How to Handle Art Handling

by Ashley Rand

This week was quite eventful at CAM. We managed to get a lot of artwork photographed, and learned new ways of taking those pictures. First off, we had difficulty photographing Robert Rauschenberg’s piece Light, from 7 Characters Suite, 1982 because the piece is enclosed in plexiglas for mounting and framing purposes. Once the piece was hung on the wall, a mirror that is part of the piece did not appear as a mirror, so we reflected light onto it with foam core. However, this created a glare on the overall piece, although the mirror was now visible. As a result, we carefully took it off the wall and unscrewed the plexiglas covering. This enabled us to put the piece back up to photograph it with the white foam core reflecting light onto the mirror only. Once the photographs were shot, we made sure to carefully place the plex back onto the artwork.

Another issue we faced this week was dealing with LeCorbusier’s Unite Series. As we were checking the accession numbers on each piece, we realized that there was a problem with a couple of the numbers. So, we had to conduct research to allow us to be able to fix the mistake. This process took awhile, as we searched the internet for the Unite Series. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to match since each site said and showed something different. The next step was to then go into the collection vault and look at the artist’s folder. These folders contain the documentation sheets and the information regarding the series. After reading the documentation sheets we were able to label them correctly. In all, I never realized how much time and effort it would take to fix such errors. I now see why it is important to consider all of the steps it takes when dealing with artwork. I couldn't imagine what the museum would be like if we had to do this every time we photographed something.