Mission Mural Rescue :: Under the Microscope

Microscopic attention to detail is the name of the public art conservation game. Dental scalers, sponges, airbrushes, saws, rags, and grinders are all part of a conservator’s arsenal. Microscopes add a high-tech level of detail. This month, the Edmonton Arts Council Public Art Conservation Department welcomed the latest addition to its battery of tools. The portable microscope came to the EAC from the United States and will allow staff to zoom in on the tiniest details as they go about their daily work of stewarding and maintaining the City of Edmonton Public Art Collection.

The microscope’s first task will be to assist the conservation team as it embarks on the final stages of ​“Mission: Mural Rescue,” a multiyear project that entails the removal, restoration, and reinstallation of a 52-year-old 1,000-pound mural by then-Alberta artist Norman Yates at the Stanley A. Milner Library. The untitled mural was painted in the late 1960s.

Public Art and Conservation Director David Turnbull says, “[This artwork is] the only known surviving artwork in Edmonton’s Public Art Collection commissioned for Canada’s Centennial.” This historic importance, and the stature of the artist – Yates founded the University of Alberta’s graduate fine arts program – inspired the conservation team to take a radical approach. Faced with the extensive gutting and renovation of the Edmonton Public Library’s main branch, the EAC conservation team wielded tissue paper, fish glue, angle grinders, and brute force to preserve the painting, cut the wall into sections, then moved the entire artwork to the EAC Conservation Lab.

Over the past two years, Public Art Conservator Andrea Bowes has ground about two inches of architectural plaster from the back of each piece to expose the artist’s original, one-inch, fragile plaster layer. The pieces are now stored on wooden A‑frames, their backs stabilized with a skeleton of lightweight aluminum channel, fibreglass, resin, and sand. The painting itself is still obscured by its tissue paper cover.

“Now that we can safely handle each piece, we can start restoring the damage on the surface. We’ll use the microscope to make sure that when we repair damaged edges that the surface lines up properly and the surrounding surfaces are even and in plane. That’s not a thing you can do just by eyeballing!”

“The next stages will be painstaking and a lot of fun,” says Andrea, ​“The microscope is going to be integral. In the meantime, we’re really enjoying the novelty of looking at several projects in the lab at a level of detail that wasn’t possible until now.”

This is the third article in a series:

• Click here for the first article from February 2017.
• Click here for the second chapter from April 2018.

Stay tuned for a new chapter as the project enters the next phase!