From the SLAM Workshop: Collections care technician keeps art clean for optimal viewing

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

Just like in your home, frames and other decorative objects in a museum are prone to collecting dust. Keeping clean the 2,500 or so works of art on view at the Saint Louis Art Museum is no small chore, but collections care technician Mary Culver ensures the art at SLAM is presented in optimal conditions.  

While cleaning and maintaining the Museum’s public spaces is a collaborative effort between environmental aides and gallery attendants, cleaning the art itself requires a more specialized touch. Culver holds a master’s degree in historic preservation with a specialization in architectural conservation. During graduate school, she spent time as a conservation technician in an art museum; she then worked as an architectural conservator for many years, focusing on the treatment of architectural surface finishes. This work sent her to buildings across the mid-Atlantic and northeastern states; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Krakow, Poland. After moving to the Midwest, though, Culver said she missed the dynamic environment of a museum and the opportunity to engage with an evolving collection. 

A good portion of Culver’s work takes place in the galleries when the Museum is closed. She uses common tools like Swiffer dusters, brushes, air puffers, microfiber cloths, and vacuums to keep art objects free from damaging particles like dust, pollen, and fiber. In some cases, wet-cleaning techniques are applied using mild solutions.

“While working in the galleries, just the simple act of dusting or vacuuming objects, frames, and paintings can be very rewarding,” Culver said. “Noting the difference in appearance as the layer of dust is removed on a gilded frame or highly polished object—it almost glows where the light hits it.”    

Over the course of the last eight and a half years at SLAM, Culver has created a meticulous gallery-maintenance schedule, with some objects cleaned weekly, while others are monthly, annually, or biannually depending on location, accessibility, or type of surface. Highly polished wood surfaces in the decorative arts galleries, for example, tend to accumulate noticeable dust and can tolerate being dusted weekly, whereas more fragile sculptural works might need to be carefully vacuumed using a small brush just once every other year.  

Then there’s the sheer complexity to factor in. Dusting the Dale Chihuly Wine Chandelier that hangs above the Auditorium Lobby, for example, is about a five-hour job that requires Culver to stand on a lift. This is done annually using a Swiffer duster to reach into all the nooks of the massively detailed glass piece. Culver said she does this project around the start of the holiday season, which tends to see more people in that area of the Museum due to an increased event schedule. Also, because the piece bears a resemblance to Christmas ornaments, Culver thinks it probably gets more eyes than usual during the winter season.   

“My job involves trying to find the sweet spot of taking care of the art without overdoing it,” Culver said. “I aim to strike a balance between accepting a certain amount of dust accumulation, but not so much that it interferes with a visitor’s ability to appreciate the art.” 

Culver also works with SLAM’s engineering and conservation departments to track environmental factors at the Museum—like temperature, humidity, and light levels across galleries and storage areas—which is essential for maintaining optimal conditions for the preservation of the collection. When not in the galleries, Culver’s work takes her into the conservation labs, where her responsibilities can vary greatly—from polishing silver or cleaning Japanese flower baskets to addressing aesthetic flaws in frames. She previously worked on a decorative frame for the Édouard Vuillard painting Ker-Xavier Roussel Sketching currently on view in Alice and Fred Conway Gallery 217. The gilded frame had areas of loss, both in the finish and the decorative dimensional details. Using moldable putty and other fill materials, she sculpted some of the missing ornamentations and floral details and painted them to match the rest of the frame. The goal, Culver said, is to not make the early 1900’s frame perfect, but to avoid it being a distraction to the painting inside. 

“I don’t feel the need to leave my imprint on the art world. Those in art conservation follow a code of ethics to do no harm,” Culver said. “We do only what’s necessary to preserve the art—nothing cosmetic that alters the original piece. So, it is gratifying to walk through a gallery and see a frame that once had distracting damage now hanging on a museum wall letting the art inside take center stage.”