From the SLAM Workshop: Conservation tech finds innovative ways to enhance art accessibility

The “From the SLAM Workshop” blog series highlights the behind-the-scenes work that enhances the visitor experience at the Saint Louis Art Museum. 

Brian Koelz is a conservation technician who is responsible for matting and framing all the works on paper presented in SLAM’s galleries. He is also tasked with finding or, in some cases, constructing the frames you see on paintings and works on paper throughout the Museum. Koelz works out of the matting and framing studio associated with the paper lab, which is one of four conservation labs at the Museum—the others are for paintings, textiles, and objects.

“The matting and framing that I do creates an interface between the Museum visitor and the art object,” Koelz said. “My goal is to bridge the two objectives of keeping the work safe from any negative symptoms of the viewer interface and facilitating the clearest and richest experience of an object of art.”

Koelz also modifies frames for conservation needs or on works going out on loan to ensure the safety of the object as it travels. But in other cases, Koelz has to start from scratch to find the best way to keep an object as safe and as accessible as possible.

A reinstallation of SLAM’s medieval galleries, Global Connections opens this year and features a French, mid-15th-century manuscript called a book of hours, which was meant for intimate devotional use. It is about five inches tall, fragile, and tightly bound, making any display a little complicated. (A similar 15th-century Italian book of hours is shown in the photos below.) Traditionally, books and manuscripts have been displayed in plexiglass or mat-board cradles that lie mostly flat—quite different from the upright position in which a book was meant to be held.

“The challenge with this project was to determine how much access we can provide to viewers without jeopardizing the object in any way,” Koelz said. “This meant determining an angle at which the manuscript could be opened for the duration of its time on view.”

Koelz created a custom design, allowing the work to be seen at roughly the same angle at which one of its previous owners might have held it. The cradle design was made with mat-board scraps glued together to provide enough support for the manuscript. The structure, which Koelz described as a “triangulation of hands,” was then covered in walnut veneer to complement the manuscript. The piece will be on view enclosed in a display cabinet, called a vitrine.

Material choice was important. The mat board used is a neutral product. From a conservation standpoint, it is considered safe to be encased under a vitrine with the artwork. Untreated wood products, however, are known to give off contaminants that can degrade materials of an artwork, so the veneer cladding had to be sealed in shellac.

The hand-made design uses magnets to hold a secondary trifold to the cradle’s main structure, which allows the straps holding the manuscript open to be mostly hidden. During the installation, art preparers will occasionally turn the manuscript pages to display other views. This is also important from a conservation standpoint. To reduce possible harm, works on paper have a limit on how much time they can be exposed to gallery lights.

SLAM has around 300 books and manuscripts in its global collection, very few of which are regularly on view because of light sensitivity and past display limitations. The recent cradle Koelz made is specific to this book of hours, but the design concept, he said, can be replicated for projects in the future.