Art in Our Front Yard_ Sculpture Conservation with Jonathan Taggart

My name is Jonathan Taggart. I am the sculpture conservator for the city. I mostly work on outdoor public art. So they can be wood, they can be stone, they can be metal, they can be fiberglass. Hopefully they're not paper mache. And I do travel all over the country working on outdoor sculpture. I do work in Kansas City. I do work in Santa Fe. I do work in Portland, Oregon. That's my territory. We're doing a maintenance of the cast iron panels in the bus shelter. These have been maintained a number of times since they were first installed with this hot wax treatment, which is all we're doing is heating the panels up and putting a very hard sculpture wax for their preservation. It's interesting to see the difference between the panels that have been maintained and some of the other iron elements in the bus shelter that have not received any maintenance or not expected to receive any maintenance for the last 12 years. And if you look down here, you'll see part of the problem is that we're starting to get iron corrosion at all of these joints, which is actually starting to splitter the push out from the glass. And there's going to be some major maintenance work that needs to happen here. The story here is really is that public art needs maintenance and the maintenance can be expensive. So it's not just acquiring a piece of public art, but it's making the commitment to maintain that piece of art for however many years its life expectancy is. And most people expect it's kind of in perpetuity. So when selecting pieces to be put into public art, you want best quality construction, best quality materials that were actually designed to be maintained and designed to be durable in the long term. Ideally, this steel should have all been galvanized before it was painted, and that would have prevented the rust at this point in time. Alternatively, this material could have been made of stainless steel. I know at the time that this was made that the artists worked very hard to make sure this was best quality materials and to make it durable and to make it last. Yet, you know, here we are 12 years later, and we're looking at some major expenses to maintain this bus shelter. It's the only piece of functional art in the city. What is it going to take to stabilize this piece? And also when new pieces are being considered for acquisition by the city, what is their long-term life expectancy? Are they made with best quality materials and with the techniques that are durable? This is Our Lady of Victory. And if you look real closely at the surface, you'll see that it's very pitted, and there are lots of small pits. Down here you can actually see where the water runs down the same place. And these are actually etched into the surface of the bronze. And that's because for many, many years, probably 100 years, this did not have a protective coating on it. So if we didn't put protective coatings on this, this would continue, the surface would continue to get worse and worse. The coating that's on it is a lacquer. It's called Incralac, International Copper Research Institute lacquer, and it is a B48N. It's an acrylic lacquer. That's the resin that it's based on. But if you look here on these upper surfaces, the resin's only supposed to be good according to the manufacturer for five years, but most people let it go longer than that. So every five years according to the manufacturer, this should be re-coated. Because if you look here where it's broken down, you can see the corrosion starting a little bit. So on the undersides where the lacquer has been protected from the sun, you'll actually see that it's darker and more saturated and in better condition. So this lacquer coating has really failed. I think we put this coating on about 12 years ago, and it's really time to renew it so that we don't continue to exacerbate this pitting. Now up here in the top where it definitely gets the most sun, the most wind, the most pigeons, you can see how corroded this surface actually is. So these upper surfaces are the ones that need renewing probably about every five years. So we were talking earlier about public art and the cost of public art, and that's one thing that everyone should know is that when artwork is put into the public environment, it's not maintenance free. And that every piece of public art that's added to the collection is going to need maintenance on a regular basis or else it deteriorates. And this is a great example because this was left unmaintained for 100 years. This surface, if it had been maintained even simply with wax every few years, this surface would be pristine. But you can see how rough it is from lack of maintenance. And with all sculptures, whether it's iron or wood or stone, some kind of maintenance is needed on a regular basis. So every piece that's added to the public art collection has an ongoing cost associated with it. You have that blue-green color that shows that the coating's broken down and you're starting to get more corrosion. Whereas if you look at the face of the general in the middle, because it's been protected by the brim of that hat, you can see that's in a much better condition overall.