Student Blog: Cleveland Museum of Art

I am currently completing my final year of graduate studies at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation (WUDPAC) with a year-long internship in paintings conservation at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). At the CMA I have the pleasure of working with a large conservation team and under the direct supervision of Senior Paintings Conservator and Head of Paintings Conservation, Dean Yoder. 

My internship at the CMA has given me a holistic view of the role of a paintings conservator in a large encyclopedic museum. I have had the pleasure of being involved in exhibition preparation, loan examinations, a courier trip, research, outreach, and treatment. Through all these activities I've been lucky to meet and work with an exciting array of people from art handlers and curators to visiting couriers and donors.

​One of my major projects has been the treatment of Abraham Hondius's The Monkey and the Cat. This Dutch oil-on-canvas painting depicts a fable of a monkey and a cat that was famous in 17th century Europe. In the story, the monkey forces the cat to reach into a fire and retrieve some chestnuts for him, but leaves the cat with nothing but a burnt paw.​ The fable was often used as a political statement stating a good leader would not lead others into a harmful situation only to reap all the benefits himself. The painting was prioritized for treatment to address heavily abraded passages and scumbled retouching. When I began treatment there were multiple layers of degraded and yellowed varnish that flattened the depth of the composition and obscured the subtle nuances in the fur of the animals. There was also early retouching that partially disguised the abrasions, but the application of it also covered areas of intact original paint. I removed the varnishes and overpaint as much as safely possible and have begun inpainting each pinpoint loss, allowing the original fine brush strokes and nuances to be seen again.

Another aspect of this treatment was replacing the toxic stretcher. The painting was lined in the 1970s and at that time was mounted to an ICA style spring stretcher. This type of stretcher was very popular at that time because it was thought to give continuous even tension to the painting but is now known to have an extremely toxic degradation process related to the cadmium plating on the spring component, which was industrially produced. At the beginning of treatment, we quickly identified this component and its corrosion and I embarked on replacing the stretcher, with attention to health and safety protocols. The painting is now on a custom wooden keyable stretcher.

My internship at the Cleveland Museum of Art has exposed me to a variety of activities and has built on my previous experiences to create a strong foundation for my future in the field of paintings conservation. Throughout the next few months of my internship, I am excited to continue sharing my work through tours and presentations, working with other museum professionals, and honing my treatment skills as I finish multiple large projects.

— Brianna Weakley, WUDPAC Class of 2024​​