From the WKRC Cincinnati website with a few minor edits for clarity:

Children on a trip to the Cincinnati Art Museum today saw a kind of artistry they probably didn't expect to see. Work is now underway to restore one of Vince Van Gogh's last masterpieces.

"Is it really a Van Gogh?" The young visitor to the Cincinnati Art Museum asks the man looking through a microscope that surgeons use. The chief conservator is working on one of Van Gogh's last great masterpieces, needing the tool for the detailed, precise work.

Per Knutas, Chief Conservator at Cincinnati Art Museum: "When you see under the microscope, vigorous brush strokes, it's fun to see how he built up the painting."

The Dutch post impressionist painter is known for the vivid colors in portraits and landscapes. But in the 70's an old technique used to protect the painting, Undergrowth with Two Figures, left wax in Van Gogh's brush strokes.

"The wax was clear, but over the years has become milky and obscures the intended colors of the painting."

Per Knutas usually works in a back room. But the combination art historian and chemist is on display so visitors can watch on a projection screen, as he uses a soft brush to apply a solvent, then a stick to carefully scrape the wax buildup away.

"To bring back the intended colors, it's not just important to the art world. This is the way the artist intended it to be."

"I started today, guess how long it will take... a day?"

The young visitors guess ...a day...20 hours? Knutas will work until July 31 to get the painting back to the way Van Gogh wanted us to see it. The work is so detailed, it does not go on all day.

You can check the art museum's website for the times, which will usually be between 2 pm and 5 pm.

The insidious danger comes from below. Liquids oozes up to wreak havoc on a foundation that seemed solid, but now suddenly cracks with fissures that spiral out of control. Malicious gases rise and permeate, damaging everything in their path. No, this is not part of some super-villain's diabolical plot to destroy Gotham or Metropolis, but there are heroes in danger in this scenario. I'm [Ron Barbagallo] talking about the impending peril that I thwart daily while preserving Disney animation cels and other art made with painted plastic materials. I am the art conservator and director of Animation Art Conservation, and for nearly 25 years (along with my partner in all things chemical, conservation scientist Michele Derrick) I've worked to protect Walt Disney animation cels, as well as other motion-picture artifacts such as Tim Burton's painted plastic puppets or the on-screen Batman suits, from further degradation.

The costume of Batman has lived in the public imagination since the Franklin Roosevelt administration, has stayed close enough to that original color scheme and overall profile that fans of any age know the hero when they see him on the page, on the screen or ringing the doorbell on Halloween. What has changed, here in Hollywood, is the cloth and thread which the hero wears on the screen. In the movie-serial years, filmmakers translated comic book drawings with stitched fabric but in recent decades there has been a new array of materials - specialized plastics poured into molds, for instance, have given Gotham's caped crusader a pliable body armor. It's an understanding of those plastics where a new conservation expertise comes into play.

Read the complete article by Ron in The Los Angeles Times: Hero Complex feature.

Excerpt from an article in The Wall Street Journal that demonstrates just one example of the importance of things and why conservators are so passionate about their life's work.
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The March 11 tsunami that devastated Rikuzentakata, a small seaside city in northern Japan, wiped away thousands of homes and left 2,000 residents dead or missing. As it swept away a community, the tsunami surge also carried off its memories, stockpiled on photographic paper and catalogued in albums.

As search crews recovered bodies in the weeks following the disaster, they also collected what waterlogged family albums and muddy pictures they found scattered within the rubble. Volunteer groups have since embarked on the tedious tasks of drying, cleaning and organizing hundreds of thousands of photos.

"When they thought they had lost everything and something like an old picture reappears, we think it will give them strength to move forward," said Tatsuya Hagiwara, a volunteer with the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention.

In a scene resembling a flea market, organizers spread out albums, yearbooks, diplomas and other keepsakes across a parking lot on the edge of town. A crowd quickly gathered, many seeking pictures of family members and friends who numbered among the dead and missing.

A yelp rose from the crowd. "That's me!" shouted Etsuko Kanno, showing a picture of a young woman in a wedding dress. The bride, laughing, covered her mouth with a white-gloved hand.

Ms. Kanno - now a 51-year-old grandmother, who arrived at the parking lot with her one-year-old granddaughter asleep on her back - said the picture was taken 26 years ago at a photo shop in neighboring Ofunato. The photographer, she recalled, snapped the picture without warning her.

