Art conservation and photographic histories | Art Conservation

Winterthur/UD Program in Art Conservation fellow Michaela Lott handled {a photograph} from the Fisk University assortment and recognized the photographer John Wesley Work Jr. among the many faces of Glee Club college students preserved within the picture.

John Wesley Work Jr. devoted a part of his life to preserving African American musical traditions. A singer, folksong collector and professor of music, Latin and historical past at Fisk University, he helped doc songs which may in any other case have been misplaced. More than a century later, second-year Winterthur/UD Program in Art Conservation (WUDPAC) fellow Michaela Lott helped protect {a photograph} of Work and the Fisk Male Glee Club. In faculty, Michaela developed an curiosity in pictures that led her to conservation and two years as an apprentice in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s {photograph} conservation lab, the place she labored on the archive of Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee. {A photograph} main with a paper minor, she not too long ago accomplished therapy of the broken picture of Work, a part of a set loaned to Winterthur by Fisk University. Through her analysis, she recognized the person standing on the heart of the second row as Work.

“This photo was creased and torn,” she stated. “It needed a lot of work.” Mounted on a black board, it was additionally lacking parts alongside its edges. The backing had degraded, forsaking powdery fibers and adhesive residue. Before starting therapy, Michaela first needed to decide whether or not the picture might safely tolerate moisture. “A big part of photograph conservation is identifying the type of photograph it is, because usually that informs what you can do for treatments,” she stated.