Articles
Lorin remembers the day he found the photograph in the early 1990s. After lunch with his parents - "at the new version of the Belden Deli" - they made their way to a garage sale in the gymnasium at Francis Parker School in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. Lorin recalls, "We walked into the gymnasium, and I saw this photo of a ballet dancer in a ratty wooden frame. It had a $5 tag on it."
Even when they may seem simple, almost every treatment carried out in The Center's laboratory is a collaborative effort between different conservations and departments. This photograph, "Portrait of George Ramige" is a family antique and arrived in stable condition but with age-related issues. A reinforced photograph housed in an antique frame, this artwork was treated in three of our departments; Works of Art on Paper, Furniture, and Custom Framing and Display.
One hundred twenty years of dust, grime, soot, and age - the early twentieth-century membership photographs from the Chicago chapter of the Scottish Rite showed their years. The photographs were taken and developed by the Gibson, Sykes & Fowler studio, one of Chicago's earliest photography studios that opened circa 1860.
Antique photography presents a challenging set of condition issues for any conservator. They are inherently delicate and often have significant inherent vices. Inherent vice - also known as an inherent fault - is the object's likelihood of deterioration because of the qualities of the materials initially used, not because of anything that happened to the artwork during its lifetime.
How to preserve a personal photograph collection and the history it represents.
Published biannually, Luxury Portfolio magazine features the latest luxury perspectives on Real Estate, Design, Travel and Lifestyle. The latest issue features “Picture Perfect” written by Lisa Klein, an interview with our CEO Heather Becker discussing how to care for your photography collection.
Our conservators love to work on pieces that showcase our city’s extraordinary history. It was a treat for our Paper Department to work on a series of twentieth century membership photographs from the Chicago chapter of the Scottish Rite. The photographs were taken and developed by the Gibson, Sykes & Fowler studio, one of the Chicago’s earliest photography studios that opened as early as 1860.
The Center has conserved and digitally replicated everything from family albums, all types of journals, archives, letters, and rare or cultural materials that are irreplaceable. This story focuses on how The Center assisted a client with creating two digital and archival scrapbooks that documented the original material from personal memories and events. The custom made digital scrapbooks were then bound in leather with custom designed clam shell boxes for protection and safe handling. This is an example of how The Center continually strives to save, preserve, and protect works - whether a family heirloom or a rare work of art.
Whether a corporation’s art collection is a curated investment, a donation from an art-loving CEO, an act of community connection, or a trove of archival material, keeping it in good condition requires the knowledge of experts. The Conservation Center has a long history of caring for corporate art holdings in four categories: disaster response, re-housing, storage, and display.
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