Word: museums
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Beneath the directors, who also run the Germanic Museum, the Semitic Museum and affiliated Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington, D. C., The Fogg branches into a network of specialized divisions. The Department of Conservation is probably the most fascinating with its tasks of detecting art fakes and of restoring damaged works. Under George L. Stout, who spends part of his time at Boston's Gardner Museum, is arrayed a staff of six specialists in this line...
Functioning with medical preciseness, the unique technical department has an elaborate system for inspection, diagnosis, and treatment of paintings acquired by the museum or sent in by private owners for a check-up. If a forgery is revealed in a work not belonging to The Fogg, it is always kept secret for "diplomatic" reasons...
...Fogg technical department, on a Fogg picture now exhibited in a second-floor gallery. Purchased in Italy by a collector, the Crespi Madonna was severely damaged when the ship caught fire. The Fogg directors bought the damaged picture, blistered and flaked as it was. At the Boston Museum of Fine Arts all the remaining paint was transferred to an aluminum panel and the missing portions restored...
When a new work of art is brought into the museum, it first passes through the domain of Superintendent Milton Worthley where it is unpacked by Elmer Heaps, former Gloucester sailmaker who is now The Fogg's carpenter. Then the work is sent through a fixed routine from the registrar to photographers to technical department and finally to a gallery or the storeroom. This latter, a spacious hall in the basement, already contains hundreds of miscellaneous items from the chair President Conant sits in at Commencement and the University's Great Salt to a bottle with Dean Swift's seal...
...Fogg's collected treasures have the dual purpose of serving as common museum exhibits and as laboratory specimens for student study. No artistic work will be accepted on the condition that it be constantly on display, and the contents of the galleries are changed periodically with the aid of a clever measuring device which allows one man alone to hang a painting exactly 62 inches from the floor. For paintings which are needed for study but which can find no place in the galleries there is the Picture Study Room, consisting of 22 rolling screens for these exhibits...