Training in the Conservation of Paintings - Calouste Gulbenkian ...

THE PROBLEM
developed scientific methods of analysis, restoration and environmental
control, the conservation work done today will be more lasting
than in the past. If so, the need for the restoration of old paintings
could decrease in the ultimate future. Certainly it is the substandard
condition in which many of the country's works of art are
still housed that is the prime cause of the need for so much conservation
work as it is now apparent should be done. It seems clear
even so, that the prospect of a falling off in demand for conservation
is remote. Controlled environment is in its infancy, and even such
supposedly beneficent inventions as air conditioning have through
their wrong application sometimes caused damage; the need for
restoration can still recur at comparatively frequent intervals in the
same painting; no system of priorities could practicably be devised
whereby only those works of art which need and deserve conservation
receive the attention of qualified restorers; and, to complete
the story, new paintings, presenting restoration problems of great
complexity, are being produced. There would thus seem little likelihood
that demand for the services of restorers could soon be satisfied.
Government Temporary Training Scheme
24. Before you asked us to consider long term arrangements for
training, emergency action was taken by the Government towards
reducing the shortage of trained restorers in the short term and providing
a cadre of instructors for future training. It had become clear
that neither a national institute of training in conservation nor any
other scheme involving additional training duties for existing restorers,
if this were recommended and approved, could do anything
for some years after its establishment to remedy the shortage of
fully trained restorers. On the contrary, it was likely to be an additional
claimant for the services, as teachers, of the few fully qualified
restorers now at work. For this reason the Government decided in
1968 to make fuller use immediately of existing training capacity by
increasing experimentally the number of trainees (normally restricted
to those destined for service in the institution in which they are
trained) in the National Gallery, Tate Gallery and Victoria and
Albert Museum. The two galleries agreed to accept for training, at
the rate of one or two a year, a total of four students each, and the
Victoria and Albert Museum a total of six students, at any one time,
for a four-year conservation course leading to a diploma. (Paintings
as well as other works of art are restored at the Victoria and Albert
Museum, but under this temporary scheme trainees are accepted
there only for sculpture, drawings and applied arts.) The first six
appointments, selected from 323 applications, were made in 1969.