AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

Beginning in 2008, American museums collaborated to preserve traditional Chinese painting conservation. Despite being a tradition over a thousand years old from China, it has only been a vital part of conservation in the U.S. for 35 years. The field was founded in U.S. museums by four apprentice trained conservators from China, but lacked a sustainable program in the U.S. to train the next generation. Supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) developed a program with objectives to strengthen the global network of Chinese painting conservators, addressing the need for conservators and establish a permanent structure to support a pipeline for training and care of collections.

This talk will give an overview of this program, focusing on the hands-on workshops and production of a documentary. These educational projects illustrate how our initial plans faced unexpected challenges, and our responses helped advance the field.

The workshops were initially designed to empower the next generation of conservators, with their diversity of training from China, Taiwan, Europe, and the U.S., to build relationships. However, it became clear the workshops would be enriched by senior conservators teaching the methods that the next generation was sharing but had not fully mastered. One year later, the workshop included six senior and eight younger conservators. This was the first time all senior conservators in the U.S. gathered to demonstrate and discuss their treatment practices. Both generations tested adhesives and colorants and practiced techniques, such as lining and dying silk fabric. We discovered the senior conservators were integrating non-traditional and traditional methods, such as using methyl cellulose and flour paste. The workshop also included discussions on treatment options for Chinese paintings. The constructive exchanges and inconclusive test results revealed the need for more dialogue, and the value of inviting the broader community of conservation advocates to help advance the field.

Another unanticipated change was transitioning the final educational symposium for fall 2020 to the production of a documentary. The pandemic made an in-person symposium impossible, so grant funds were repurposed to create an evergreen resource to document and raise public awareness. In 2021, the NMAA produced the film with director Eros Zhao and contributions from key institutions. This bilingual documentary honors the voices of trailblazing senior Chinese conservators, highlights the next generation carrying these traditions forward, and preserves the tangible and intangible heritage of Chinese culture. Through the barriers of developing and filming a documentary during the pandemic, we interviewed the conservators and created a living document that captures a moment of change between two generations as the field transitions into the future.

The NMAA Mellon Program anticipated a pipeline from one generation to the next, but no one anticipated that both generations would be empowered to shape the global network. Despite a tradition that is centuries old, Chinese painting conservation is a field that is evolving rapidly. After a decade, the Mellon program enabled Chinese painting conservators to lead this progress in the face of conservation’s changing landscape.