Culture Connect Featured Event

This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to explore the process of fine arts conservation, uncovering the relationship between curators and conservators and the objects entrusted to their care. Each of the works in the exhibition, which includes Asian ceramics, African ritual objects, ancient statues and mosaics, and American and European paintings and decorative arts from the Gallery’s collection, illustrates a different conservation dilemma. What does cleaning a painting’s surface reveal? Should fragmented objects be displayed as pieces or reassembled into a convincing pastiche? Should damaged objects be repaired for aesthetic reasons? The passage of time impacts not only the physical state of an object but also the techniques used to preserve it. Time Will Tell examines the evolving science of conservation and the questions that arise in preserving works of art while staying faithful to the artists’ intentions.