A treasured, historical painting needs proper care to continue to tell its story sharply and accurately.
A viewer might be attracted to the deep hue of delicate clothing on a famed king or the fine brush strokes of a rolling landscape’s blades of grass. An experienced eye could even note the era in which a work of art was constructed by the medium used — but only if that work is preserved properly and tediously, down to the degrees of temperature and percent of humidity where it lives.
The importance and necessity of art preservation and restoration also extends to environments that house art, places that often are considered works of art themselves.
The Taft Museum of Art fits tightly into this category, as noted by its President/CEO Deborah Emont Scott during July’s groundbreaking for its Bicentennial Infrastructure Project. This restoration effort aims to enhance visitor experience, resolve HVAC issues, upgrade security and fire protection and preserve the museum’s 200-year-old house.
Known for its list of prestigious owners, including Martin Baum, Nicholas Longworth, David Sinton, Anna Sinton Taft, and Charles Phelps Taft, the house was registered a National Historic Landmark in 1973 (it became a public museum in 1932). It is Cincinnati’s oldest wooden residence in its original location and holds the celebrated Robert S. Duncanson landscape murals on original plaster in the home’s foyer. Duncanson, a Black artist, was commissioned to complete the works between 1850 and 1852 and they are considered “the most significant pre–Civil War domestic murals in the United States,” says the Taft.
“A painting is very, very sensitive to a change in climate. Because if it’s hot, the canvas may expand at a different rate than the paint layers on top of it, and then you would have cracking,” Emont Scott says. “That’s why we try and maintain, in the museum profession, 72 degrees Fahrenheit, plus or minus 5 degrees, and 50% humidity, plus or minus 5%. The house has to be treated similarly, especially a house built in 1820.”
“Clearly the house was not built to be a museum. In an ideal world, we need our museum to sort of be hermetically sealed to maintain those conditions for the art,” she continues.
In partnership with GBBN Architects, HGC Construction and historic preservation consulting firm Sullebarger & Associates, the project will address major repairs so the museum can more easily maintain these complex conditions and preserve the house’s iconic, grand facade and original wood siding. Since its launch last October, the “Love This House’” campaign has reached just over $10 million of its $12.7 million goal to directly benefit the Bicentennial Infrastructure Project.
In 2015, the staff and collaborators decided to assess and make a plan for restoration, looking forward to the museum’s 90th anniversary next year and the historic house’s 2020 bicentennial.
Initial plans for 2020 faced setbacks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous construction bids and fund estimations were significantly affected; $2 million was added to the campaign’s original $10.7 million goal, Emont Scott says.
The July 30 groundbreaking kicked off one of the most important aspects of restoration that involves taking each piece of wood off of the house individually. About 80%-90% of the wood is original to the structure, Emont Scott says. If it’s not too damaged or warped, it will be put back after proper insulation is in place and vapor barriers are secured.
“We are going to have to look at every board. And if there’s water damage, we will shave it down, if it can be used,” she says. “We want to use as many as we can. If not, we will find wood that is as close to the kind we are replacing as possible. And then we will have a better environment for the house itself … and the works on the inside of the museum will be able to be conserved, as well.”
Restorations only apply to the original footprint, leaving special exhibitions, the outdoor garden, Museum Shop and Lindner Family Café open throughout construction, during which guests are invited admission-free with an option to “pay what you wish” for entry. Construction is predicted to finish in spring 2022.
Often deemed the Taft’s largest work of art, the house itself has been emptied of its prized contents. At any one time, Emont Scott says there are about 400 to 500 objects on view there, some of which have gone into storage. About 80 works were carefully selected to be reinterpreted in an exhibit called In a New Light, which can currently be seen in the Fifth Third Gallery at the museum.
“It’s revelatory seeing the collection in a new light,” Emont Scott says. “There are many examples of the way we’ve reinterpreted the collection, trying to make this early-20th-century collection meaningful to a 21st-century audience.”
Among Chinese porcelains, 19th-century American furniture and European and American portraits and landscapes, select works of In a New Light confront centuries-old social concerns such as distribution of wealth, environmental destruction, and gender and racial inequality, according to the museum’s website.
Emont Scott mentions one work in particular, “Portrait of a Man Rising from His Chair,” by Dutch artist Rembrandt. Painted in 1633, the portrait shows a stop-motion moment with a man gesturing to his left. It was innovative for portraits then to convey expression or motion, she says.
The original label describes Rembrandt’s “magical technique” and signals wealth, whereas the “More to the Story” label — which signifies the reinterpreting aspect of the exhibit — reveals that the coveted black dye of his garb was harvested by enslaved people and his gold-adorned lace collar was made by working-class women.
“This is in a section that we have titled ‘Power and Wealth,’” Emont Scott says. “And it lets you know that sometimes things that we take for granted have come to be because of things that we might not want to think about or talk about.”
Another select 50 works are on view at the Cincinnati Museum Center in an exhibit titled Borrowed Gems. The show is on view through February and displays Charles Phelps Taft’s and Anna Sinton Taft’s personal collection that was passed on to Cincinnati along with their home to officially become the Taft Museum of Art in 1932.
These new exhibits were endorsed during the groundbreaking event, where donors and supporters were also recognized individually. As the leading donor to the “Love This House” campaign and a longtime partner of the museum, Fifth Third Bank was represented by Heidi Jark, managing director of the Fifth Third Foundation. Jark says the Taft Museum isn’t just a building, but “a living, breathing center for the arts that’s accessible to all people. The question isn’t why would we give this gift, it’s why wouldn’t we?”
Fifth Third also donated $1 million to the Taft’s 2004 additions and interior renovations, which earned the Fifth Third Gallery namesake.
Public and private donations have contributed to the “Love This House” campaign, and the museum earned two large grants toward its goal. The Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the project $750,000, and the National Park Service (as part of Save America’s Treasures) granted $500,000. Both of the grants were allotted in the maximum amounts offered by each organization.
“It’s one thing for me to tell you how wonderful the project is,” Emont Scott says. “But I think it’s even more meaningful when you have a panel of experts at the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Park Service, who manage and run the Landmark Program for the country, to review grant applications. Those applications sort of separate the men from the boys and the women from the girls and everyone in between.”
“They’re not easy to do and I think the fact that we got the maximum amount granted for both of these grants is like a super, super, super ‘Good Housekeeping’ stamp of approval,” Emont Scott adds.
Taft Museum of Art, 316 Pike St., Downtown, taftmuseum.org.
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This article appears in Aug 18-31, 2021.
