Before The Paint Hits The Wall: Will Shank
Before The Paint Hits The Wall: Will Shank
Before The Paint Hits The Wall: Will Shank
Will Shank
The Getty Conservation Institute works internationally to advance conservation and to enhance
and encourage the preservation and understanding of the visual arts in all of their
dimensions—objects, collections, architecture, and sites. The Institute serves the conservation
community through scientific research; education and training; field projects; and the
dissemination of the results of both its work and the work of others in the field. In all its
endeavors, the Institute is committed to addressing unanswered questions and to promoting the
highest possible standards of conservation practice.
The Institute is a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust, an international cultural and philanthropic
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programs for education, scholarship, and conservation.
Before the Paint Hits the Wall
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Preface
The following essay was originally presented at “Mural Painting and Conservation in the
Americas,” a two-day symposium sponsored by the Getty Research Institute and the Getty
Conservation Institute, May 16–17, 2003, at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
discussed the social, artistic, and political dimensions of murals, the value they hold for different
constituencies, and the rationale and conservation techniques for ensuring their long-term
survival.
The views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not represent the
Since leaving the ivory tower of climate-controlled art museums and paintings maintained in
superb condition, I have devoted a fair amount of thought to this question: Why do people apply
paint to walls?
Most commonly, it seems to me, wall paint is applied with two broad purposes in mind:
• The purpose of the painting may be “fine art,” with no particular purpose other than
imparting beauty.
• Or the fine art may come with a political, cultural, or other message, bringing this
The next obvious question that I ask myself as a conservator is this: What are the
longevity expectations of the wall paint, according to the painters and the people who own the
• The decorative murals are usually expected to last somewhat longer, and they are
considered renewable, i.e., repaintable, by the original artist or by another artist of the
• Murals whose significance relates primarily to their artistry are the ones that
Then the trickier questions begin, like this one: How does time change the value of
murals? Wall paintings whose original intent was simply to inform can acquire historic or artistic
value simply because of their longevity (graffiti on a wall in Pompeii, for example, or an early-
Works of a deceased artist are inherently more valuable, because there will be no more
It is difficult, in any case, to determine the “value” of a wall painting, since it usually is not
movable and thus cannot usually be bought and sold, or traded, independently of the
This point brings us to the next question: How long can or should murals last? This is
indeed the Big Question, and I, for one, hope that together muralists, conservators, art historians,
paint manufacturers, arts attorneys, and public art managers will eventually come to some
consensus about the various approaches to the answers to that question. The question of the
permanence of the paint—and to some degree of the painting support—is, in fact, the
Working backward from the title of the symposium, “Mural Painting and Conservation in
the Americas,” I hope to at least identify two issues in this brief introduction; other papers in this
symposium address one or the other of these two topics: (1) considerations to be taken into
account before the paint hits the wall; and (2) the present state of affairs surrounding the murals
that go bad or peel or fade or disappear; who is intervening to save those murals; and different
Is the wall that will receive the paint a permanent engaged architectural surface or a
freestanding system?
What are the salient environmental factors (for instance, pollution, a marine environment,
What is the geographic orientation of the wall? Will it be blasted, for instance, by southern
What is the relative permanence or fluidity of the building itself or the structures in the
neighborhood?
Is there a stated or written agreement with the owner of the building?—not just about the
usual parameters of costs of labor and equipment. Has an eye been cast toward the future
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about maintenance of the mural? For instance, who will clean off graffiti? Who will pay for that?
Who will keep weeds from obscuring the mural? Who will pay for that? Who will assess the
deterioration of the mural, and who will intervene? Will the artist do that? Will the owner arrange
for a conservator to do that? Will the community find the resources to do that?
From the point of view of the conservation profession, contemporary murals seem to be in their
own category.
Principles and ethics of art conservation dictate certain norms for those of us whose
careers have been devoted to preserving the artwork of others. These principles include those
of reversibility and of documentation of one’s work when any changes are made to the artwork
of another.
The conservation of easel paintings is similar to the conservation of murals, in that similar
problems can present themselves, such as delamination of one layer from another, or an
But murals are different from easel paintings for many reasons. The materials of outdoor
murals have a relatively short life span, mostly because of their environment. And their scale
The care of outdoor sculpture is similar to mural conservation, in that both categories of
artwork are subjected to challenging conditions and thus require more frequent maintenance
than indoor artworks. Sculptures frequently have renewable surfaces (which may, for instance,
be recoated, repatinated, or in some cases repainted), and they may or may not be different from
murals.
There are two basic approaches to intervening in the condition of a deteriorated mural,
and these approaches diverge widely. The first is traditional conservation, as discussed above.
Artists would call the second approach restoration, but conservators would term it repainting.
We will explore the differences between the two approaches and the appropriateness of each.
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Many of this symposium’s presentations focus on the mural as a physical fact. You will hear
from public art managers, from muralists, from mural conservators, and from paint chemists and
representatives of paint manufacturers. They intend to share with you a great deal of information
about the physical facts of murals. Together we hope that those of us who care about these
great works of art will come to some conclusions about how they might best be preserved.
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Will Shank
Will Shank was on staff at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 1985 to 2000, and for
the last ten years of his tenure there, he served as chief conservator. He studied art history and
art conservation in Florence, earned a master’s degree from the Institute of Fine Arts at New
York University, and received advanced training in paintings conservation at Harvard. Shank,
who has restored many paintings, has produced comparative research on the techniques of
artists as diverse as John Singleton Copley and Bruce Conner, Clyfford Still and Diego Rivera,
and Maxfield Parrish and Robert Motherwell. He is the curator of the exhibition A Hidden
Picasso, which examines two works done by Picasso in 1900. Shank is also currently writing