"This was the happiest moment," she said, gripping the picture. "But this is only a picture of me. I wanted a picture of my husband."

The man she married a few days after that picture was taken died in the tsunami. The powerful waters swallowed their home, where he was spending a day off from work with his 83-year-old mother, who also died.

Pictures of her three daughters, grandchildren and husband were washed away with the rest of their possessions.
...
"I want something on paper that I can look at," she said. "I looked around and found nothing."

When volunteers began tackling the photo cleanup several weeks ago, they started with a wet clump of snapshots. They laid the pictures out to dry. They dusted dirt from individual photos with paint brushes, and wiped plastic album sheets clean with damp rags.

The process was time-consuming and imperfect. Only about 10% of the recovered photos, some still damp and covered in dirt, were displayed last week.
...
People who found photos belonging to them filled out a form and took the pictures. Organizers said they may take the rest of the photos by truck to the 65 different evacuation centers across the city.

For group photos, the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, one of the organizations leading the volunteering, plans to scan the pictures digitally and upload the images to the Internet. The group is working on a project to archive photos along with tsunami-related information from Rikuzentakata and nearby towns.

This article in the Wall Street Journal, by Melik Kaylan insightfully discusses ever-changing perspectives of museums and the stories they tell about vast collections of objects.

Dura-Europos: Crossroads of Antiquity, a exhibit currently running at McMullen Museum, inspires a discussion of museum theory using and exhibiting cultural material to explore history and society. Here is the concluding sentence.

"Though it features, among other things, the best example of a Roman armor-suit ever found, this is not a show about rare objects of great value. Rather, it illustrates moments of consciousness in history, including the moment of the excavations to illustrate how the world then chose to digest its own ancient history. Between the World Wars, the revelations of Dura-Europos were valued largely as contributions to the history of art, illuminating the bridge between Classical and Renaissance aesthetics. The show's present-day curators invite us to consider how their preoccupations (and ours) have changed. They focus on the successful cross-pollination of cultures at Dura-Europos, how Greek, Jewish, Parthian, Roman and Christian cultures synthesized and abided in harmony. A Sassanian helmet with a nose guard demonstrates how Romans learned from other cultures: They added a nose guard to their own helmets. The Palmyran temple frieze shows how a Roman general worshiped with local pagans. The curators prod us to view the ancients through our contemporary concerns: in a word, multiculturalism or diversity. In the study of archaeology, they seem to say, we see what we look for. It never goes out of fashion."

From the Los Angeles Times:

For its 90th birthday, Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House is getting another round of rejuvenating restoration work, with the partial makeover priced at $4.3 million.
...
The project is the third phase in the ongoing restoration of Hollyhock House - the first two phases, from 2000 to 2005, cost $21 million, mainly to repair damage from the 1994 Northridge earthquake and stabilize the Barnsdall Park hillside fronting Hollywood Boulevard.
...

Some of Hollyhock House's geometrically patterned stained-glass windows will be sent out for special restorative cleaning, and the porch's concrete floor, installed during a 1970s renovation, will be replaced by oak that matches the original 1921 floor trod by Wright's client, Aline Barnsdall.

The work list also includes repairing cracks in two fountains on the grounds, which could pave the way for them to be refilled with water for the first time in years - although Herr says that the entire project budget may be used up on the house itself, leaving it to future fundraising to provide for the fountains' revival.

Inside, the project aims to better anchor the living room fireplace that's one of Hollyhock House's hallmarks, in hopes of preventing damage in future earthquakes. Also on the agenda is re-adjusting the Modernist stone mural above the fireplace, which shifted slightly in the 1994 quake, according to a consultant's report. Herr said an engineering report he received Wednesday had some good news: The ground under the fireplace is solid, rather than loose dirt that would pose a high risk of giving way in a quake and causing it to topple. Leaving the fireplace as-is remains an option. Herr said there's no plan to refill the indoor moat that surrounds it, because water vapor would be harmful to furnishings.
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The California Cultural and Historical Endowment has provided $1.9 million from a grant fund created by a bond issue voters approved in 2002; Herr said the city tapped a variety of capital-project funds to come up with the required match. The project coffer also includes a $489,000 "Save America's Treasures" grant from the National Parks Service.

Deborah Baker, conservator of archival materials, is methodically restoring the archives of the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture, preserving thousands of irreplaceable drawings from the city's oil-boom history.

Read the article in the Tulsa World.

