- We are inundated with imagery today.

We take paintings in on a digital screen most of the time.

And it's easy to thin that you've seen the painting, you've experienced the painting.

But you haven't.

Traditional painting is a three dimensional illusion created on a two dimensional surface.

It's magical.

My goal in treating an object, in treating a painting, i so that the visitor can come in, a viewer can stand in front of that painting and experienc the painting as its intended.

Some of it could be considered detective work.

Yeah.

if we're dealing with a painting, thats say, 200 years old, the artist is obviously no longer alive.

And so we have to take the information that the object presents to us, the evidence, so to speak, and try to determine how they created this object, what materials they're using, what methods, and again, what the core intent of the object is.

200 years ago, if a painting was damaged needed to be cleane or worked on in some some way, it would usually be take to another artist, to a painter who would remove a varnish, potentially incur some damage on the painting, and would repaint some areas, and they would not be so concerned with being true to the artist's original intent, but they would be concerned more with presenting a beautiful object.

- You'r welcome to get a little closer if you want to take a look.

You can see around this figures face particularly around the cracks.

The the paint layer has been abraded away a little from past cleanings.

This is also a really interesting painting too, because again, it was painted in 1750s, and at one poin in the history of this painting, it was titled “A Woma And Her Servant Picking Fruit” And as you can see, this woman of a darker complexion was thought to be a servant.

But if we look at the han on her shoulder, she's actually twirling this woman's hair.

The lavish dress she's wearing.

The jewelry.

She's making direc eye contact with the viewer.

This is clearly not a servant.

So as you can see now, we have changed the title and is currently “Portrait of Two Women.” And as I said, we're hopefully going to identify who the sitters are.

- It may be a little dramatic to think of the things we work on as living objects, but I think every conservator kind of does.

And so you approach it in a very different way, I think, than when you'r thinking of it as just a thing.

- (Guide) And weve had it since 1943 (Brushing sounds) If we take ourselves back 500 years, the limit of visible images are really just these paintings.

And I think we lose sight of how magical that is.

A painting is not a painting until somebody look at it.

It doesnt become an artwork until a viewer stands in front of it and their brain creates this feedback cycle, and maybe it triggers a personal memory for them.

And so every individual has their own relationship with that painting.

and that' when it becomes a work of art.

If we And so it's kind of a cliche at this point, but if a conservator does their job well, it's something that you never would know.