, just like a character in a Frankenstein movie, I stuck my hands in there and screwed the rods attached to the flange into the backboard. It was a delicate operation, almost like heart surgery, but it was all for our boy’s well-being.

One sculpture in the Park that has always inspired my contemplation is Steven Siegel’s To see Jennie smile. This 24-foot-tall sculpture incorporated over 20,000 pounds of News & Observer newspapers. Siegel and a team of 50 volunteers spent two weeks installing the work in 2006. Community involvement is an important aspect of the artist’s work. as reflected by the title of the piece. In an interview with the artist, Siegel tells his story of a volunteer inspiring his naming of the work.
Download audio file (siegel.mp3)
Using specific materials to emphasize the ephemeral nature of our landscapes, Siegel always inspires discussion about environment and art. Visitors have often asked whether the newspapers are detrimental to the environment, as they are expected to decompose in the landscape during the piece’s lifetime. (The answer is no: the newspaper uses vegetable-based inks, and the glossy inserts were removed before installation.) I have found myself staring at the top of the sculpture among the trees and wondering if the local birds have taken part in the work as they construct their nests.

In June 2009, a conversation began among staff members regarding To see Jennie smile. We began to notice the sculpture leaning slightly to the right. Staff members of the Planning and Design, Conservation, and Curatorial departments decided to monitor the changes in the sculpture over the next six months. We photographed Jennie at various stages of deterioration and finally made the decision to remove the piece. On May 20 the NCMA staff said our goodbyes to a work of art that has delighted us, and the public. for four years.

The deinstallation took just a couple of hours and was pretty painless. After wrapping the entire piece in black landscaping fabric, the crew was able to pull the sculpture to the ground with a backhoe. The discarded newspapers and wood infrastructure were hauled off in a large truck. The staff, visitors, and the inhabitants of the Park will surely miss Jennie—especially the 3-foot-long black snake that had taken up residence inside it.

I revisited the sculpture’s footprint last week in search of remnants of the past. I performed my own little archaeological dig at the base of a tree and found small bits of Jennie. The ongoing presence of the work in the landscape—even after deinstallation—actually made me smile!

These remnants called to mind a quote in an interview with Siegel in Sculpture magazine:

“I believe that we are the landscape, not only by our physical presence, but also by the messes we leave and the way we reconfigure all of the material around us—from the roadway to the recycling of cans to nuclear waste. Our presence is there in every molecule.” Excerpt from an interview with the artist and John K. Grande, a contributing editor for Sculpture, and curator of earth art at Canada’s Royal Botanical Gardens.

A systematic catalogue is a book that features every single painting or artefact in a collection. SysCats (that’s what curators call this type of catalogue) are very important because they show the world (the general public and scholars alike) what we have in our Museum, and they encourage further academic research. The Museum is planning a series of systematic catalogues, a volume for each of the collections in its holding. Curator Dennis Weller published the first of these catalogues, Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings, which you can purchase at the Museum Store. (It’s a fabulous book!)

Second in the series, the Egyptian SysCat will feature all 37 artifacts, each beautifully illustrated with recent colour photographs. The catalogue entries will include a very detailed description (what is it, what was it used for, what does it mean, how old is it, where does it come from, who owned it before us, etc.), a translation of the hieroglyphs, publications in which the objects appeared … basically,  everything you always wanted to know about our Egyptian collection!

It’s long and tedious work (just ask Dennis), and I have been studying the Egyptian artefacts for five years in order to write this catalogue. Conservator Noelle Ocon and I have taken x-rays of several objects (including the coffins of Amunred and Djed Mut), Billy and I took the grain mummy for a CT scan last summer, and I have spent endless hours doing research and deciphering hieroglyphs. We even had a conservation scientist (think CSI for art) come to the NCMA to take samples of various pigments for analysis.

There are a few more things we want to do—take a sample for thermoluminescence dating and look at an object or two under ultraviolet light—before we complete the research. That’s what is happening this week. Noelle will set up lab equipment in the gallery in order to do a complete conservation assessment of the collection.

While the gallery are closed, you can certainly stand quietly by the stanchions to peek at the activities within. However, we do ask that you not disturb Noelle, me, or any staff member working in the gallery. If you have questions, just send an e-mail or post a comment on the blog. Thank you for your consideration.

Support for this research has been provided in part by GlaxoSmithKline and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ann and Jim Goodnight Fund for Curatorial and Conservation Research and Travel.

(See full size image)

And here are some of Stacey’s awesome mummy-making photos with captions on Flickr:

When things settle down a bit, we’ll tell you what it was like to see our home in the new building for the first time. That’s where we met our maker, Ledelle Moe, once again. That will have to wait for another day.

Instead, we want to share some amazing news: You know we’ve actually been on loan for a long time–visitors and volunteers alike love us–but it’s meant that we haven’t always felt like we were part of the family around here. That’s all changed. The Museum docents (we love you!) have generously decided to purchase us so that we may be part of the permanent collection. We’re thrilled. We’ve come a long way on our journey to North Carolina, and soon we will be able to call it home, forever!

This post is part of the series Follow Our Journey. Follow Congregation and six other works of art on the Big Move to the Museum’s new building.