"The drawings include floor plans, sections and elevations for some of the most iconic landmarks in Tulsa, from downtown skyscrapers to Southern Hills Country Club. In many cases, where historic structures have been torn down, these drawings offer the only surviving records that show how the buildings looked. Unfortunately, no one ever expected to keep these drawings forever, and many of them have been folded, creased, torn and taped back together.

"These are working drawings that people rolled up and took to construction sites," Baker says. "You'll see coffee stains and cigarette burns. And you see a lot of stuff like this," she says, picking up a floor plan that has been Scotch-taped together. "It's probably been like this for 50 years."

Carefully, millimeter by millimeter, Baker removes one piece of tape to expose a tear in the yellowed drawing. She'll use wispy Japanese tissues to fill in the gap, painstakingly cutting and pasting the new section of paper until it fits perfectly with the old part....

The foundation hopes to relocate later this year, taking the archives to a larger space where some of the drawings will go on display for the first time.

"These are truly works of art," says Executive Director Lee Anne Zeigler. "People are going to be amazed at the detail and intricacies, all done by hand." Her favorites include the elaborate, art deco elevations of the Medical Arts Building, designed in 1927 by well-known architect Joseph Koberling. Standing at Sixth Street and Boulder Avenue, it was knocked down in the early 1980s to make room for ONEOK Plaza.

"Look at this detail," Zeigler says, pointing at the decorative chain links that supported the awning over the Medical Arts entrance. "A draftsman must have spent hours and hours on this one little section. You would never see that done today."

The foundation's archives include more than 35,000 original drawings, most dating from the early 1900s through the 1970s, when computer-assisted design began to replace hand drawings....

A federal grant last year allowed the foundation to bring in a specialist to help restore the archives [and to train staff in preservation and basic stabilization techniques]."

Excerpt from an American Chemical Society article below. Find the entire article here.

Researchers led by Kristin Wustholz, a chemist at the College of William & Mary, made the improvement to a protocol called surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). The method pinpoints the chemical make-up of pigment from just a single microscopic particle of the colorant, instead of needing large, destructive samples required for more traditional techniques. The pigment particles required for SERS analysis are "so small they are not visible to the human eye," Wustholz says. Removing one does not change the appearance of the masterpiece.

In the standard SERS technique, a researcher picks off a pigment particle from the painting and treats it with strong acid to separate the pigment from paint binders, varnishes, and other media. The pigment can then adsorb to a silver nanoparticle mixture. Using a Raman spectrometer, the scientist then takes a vibrational spectrum of the pigment-nanoparticle mixture to identify the pigment's chemical signature. The silver nanoparticle acts like a signal amplifier for the pigment particle, allowing scientists to get useful information from the tiny sample.

Using two 18th century oil paintings in the collection of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Wustholz collaborated with Williamsburg conservator Shelley Svoboda to discover that the acid step wasn't necessary (Anal. Chem., DOI: 10.1021/ac200698q).

Wustholz's team used the new technique to identify the lip pigment in the oil painting Portrait of William Nelson by Robert Feke. They found that the red color was carmine lake, an organic pigment extracted from insect scales. The team also used the technique to study flesh tones in Portrait of Isaac Barré by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The team chose Reynolds' painting because he typically added to his paint a complex mixture of binders and varnishes, which would normally be removed by the acid treatment. Keeping these components, which can produce spectroscopic noise, in the sample was a good way to test the limits of the new protocol, Wustholz says. The team could still identify the pigment, which was again carmine lake.

The following text is from an American Chemical Society press release:

How scientists use chemistry to tell whether works of art are the valuable real thing or worthless forgeries is the topic of the latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning Bytesize Science podcast series.

The high-definition video, "Is that 'priceless' painting the real deal or a cheap fake?" is available without charge at www.BytesizeScience.com and on the Bytesize Science podcast on iTunes. It is based on an article in the latest issue of ChemMatters, ACS' quarterly magazine for high school students.

This episode describes the "Wacker Case," one of the most famous frauds in art history, to illustrate the amazing ability of forgers to fool experts, let alone the general public, about the authenticity of works of art. The case involved 33 works allegedly painted by Vincent van Gogh and helped foster the development of scientific techniques, many based on chemistry, to examine paintings at the molecular level and determine their authenticity.

