Introducing Steve Hanson, an old friend from New York. We met a long long time ago, well before either of us got our careers going. Imagine a tall, smiling and really lovely human who always seems to give you the feeling he has all the time in the world to have a lovely chat with you. Steve was actually one of the first people to ever purchase one of my oil painting works. I had a good long chin wag with him about his career within the art conservation world.
Steve at a gallery opening in NYC
Right, Steve, so tell me about where you’re working and what you’re up to these days.
I work at Modern Art Conservation with Suzanne Siano who is the Chief Conservator. We’re a team of 6 conservators some part time and full time. There’s also an operations assistant, a studio manager, a preparator, an art handler, and then there’s me who is the Studio Registrar.
Ok and what exactly is art conservation all about?
Conservation is an overarching field encompassing works on paper, art objects, sculpture, even time based media. It involves the keeping in the best mind best practices, least intrusive treatment methods and least invasive methods of testing prior to treatment methods which are intended to restore or “conserve” an artwork for museums, collections and artists for further generations.
The conservation of art objects takes place in museums, private conservation studios, on site at artists studios, at an auction house, in a collectors home, on grounds where work is permanently installed (in terms of large scale sculpture) and in labs. It’s normally ideal when it takes place in a formal studio or lab within a museum or archive since the conditions are temperature and humidity controlled and have adequate machinery, tools and equipment needed to restore, conserve or clean an art object.
So is it like tweezers and chemicals and magnifying glasses? Because that’s what I picture. I’ve got CSI Miami forensics in mind, but for art.
The studio at Modern Art Conservation
LOL! Yes kind of! We do a lot of treatments, from dusting, dry cleaning, the testing of small areas to make sure solvents wont damage them, stabilising areas of paint that is lifting by essentially ironing them w a tiny iron under a microscope and using natural glues. We also oftentimes repaint small areas where paint has come off (called losses) also often under a microscope matching the colours and pigments as closely as possible to the original with paints that can be removed if necessary which is called inpainting. We also varnish and de-varnish paintings. Flattening or re-stretching of canvases that are no longer taut or planar, removing mold, etc.
Ok. And what does a Registrar and Collection Manager do?
I specialise in collection and inventory management, logistics, registration, and object research. So I’m basically the guy who catalogues, gathers documentation for, and confirms artwork information / cataloguing information of incoming and outgoing artworks, and makes sure they’re documented before arriving and when leaving the studio for liability reasons. I also take professional high res photographs of the artworks for before and after treatment.
As far as collection management goes, it’s a lot of looking after and cataloguing of art objects in a public, private collector’s collection or objects in a museum holdings in addition to looking after loans, these art objects’ movements, sending these objects out for or bringing in / arranging conservation consultations, framing, shipping and logistics and so forth.
Steve moderating at an event for Kee Joo Park, Echoes in Time
Do you guys work on hundreds of artworks at a time?
Not hundreds but a lot at once, yes. We often have many artworks in queue waiting to be treated, tested while others are being worked on.
Any works I might be wow-ed by?
Well, yes definitely. The only problem is the client confidentiality part, so I really can’t share any specific works, but I can say there are a lot of famous artists from all over the globe, including Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Anne Truitt, Glenn Ligon, Miyoko Ito, just to name a few. Most of the paintings we treat are categorised as modern and contemporary. Some really incredible works come through the doors.
Wow. Ok so let’s just say I’d 100% be hands-a-shakin’ if I had to handle any of these.
And so what were you doing before? How’d you land in conservation?
Steve at David Zwirner in NYC
So originally I double majored in Art, Design & Culture studies and Cognitive Studies in the Arts. I minored in Philosophy of Art. I also hold an Associates degree in Photography. My first big career role was working at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC for 9 years as an Exhibition Aide, then at MoMA for almost 7 years working for the Department of Visitor Services and most recently with David Zwirner working in the Research & Exhibitions Team. After pandemic layoffs I helped run a small contemporary gallery in the Lower East Side.
Oh wow, incredible.
Yea, my time at Zwirner was incredible really. I was the Library & Archive Coordinator there for almost two years and also assisted David Zwirner Books with distribution and logistics, which was really fantastic, a dream job! But conservation has always interested me as well. I am more fond of preservation, history and research of artworks rather than their sale and “the market” - the art market does indeed effect the business of a private conservation practice, whereas in a museum setting it’s normally pieces already in the collection or new acquisitions coming into the museum which need attention, so there is not as much concentration on the valuation of the art object in that setting.
Worst (or ickiest?) damage you or your colleagues have had to conserve to date?
A dog peed on a sculpture! Also, fly poop is a very common condition issue which needs to be removed. There also was a dead spider in an artwork!
Gross! Yea, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Christian Boltanski’s work but all I remember of high school art classes was learning about how he pissed on his work and that definitely stuck with me. That’s got to be the worst, surely.
Honestly, so far the worst damage I’ve come across in this industry is a painting where a previous conservator once varnished it and inpainted it to hell so that you could no longer see the brushstrokes and the nuances in the tonalities of the black values that the artist was trying to convey. So it ended up all black with no tonal values of black at all and looked like an abyss. It was a New York abstract painter who is literally renown for his “black” paintings. It really showed me just how incredibly careful even the best conservators have to be, and how precious these works are.
Eliasson’s recent 2024 works at Tanya Bonakdar, NYC
Also, I heard about an abstract painting where an elbow somehow went through it. A lot of crazy things happen behind the scenes to artwork in this industry that I’ve learnt aren’t always so great.
Oh and there was a famous French conceptual painter of the sixties whose work literally fell off the wall LOL! In fact there was another painting I remember that came off the wall too and a chair actually went through it. Artwork tears are one of the most intense repairs. It’s not all minor scratches and cracks!
Wow, that’s bad. And if you could work with any piece of art in the whole world, what would it be?
I’m obviously not a conservator myself but pretty involved in what goes on and read all of the condition reports and take condition images and document treatment before bed after. I read all these reports and follow along with their progress very closely as they work on the paintings. So if I could work with any piece of art in the world, it would be an Olafur Eliasson. His stuff is newer though and considered ‘objects’ not paintings so it’s a whole different ball game to for conservation of objects. Paintings I have to say I’m pretty gagged over are the Ellsworth Kelly’s and Anne Truitt. Truitt’s - Oak was definitely a favourite. I would love to work on conserving sculptures but I would need to go back to school to learn the science behind that and it is expensive!
Check out how to have a work commissioned here, for a piece of art that you can love and look after for years to come. No dog piss or fly poop.