As fun and exciting as it may all sound, a lot of planning and work happens behind the scenes to prepare for sending a work of art on the road. Back in October 2008, I was removed from my comfortable spot in the gallery and moved to the Museum’s conservation lab. While in the lab, the conservators did a very thorough job of examining me from top to bottom. I couldn’t be modest during this process—the conservators wanted to make sure that I was in good enough shape to withstand vigorous travel. I also had a fitting for my crate—it was built specifically to transport me from one venue to another. Crates are built to be super sturdy and protect works of art as they travel. The carpenters try to make it as comfortable as possible with extra foam padding, but it is not fun to be boxed up in the dark for a long time.

After much anticipation on my part, I was finally secured in my crate, the lid was screwed on, and I was on my way to my first stop—Washington, D.C. The ride was a little bumpy and I was relieved when I arrived at the National Gallery of Art. When the art handlers were ready to install me, they unscrewed my lid and took me out of my crate.  Before I could be hung on the wall, the conservators looked me over again to make sure I didn’t get any bumps or bruises on the road trip.  After a thumbs-up, I was hung on the wall with the other paintings. After a few deep breaths, I slowly relaxed and was able to take in the scenery. WOW—I recognized so many old friends from my artist’s studio even though it had been hundreds of years since I had seen them.  What fun it was to be reunited with them for this exciting journey!

This post is part of the series Follow Our Journey. Follow The Feast of Esther and six other works of art on the Big Move to the Museum’s new building.

Golden Boy with Mini-Mummy-Me

Dearest Golden Boy,

How lonely you must be without the support of your original mummy! We, the NCMA staff, have decided that your mummy-less existence must come to an end. In admiration of your glittering gilded hieroglyphs, slimming pectoral piece and flowing locks of cobalt blue helmet hair, we are proposing a new mummy for you.

But look! Meet Mini-Mummy-Me—NCMA’s newest Top Model! At 11” tall, MMM is rockin’ the newest mummy style of carved foam covered in the finest of fabrics—a.k.a. felt and cotton knit. (Plastic mounts are so 1983!) Yes, of course darling, MMM’s a bit small for you now—it’s just a model!—rest assured your final mummy will fit you perfectly. Your golden BLING will have their own custom-carved foam pieces embedded into the body of your mummy for support. No worries though—all pieces are easily removable in case you need a little “TLC” or go off-site for your speed dating lunches. We know that the new mummy can never fully replace your original mummy. Your special bond with your “O.M.” is one that we can only cherish and honor.

But you never know what might happen! Once you move into your modern Egyptian super-white penthouse, you can rock those house parties with your hot new mummy. Mingle with the other sexy single gilded mummy coverings and you, too, could be updating your Facebook status! We just can’t wait to see all the changes that are in store for you!

Keep rockin’ that museum scene, Golden Boy!

XOXO

Stacey

Curator Caroline Rocheleau and Conservator Bill Brown inspect the Golden Boy.

What do you do when your mummy breaks? Take it to Give Me a Break Conservation Services, Inc. Not your run of the mill discount repair shop by any means, Give Me A Break Conservation is the highly respected conservation practice of Linda Nieuwenhuizen of Long Island City, NY. Because the NCMA Conservation Center specializes only in paintings restoration, an objects specialist was needed to assess the condition of the Museum’s ancient Egyptian collection, including the Gilded Mummy Covering—aka the Golden Boy. Linda fit the bill having worked for many years at the Museum of Natural History in New York before establishing her private practice. She currently serves as adjunct faculty for the NYU Conservation Program and has worked on many important private and public collections of ancient artifacts.

Composed of several separate pieces, the Golden Boy is not actually a mummy, but an embellishment incorporated onto the bandages of a mummified body. Vestiges of the original mummy wrapping can still be seen stuck to the back side of the covering. Golden Boy was tagged by Linda as IN NEED OF IMMEDIATE REPAIR because of the deterioration of the ancient materials and past restorations, and cracking caused by the old exhibition mount.

The helmet mask and pectoral are representative of the condition problems identified on the various fragments of the gilded mummy covering. There are cracks on the mask, at the chin, on the top and back of the head as well as at the sides in the shoulder region, caused by the exhibition mount, which did not support the mask adequately. There is also a crack on the bottom edge of the pectoral which resulted from the weight of the fragile structure resting on a metal mounting pin. There are losses to the blue paint of the wig and the gold leaf. The overall surface of the pectoral is slightly undulated and the wrappings on the reverse are loose.

The treatment involved cleaning the surface by brush and vacuum, and specialized chemical sponges. Loose paint/gold was noted and consolidated with a conservation adhesive. The cracked areas were humidified with deionized water to relax the structure, then reformed and gently moved into better alignment. Cracks were reinforced with small strips of spun, bonded polyester fabric adhered with conservation adhesive. Additionally tabs of the polyester were adhered to the back of the cloth to assist in remounting. Linda suggested that the mummy covering be supported by a mount that conforms to the actual curvature of the various fragments.

Now that the piece is stabilized and conserved, it can be safely displayed in the new building. The challenge before us is to figure out how to safely display Golden Boy without the new mounting system breaking it again. Indeed, a challenge! But I’m not worried—we’ve got a great team working on this. We’ll come up with a brilliant idea that will make Golden Boy shine more than ever!