"We use the same techniques to find forgeries and to solve crimes," James Martin says in the video. He is a scientist who has investigated forgeries for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, museums and buyers. "You start by broadly examining the object to look for alterations and restoration, and then, you try to identify materials and compounds in the painting," Martin adds.

Watch the video on the ACS website.

The Brooklyn Museum took Lady Gauteshenu - a rich lady from the Late Period of Egypt's glorious past - to North Shore University Hospital for a look under her skin, as it were. She'd been X-rayed before, but assistant conservator Tina March said there were still some questions left unanswered.

Read the complete article in The Brooklyn Paper.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art hired a group of skilled Moroccan craftsmen who have experience in monument restoration to recreate a medieval Maghrebi-Andalusian style courtyard in its Islamic Art galleries. For two months, a reporter and a photographer from The New York Times observed and documented the craftsmen's work. "History's Hands", a Times article raises two points for consideration:
--The great value for both art historians and conservators of such a thorough documentation of working methods.
-- Why it is acceptable for a museum to recreate a piece of architecture, when it would be unacceptable for a museum to hire a painter to recreate a work from a certain school of painting that was not represented in its collection?


According to "Bellini Work at Frick is Seen in a New Light", in late May, after a year of study and treatment of the painting which yielded new insights , the Frick Collection will reinstall Giovanni Bellini's "St Francis in the Desert" in a special exhibit that will include computer kiosks at which visitors will be able to study the painting's structure and Bellini's working methods.

During the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila in the Abruzzo region of Italy, many works of art were damaged. According to the Wall Street Journal "Donor of the Day" feature, "Restored Italian Statue Visits Its Guardian Angels", in the aftermath of the earthquake, the Italian American Museum in New York City collected $110,000 in small gifts from thousands of donors. That money was earmarked for the treatment of damaged works and one of those works, La Madonna di Pietranico, has been sent to the Museum on a two-month loan as a thank you gift.

Chief Conservator of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Jim DeYoung, is interviewed about life behind-the-scenes working to preserve the museum's significant collection. Jim covers a lot of ground about the daily activities of a small conservation staff (Terri White, Tim Ladwig, and Chris Nivor). From exhibit condition reporting to gallery surveys, answering public queries and keeping documentation records, hosting tours and actual treatment activities, it is all in a day's work...or 30 years of work.

Read the interview at OnMilwaukee.com.

To many, he's the godfather of American tattooing, the original outsider artist.

Between 1940 and 1973, Norman "Sailor Jerry" Collins inked his distinctive tattoos on the flesh of visitors to his Hawaii shop. His distinctive style combining bold lines and careful coloration is still imitated today and can be found today on thousands - perhaps tens of thousands - of people.

"It's pure folk Americana and it has a rich history," said Erich Weiss, of Philadelphia, who wrote a book and directed a documentary about Collins. "People now consider tattooing as an art form, but back then they didn't see it that way. "

Now Center City's Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts is preserving Collins' work for prosperity with the same care they've put into historic documents and other masterpieces of art. They're finishing up the project in time to mark the 100th anniversary of Collins' birth this year.

Read the full article in the Philadelphia Inquirer to find out what the conservators are doing to the unusual archives. The art Samantha Sheesley is working to preserve left an impression on her that she decided to make permanent.

Two separate articles in the current issue of Art & Antiques magazine make for an interesting juxtaposition.

The first article profiles the artwork and conservation of AIC Professional Associate Daisy Craddock and gives a glimpse into the work of someone who both creates and conserves paintings.

The Afterlife of Eva Hesse discusses the changes that time and inherent vice have wrought in her artwork. Conservation can only do so much.

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Rachael Perkins Arenstein
AIC E-editor

"Golden-hued foliage has darkened to an earthy tan. A sunny yellow field has faded to off-white. In spots, the paint is powdery and has started to flake off.

Vivid colors are deteriorating in Henri Matisse's iconic The Joy of Life, owned by the Barnes Foundation, and scientists are stepping in to help before the giant canvas is moved to its new home in Philadelphia.

Conservators presented the results Tuesday from a sophisticated chemical analysis of the painting, which will guide the effort to retard further damage and perhaps, someday, to reverse it. The research, presented at a conference of the American Chemical Society in California, was led by Jennifer Mass, a senior scientist at the Winterthur museum in Delaware who was enlisted by the Barnes."

Francesca Casadio, senior conservation scientist at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Barnes Foundation conservators, Barbara Buckley and Margaret Little, completed the research team.

