AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

The concept of “expecting the unexpected” is essential to the art conservator. We must carefully test and be prepared to adjust our treatments in accordance. However, we are also required to give cost and time estimates to the client before even touching an artwork. This leads to challenging situations particularly for complex, aged, technological artworks from the 1980s.

Sometimes, we find ourselves asking simple questions like “have they tried turning it on again?”, or “can we SAFELY turn it on again?”, or “what is it even supposed to do?”. Oftentimes records are scarce, so you gather what little information you can from residents or employees that have been around the longest. Once a treatment proposal has been established, there is always the issue of finding spare parts that are often not produced anymore. These challenges must be overcome since these artworks are truly starting to show their age and desperately require restauration [conservation].

Olga Zeldakova created “L’horloge” in 1983. It consists of painted steel pillars with an aluminum cube structure standing 30 feet high above an air vent. The cube contains four quadrants with light bulbs arranged in circular patterns. The artwork is part of the “one-percent initiative” and is located outside in a very busy area of Montreal. There were no videos available of the clock functioning, but the general information is that the clock would indicate time with red lights and chimes. However, the noise apparently bothered the residents, so it was turned off decades ago. The cube containing the electrical parts of the clock is only accessible through a trap door and carefully built scaffolding. We were called to propose a treatment without knowing the current condition of the artwork. Obviously, this led to a lot of surprises, such as the extent of the corrosion beneath the layers of paint, the reality of just how busy the area around it is and the actual functional state of the clock itself.

André Mongeau created the “Horloge solaire” in 1983 to be integrated into a building. This artwork, also part of the “one-percent initiative”, is composed of glass fiber optical cables running through the wall of the building that capture the light outside and shine through a plexiglass disk located in a now abandoned staircase. An additional element to the artwork is a laser canon located inside the building across the street that was intended to shine a red laser beam into the glass exterior captor, which allegedly turned the light specks red at night. Again, no videos of this artwork in action were available. Accounts from the artist say the laser beam never worked properly. Examination of the artwork after deinstallation revealed the fiber optics were fractured and had shrunk. In addition to this, the laser canon had caught fire. Now the challenges we faced were “where can we find glass fiber optic cables?”, “can we reinstall a new safer laser canon?” and “will it work?”.