Jerry Podany

The American Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Works (AIC) is the national membership organization supporting conservation professionals in preserving cultural heritage by establishing and upholding professional standards, promoting research and publications, providing educational opportunities, and fostering the exchange of knowledge among conservators, allied professionals, and the public. The Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation (FAIC) supports the preservation of cultural materials through education and research initiatives for conservation and allied professionals. FAIC advocates public appreciation of conservation and the primary role it plays in increasing understanding of our global cultural heritage.

A very fine-grained white marble “historical” relief, featuring three figures and part of a Latin inscription, is said to be from Southern Spain. This privately owned relief, presently on loan to the J. Paul Getty Museum, represents the Emperor Tiberius being introduced by a female personification to an enthroned semi-nude figure holding a cornucopia. This article examines the style, iconography, and marble type in an attempt to determine if it may indeed originally have come from Southern Spain. Based on the combined petrographic, cathodoluminescence and a C and O isotopic analysis, the marble proved to be from the Luni-Carrara quarries. This prestige marble from Italy was used in Roman Hispania for different decorative sculptural programs, especially those of the Augustan and Julio-Claudian period. Explored here are various issues associated with this relief, its provenance, and date.

ABSTRACT-Acrylic copolymers are now well known in conservation practice. Based upon relative stability and reversibility, Paraloid B-72 has found a particularly wide range of uses as a coating, consoli-dant, and adhesive. Increasingly, B-72 is being used as an adhesive for ...

... Of particular note in the development of preventive conservation was the Dresden ICOM-Triennial Meeting of 1990. It was here that many formative presentations were given, such as Stefan Michalski's "An overall framework for preventive conservation and remedial ...

The preservation of historic structures and monuments, so crucial to the understanding of our shared past and essential to the cultural identities that make up the global community, has bene tted signi cantly from advances in seismic engi- neering. Seismic retro tting to resist the strong ground shaking during earthquakes has saved many historic buildings. But the protection of “contents” has only recently gar- nered appropriate attention and research. The new-found attention is in large part due to the fact that the value of such contents often far exceeds the value of the structure that houses the contents. And this is especially true of our museums and the price- less objects they contain, an issue which has been given less attention than it deserves. Every year an unacceptable number of artistic, historical and cultural treasures are se- verely damaged or lost due to earthquakes. Such damage weakens the immediate and long term resilience of our cultural institutions and counters their mission of preserva- tion. This paper will discuss the various methodologies, from the most inexpensive and straightforward approaches emerging from common sense to the more advanced ap- plications of base isolation, developed through multi-disciplinary teams. Preventive, pro active approaches to assuring resilience will be promoted. The need for research, devel- opment, implementation, and education in the area of earthquake damage mitigation for cultural artefacts is a signi cant challenge facing cultural institutions worldwide. How Academies of Science can assist in overcoming the present state of “temporal parochi- alism”, so common among intuitions with regard to the threat of earthquake damage, will also be addressed.

This paper, presented at  the International Symposium on Advances of Protection Devices for Museum Exhibits,
April 13-17, 2015  Beijing and Shanghai, China,
provides an  overview of the developments and methodologies used for the mitigation of earthquake damage to museum collections as illustrated by case studies at the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles California.

What influences the heritage conservation choices we make is no longer a simple matter of “preserving all forever at any cost”.  The sustainability of our effort, and indeed of our mission and our profession, must take into account the impact our activities have on other finite resources and the broad understanding of our purpose by others.  The profession of heritage conservation is undergoing changes and many of the tenets it has come to hold as unassailable are increasingly being challenged.  Rather than resisting this change it may be time to see this new situation as an opportunity to verify what we hold true and to expose assumptions that, in the light of contemporary understanding and values, no longer make sense.

Close Document Image Close Document Printer Image Print This Document! Conservation Information Network (BCIN). Author: Podany, Jerry Editor: Oddy, Andrew Title Article/Chapter: "Restoring what wasn't there: reconsideration ...

Close Document Image Close Document Printer Image Print This Document! Conservation Information Network (BCIN). Author: "Scott, David A. (ed.); Podany, Jerry (ed.); Considine, Brian B. (ed.)" Corporate Author: The Getty ...

ABSTRACT-Acrylic copolymers are now well known in conservation practice. Based upon relative stability and reversibility, Paraloid B-72 has found a particularly wide range of uses as a coating, consoli-dant, and adhesive. Increasingly, B-72 is being used as an adhesive for ...

Close Document Image Close Document Printer Image Print This Document! Conservation Information Network (BCIN). Author: Podany, Jerry C. Editor: Hutchins, Jane K.; Roberts, Barbara O. Title Article/Chapter: "Emergency preparedness plan. ...

115 FROM FLOOR TO WALL: LIFTING AND EXHIBITION PRACTICES APPLIED TO ANCIENT FLOOR MOSAICS Jerry Podany The importance of context in the effort to preserve archaeological material is not exclusively a late-twentieth-century idea. In 1903 the Austrian art historian ...

We know relatively little about how sculptures were restored in ancient Greece and Rome, though they surely were since there is praise of successful restorations and a number of complaints about botched work and ruined masterpieces from writers of the time. It is not until the Renaissance and the beginning of collecting as we would recognize it today that we find references to the conflicting desires to restore and to refrain from restoration. The almost feverish pitch with which lost arms, legs, and noses were repaired and replaced during the late 18 th century to the mid-19 th century was matched only by the same fervor applied to removing it all in the late 19 th through mid-20 th century. Tastes changed and sculptures bore the scars and scrubbings deemed necessary to keep up with fashions. Sometimes the changes were reflected in pose, sometimes in attribute and sometimes even in gender. Today the conservator is left to make sense of all these layers and changes, additions and reductions. Although analytical methods can sometimes assist in sorting through what is, or is not, original, the question of whether the ancient fragments and the added restorations can coexist remains. Of the myriad values communicated by an object, including historical and aesthetic values, the question of which should be allowed to dominate based on our modern preferences is a complex one. And equally complex is the question of what is gained and what might potentially be lost when that decision is made. Using technical evidence gleaned from restored sculptures as well as from numerous specific case studies, this presentation will follow the cycles of restoration philosophy and practice spanning the period from the Renaissance to modern times. From the fragmented remains of a sculpture in Dresden that changed identity at least three times since its discovery in 1704, to the reinstatement of 18 th century restorations on the Lansdowne Herakles at the Getty Villa, to the drawer containing removed marble noses in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, the questions of how changing tastes influence our perception of ancient sculpture, and of how they often have permanently changed the sculptures themselves, will be explored.