Read the full article in the Philadelphia Inquirer online edition.

Over the past few months The New York Times has published a number of articles and short notices about conservation projects:
A Hidden Treasure Struggles in Los Angeles (February 1): The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has taken over responsibility for Simon Rodia's Watts Towers from the City of Los Angeles which can no longer afford to maintain the work. A preliminary estimate of the cost of needed restoration work is $5 million.

Restoration is Planned for Historical Murals (February 23): A set of murals depicting events in African-American history owned by Talladega College in Alabama will be cleaned and restretched at the High Museum(Atlanta) before they are exhibited in Atlanta and Indianapolis.

A Plan to Restore a Destroyed Buddha (March 1): After studying fragments of the statues for eighteen months, scientists at Munich's Technical University have concluded that the smaller of the Bamiyan Buddhas (which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001) could be reconstructed at the site from its 1,400 fragments .

Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that a masterpiece in the basement goes unnoticed for more than half a century. It is a wonder, however, when a neglected nothing, a dirty ragamuffin of a painting, is suddenly noticed amid a quarter-million stored confreres - is pulled out, looked at, looked at more closely, and finally recognized for what it really is beneath the soot, the grime, the clouded varnish: a treasure.

This is precisely what happened with George Inness' 1851 landscape Twilight on the Campagna, acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1945, [and was put in storage soon after, and forgotten until 2005.]...

Conservator Judy Dion managed the cleaning, and what emerged stunned all involved...Beneath the varnish, the canvas was covered by a thick layer of what is called bleached shellac, probably applied by Inness himself; while the shellac was discolored in some spots, the surface of the painting was extremely well preserved - somewhat unusual for Inness' work - which allowed his rendering of light to shine...

Read the full article in the digital Philadelphia Inquirer.

From the Bangkok Post:

Flying in and out of Bangkok regularly over the past two years is textile conservator Julia Brennan. US-based Brennan is no newcomer to Thailand, having grown up in Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai at the time Her Majesty the Queen was establishing the Support Foundation and reviving the nearly lost textile traditions.

Julia Brennan has taught textile conservation in Asia for the past decade. She helped establish the National Textile Museum, under the royal patronage of HM Ashi Sangay Wangchuk in Bhutan. Over a period of eight years she helped train the first generation of Bhutanese textile conservators.

However, working in Thailand as a professional conservator, to preserve Thai cultural treasures was a long held dream that has now come true. In Thailand, she has been working on a number of textile projects, mainly as a consultant training a group of textile conservators, helping to set up a new textile conservation laboratory, and helping to establish the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles, organised under the Support Foundation and Her Majesty's the Queen's Personal Affairs Division Office. The museum is expected to open in August.

Another project, which she has just completed, is the conservation of the ceremonial robe presented by King Chulalongkorn to Phraya Cholayuth Yothin, otherwise known as Vice Admiral Andreas du Plessis de Richelieu, a Danish navy officer who became the first and only foreigner to take command of the Royal Thai Navy at the beginning of the 20th century...

Joyce Hill Stoner was awarded the 2011 College Art Association/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation at the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Her many contributions to the field of conservation include her advocacy for collaboration with living artists as well as being a pioneer for art conservation programs at academic institutions.

Amber Kerr-Allison made the video which can be watched on YouTube.

Read the announcement on the Heritage Preservation website.

Museums Aotearoa, the professional organization for New Zealand museums and related professionals, has started to post status updates from various area cultural repositories about their status since the February 22, 2011 earthquake near Christchurch.

The February 2011 6.3 magnitude earthquake is considered an aftershock of the September 2010 7.1 magnitude earthquake, centered about 20 miles away and also damaged cultural buildings. The region has experienced periodic seismic activity since then, with at least seven aftershocks with magnitudes over 4.

Read the Canterbury Earthquake Museum Update blog on the Museums Aotearoa website.

Museums Aotearoa also has a Facebook page that is actively being updated.

AIC has offered the assistance of the Collections Emergency Response Team.

Only a handful of high-tech tools have been created specifically for art conservation. Most of the tools conservators use, ranging from syringes and enzyme gels to X-ray imaging and lasers and beyond, have been adopted from other industries.

An example of this adoption and creative modification is the use of a Computer Numeric Control industrial cutting tool (CNC) to remove concrete from a previous treatment from the back of a Byzantine mosaic.

Read the article in the Yale Daily News.