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The conservators could be considered heroes of this story

By Rebecca Rushfield posted 08-15-2023 12:03

  

The front page of  the August 14, 2023 issue of the New York Times  contains an article by Alexandra Eaton titled, “The Story of an Enslaved Youth Emerges From behind the Paint”. The painting Eaton discusses, “Belizaire and the Frey Children” , now  in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and attributed to Jacques Amans, contains the portrait of an enslaved young man of African descent which had been painted over around the year 1900. The work was donated to the New Orleans Museum of Art in 1971 under the title, “Three Children in a Landscape“, with the ghost of the figure of Belizaire showing through. The Museum did not have the painting researched, cleaned, or treated and it remained in storage until it was deaccessioned and sold in 2005. It was the work of two conservators—Katja Grauman who did a preliminary cleaning after the painting's sale and Craig Crawford who performed  additional conservation treatment in  2022—which  brought Belzaire back to view and enabled the work to have a new narrative . The conservators could be considered heroes of this story.     #ConservationintheNews

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