Skilled staff shortages impacting art restoration

WSJ.com : To conservator Sue Ann Chui at the Getty Museum , the 518-year-old wooden panel painting on her easel is a study in the subtle science of art.Under scrutiny at her studio, the 15th-century masterwork depicting Madonna and Child is yielding its secrets to X-ray probes, ultraviolet scans, infrared reflectograms and molecular spectroscopy. The panel painting, like many thousands of others world-wide, was severely damaged by earlier efforts to preserve it. Ms. Chui is repairing the ravages of time and good intentions, while helping to turn a dying craft of panel conservation into material science."This specialization is a real rarity,” says George Bisacca, a leading painting conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York . “It is in a curious spot between science, artisan skills and artistry, requiring very complicated judgment and knowledge from lots of different fields. That’s why there are so few experts."No more than half a dozen or so restoration specialists world-wide have the expertise for such sophisticated work, and most of them are nearing retirement. The only specialist training program for panel painting conservation, located in Florence, Italy, recently shut down. “It has created this vacuum in expertise,” says Getty Conservation Institute scientist Alan Phenix.