Cold Never Bothered Us Anyway - An Arctic Conservation Adventure

Hays Shoop; Yasuko Ogino

Hays Shoop Conservators of Paintings, Denver, CO
Yasuko Ogino Conservators of Paintings, Denver, CO

Abstract

In November of 2015 we were contracted to travel on-site to Barrow, Alaska (some 300 miles above the Arctic Circle) to treat a large oil painting on canvas, and to examine and prepare treatment proposals and cost estimates for the other five paintings in the collection of the Inupiat Heritage Center (IHC). The project occurred during the week in which the sun ceased rising above the horizon and the temperatures were in the minus 20-30F range.

The treatment of the large painting went well and as planned, though issues arose with the use of a relatively non-toxic solvent (EtOH) in the building, and a staffers extreme allergies. The intent was that the easel paintings would be shipped to Denver for treatment where we would have the full complement of equipment and supplies.

When IHC received funding to treat the five paintings in 2017 we began to advise the collections manager on properly packing and shipping them, only to find that the cost of transit insurance to fly the paintings out of Barrow (no road access) would sink the project. We ultimately agreed to undertake some extensive treatments on-site (including infusing and lining a large painting), in a figure-it-out-as-you-go manner, during the opposite season when it was daylight around the clock and the temperatures soared to the 20 above zero range!
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Author Biographies

Hays Shoop, Conservators of Paintings, Denver, CO

D. Hays Shoop has been a Conservator of Paintings at the Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts in Denver, Colorado since 2002 and worked at the Rocky Mountain Conservation Center at the University of Denver beginning in 1988. He holds a BFA from Arizona State University, and served an internship in the Conservation of Easel Paintings at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London as a Samuel H. Kress Fellow in 1993/94.

Yasuko Ogino, Conservators of Paintings, Denver, CO

Yasuko Ogino owns and operates Mobile Art Conservation Services LLC in Denver, Colorado. She received a BA in Art from UCLA in 1992 and a MA/CAS in Art Conservation from the State University College at Buffalo, New York in 2000. She has worked for museums, private conservation studios, regional conservation centers, and state-run facilities for historic preservation in California, Colorado, Indiana, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. Yasuko has lived in Denver with her fellow-conservator husband and two sons since 2010.