It is rare for an untied shoelace to have positive consequences. Rarer still if the resulting trip sends you careering into three priceless vases with the same brutal efficiency as the proverbial china shop's bovine guest.
Unlikely as it may seem, the infamous accidental destruction last January of three Qing vases in Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum has reaped unlooked-for rewards in the form of an unusual exhibition, Mission Impossible: Ethics and Choices in Conservation at the Fitzwilliam Museum, nominally centred on the first of the three vases to be repaired, but principally concerned with the theme of damage and its restoration.
Damage is generally bad news for curators, and the exhibition finds novel ways to shed light on the conservator's task. It also manages to point up the way in which the faded colours of an old master, or
|
|
  |
|
|
the tarnished bronze of a sculpture, have come to be stamps of aesthetic authenticity. The trail left by generations of spectators guarantees the remoteness of an artwork's production, and if its shiny newness had been preserved in aspic we wouldn't relate to it.
But the best thing about the exhibition is that visitors are actually encouraged to do their own damage, satisfying that inner schoolchild in us. You won't be invited to recreate January's wrecking extravaganza, but you will be encouraged to tinker with and prod at samples of fine brocade fabrics, marble, bronze and paintwork to your heart's content. Similar samples are shown protected so that you can see how much damage you've done. The experience is of course mainly educational, but I assure you it's well worth the trip just for the rare satisfaction of having had a good old poke. 
FIRST POSTED AUGUST 11, 2006
 More art: John Richardson
|
go back...page 2 of 2
