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Paintings Conservation
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Detail of lacquered tray with scenes from Virgil’s Aeneid. The section depicts figures fighting on horseback, ships at sea, and ornate floral motifs.
Audio
Immaterial: Chia
Beyond superfoods and infomercials.
July 30, 2024
Writer Fran Lebowitz speaking and gesturing with her hands in The Met’s Paintings Conservation Lab in front of Rembrandt’s Aristotle with a Bust of Homer painting.
Video
Fran Lebowitz: Pretend It’s a Museum
Fran Lebowitz goes behind-the-scenes to The Met’s Paintings Conservation Lab to see Rembrandt’s Aristotle with a Bust of Homer.
Fran Lebowitz
November 9, 2023
A cracked egg floats over a table top surface featuring a bowl and whole eggs as well as a bucket of paint brushes and bottles of blue, yellow, and red pigments.
Video
So That’s How You Make Paint?
What does a cake have in common with an Italian Renaissance painting? The answer may surprise you! Watch to learn about the special properties of egg yolk that make it just as perfect for painting as it is for baking.
October 20, 2023
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Refashioning the Lavoisiers
A team of experts from across The Met gains new understanding of Jacques Louis David’s iconic portrait.
Silvia A. Centeno, Dorothy Mahon, and David Pullins
September 1, 2021
A wide shot of a paintings conservator working on three panels from an Italian altarpiece depicting three religious figures on a gold background.
Video
Conserving the Giovanni di Paolo Altarpiece
Follow the two-year-long conservation treatment of the Madonna and Child with Saints altarpiece (1454) by Giovanni di Paolo.
Michael Gallagher, Cynthia Moyer, and Evan Read
April 8, 2021
The Met Fifth facade
Take a Look Behind the Curtain of Johannes Vermeer's Enigmatic Masterpiece
Scientists and a conservator at The Met, an art historian at The Frick Collection, and scientists at the Doerner Institut in Munich team up to investigate changes to the composition and the discoloration of some paint passages.
Dorothy Mahon, Silvia A. Centeno, Federico Carò, Margaret Iacono, Heike Stege, and Andrea Obermeier
June 18, 2020
The Met Fifth facade
After Three Hundred Years of Fading, a Dutch Masterpiece Is Digitally Restored
Three centuries of light exposure caused a famous still life to fade. Here's how a team of conservators and curators brought it (digitally) back to life.
Gerrit Albertson
June 20, 2019
The Met Fifth facade
Unlocking the Mysteries of Two Jan van Eyck Frames, Part Three: Addressing Questions of Display
Having recognized through technical examinations that the mysterious fragmentary texts discovered on the frames of Jan van Eyck's Crucifixion and Last Judgment were original, a paintings conservator discusses the options for revealing the original inscriptions and how best to restore the frames for presentation in the galleries.
Sophie Scully
March 5, 2019
The Met Fifth facade
Unlocking the Mysteries of Two Jan van Eyck Frames, Part Two: Imaging the Hidden Details
After a hidden fragmentary text was discovered in the frames of two of the Museum's most treasured paintings, a research scientist and a paintings conservator got down to work performing technical examinations to determine whether the text was original to the paintings.
Silvia A. Centeno and Sophie Scully
February 26, 2019
The Met Fifth facade
Unlocking the Mysteries of Two Jan van Eyck Frames
The discovery of a mysterious fragmentary text on the frames of two of the Museum's most treasured paintings brought together curators, conservators, scientists, and a paleographer to uncover the meaning of the text and the history of the frames. In this article, the detective work begins.
Maryan Ainsworth
February 19, 2019