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

TRAINING IN THE CONSERVATION OF PAINTINGS
ing, non-profitmaking basis, under the Directorship of Mr Richard
Buck, on whom our National Gallery called in 1949 for advice and
personal help in the formation of its conservation department. The
Association has recently set up a three-year postgraduate course
with the help of the Ford Foundation. The first set of three students,
entered in 1970, have only just completed their qualifying year,
after which it is intended that they should work for two years on the
inspection and restoration of paintings as apprentices to the Association.
They receive a stipend throughout the three-year course,
and a certificate of the Association, not a university degree, at the
end.
(b) In Institutes primarily concerned with Training
39. The Institut fiir Technologic der Malerei in Stuttgart is the
only institute that we visited in Europe which is primarily for training,
and in which actual restoration of works of art is undertaken
only with a view to its value in training. Here, however, the two
training courses offered are part of a programme lasting in all five
years or more, two or sometimes three of which must be passed in
conservation studios, often abroad. The main course, lasting six
semestres (about three years) is for students qualified by at least
three years satisfactory practical experience in a conservation department;
and, during the course, periods of practical work in the summer
vacations as temporary assistants in conservation studios elsewhere
are arranged for the students by the Institut. An introductory
course of one year is also provided at the Institut, and is accepted
as one of the three years of experience qualifying for the main
course.
40. In the Conservation Centre of the Institute of Fine Arts, New
York University, which was established in 1960, and also in the
course which has recently been established by Mr and Mrs Sheldon
Keck as one of the Cooperstown Graduate Programs of the New
York State University, Oneonta, similar measures are taken to ensure
that the students have a period or periods of apprenticeship
which, it is recognised, must be taken in a working conservation
studio and not in an institute primarily devoted to training. These
periods are equated in the United States with hospital internships
of medical training, and are so designated. The New York University
course, under Professor Lawrence Majewski, of which Mr Keck
was the first director, provides for a seven-month internship during
the third of the four years' training at the Centre, and this may be
extended into the fourth year; at the Cooperstown course, which
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