The Kimbell Art Museum will host a panel discussion on art conservation featuring five renowned conservators Saturday, April 22, beginning at 10 a.m.
“The Past, Present, and Future of Conservation at the Kimbell” is being presented as part of the Kimbell’s yearlong observance of its 50th anniversary and the panel will look back at the museum’s memorable research and treatments, discuss the vital role of the conservation program within the museum and reflect on changes in the profession.
The program will get underway with Eric M. Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum, welcoming the panel: Claire Barry, director of conservation emerita, Kimbell Art Museum; Peter Van de Moortel, chief conservator, Kimbell Art Museum; Michael Gallagher, Sherman Fairchild Chairman of the Department of Paintings Conservation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Elise Effmann Clifford, head of paintings conservation, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and Bart J.C. Devolder, chief conservator, Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey.
“The Kimbell has had a distinguished history in conservation, and many leading conservators have been associated with its department,” said Eric M. Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “The panel will be a reunion of sorts, with current and former Kimbell conservators looking at where the department and field of conservation has been, where it is now and where it is going.”
Admission is free and no reservation is required, but seating is limited. The discussion will take place in the Pavilion Auditorium and will be simulcast in the Kahn Auditorium.
Claire Barry has been the Kimbell’s director of conservation emerita since April 2021, when she retired from her full-time position. She first joined the museum in 1984 when she was hired as the Kimbell’s first full-time conservator and was appointed director of conservation in 2011. Barry set up the conservation department with state-of the-art equipment and developed the conservation program to examine and care for the needs of the Kimbell’s collection, with an emphasis on paintings. In 1992, she initiated a joint conservation program to care for the museum’s European paintings as well as the American paintings at the neighboring Amon Carter Museum. In addition to hands-on treatment of paintings, Barry also published numerous technical studies devoted to artists’ creative practices. She lectures regularly on artists’ painting techniques and consults with museums and private collectors.
Peter Van de Moortel has been chief conservator at the Kimbell Art Museum since 2021. He joined the Museum in 2017 as assistant conservator and became associate conservator in 2019. During his time at the Kimbell, Van de Moortel has worked on European and American pictures by artists such as Girolamo Romanino, Bartholomé Esteban Murillo, Nicolas Lancret and William-Adolphe Bouguereau and has conducted technical research on works by Winslow Homer, Frederic Remington, Salvador Dalí and Francisco de Zurbarán. Prior to joining the Kimbell, Van de Moortel was the Sherman Fairchild Fellow in Paintings Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Michael Gallagher, who was born in Liverpool, undertook post-graduate training in the conservation of easel painting at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge, England. Following a fellowship at the J. Paul Getty Museum, he was appointed assistant conservator of paintings at the Kimbell Art Museum in 1992. As a contractual conservator from 1995 to 1999 for the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, he conserved six panels from an altarpiece by the Master of the Crispin Legend, wings of an altarpiece by the Master of the Darmstadt Passion and Saints Gregory, Maurus, Papianus, and Domitilla by Peter Paul Rubens. In May 1999, he was appointed keeper of conservation at the National Galleries of Scotland, where he oversaw more than two dozen staff members in the Conservation and Registrars’ Departments and was directly responsible for the conservation of a number of major paintings. Gallagher took up his position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in October 2005. He initiated and oversaw the major refurbishment of the Sherman Fairchild Painting Conservation Center that was completed in March 2009. He has published articles on specific treatments and broader themes and has lectured regularly throughout his career.
Elise Effmann Clifford was the Kimbell’s assistant conservator of paintings before joining the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She trained at the Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, with her final-year internship spent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, followed by an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has published on such diverse topics as the rediscovery of a painting by Thomas Cole, the painting technique of the Pre- Raphaelite John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, the reattribution of an early work by Canaletto and the materials and techniques of the Le Nain Brothers, a study co-authored with Claire Barry.
Bart J.C. Devolder received his M.A. in painting conservation from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium, in 2002. He held internships at the Akademia Sztuk Pieknych, Krakow, Poland, the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA), Brussels, and the Musée du Louvre, Paris. He also received a fellowship from the Straus Center for Conservation at the Harvard University Art Museums (2003-4) and was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Painting Conservation at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2004-7). Devolder previously worked in Fort Worth at the Kimbell and at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Before joining the Princeton University Art Museum he worked in Belgium as the on-site coordinator and painting conservator for the restoration of the Ghent Altarpiece by the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Devolder has studied, published and lectured on a wide variety of topics, ranging from Fayum portraits, Early Netherlandish canvas paintings and the representation of gold brocades in Netherlandish paintings to the methods and techniques of Cubist paintings. He is also particularly interested in the newer applications of computer sciences to the field of studying old master paintings.
About the Kimbell’s conservation department: Prior to the construction of the Louis I. Kahn Building, founders Kay and Velma Kimbell envisioned a conservation program to “preserve for future generations what has been entrusted to its care.” The pre- architectural program, dated 1966, called for a conservation studio with an “open studio work area” with the caveat: “must face north, with entire wall glazed; it is impossible to get enough light in this room!” With the building’s completion in 1972, the paintings conservation studio became one of the first purpose-built museum conservation studios in the United States.
Information for this article was provided by the Kimbell Art Museum.