Treatment of Large Paintings at Shelburne Museum

FAIN: PG-263492-19

Shelburne Museum (Shelburne, VT 05482-0010)
Nancie C. Ravenel (Project Director: April 2018 to August 2019)

A conservation assessment of 10 damaged over-sized paintings from the Shelburne Museum’s permanent collection that include portraiture and landscapes covering themes of family life, commerce and advertising, transportation history, and wildlife relevant to the history of Vermont, the Adirondack region, and New England at large.  Included in the collection are Racquette Lake by Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, which depicts a scene near the Shelburne Museum, works by prolific wildlife painter Carl Rungius, and the piece Studebaker Wagon Sign, which connects to the museum’s collection of horse-drawn vehicles.  This project would be the first step in making these paintings accessible to the general public and ready for exhibition.

Shelburne Museum requests funding to support the consultation of two conservators from the Williamstown Regional Art Conservation Lab to visit the Museum and examine the condition of 10 large-scale paintings and frames. The two conservators will provide Shelburne Museum with treatment proposals to address condition issues that prevent the Museum from placing these ten paintings on view. Once examined, Shelburne Museum staff would seek additional funding to set a prospective treatment plan in place and, ultimately, include the works in rotating exhibitions. Electra Havemeyer Webb gathered Shelburne’s collection of American paintings in the late 1950s. In a forward-looking endeavor, Webb assembled a survey of American portraits, landscapes, genre scenes, and still lifes from the 18th and 19th centuries to animate her museum and narrate a story of the United States as an attractive heterogeneous and industrious nation.