Thomas Hart Benton: America Today Mural, Pt. 2

"Some twenty-five years later, when on a trip to New York, I visited the New School, I found, because the Board room had been turned into a classroom and that folding chairs and blackboards were stacked against the surface of the mural. This treatment had evidently been going on for a long time, because very marked lines of abrasion had developed over the mural surface. Scrapes from the blackboards had obliterated parts of the basic drawing as well as the surface color.

I called this to the attention of Alvin Johnson, founder of the school, who still maintained offices in the building. He was shocked when he examined the damages, confessing that he had not looked closely at the mural for years. He said that the professors who used the room for their classes were naturally more interested in their subjects than the mural and probably had not noticed the growth of the abrasions either. In any case no one had reported anything. In the end I agreed that I would clean the mural if the New School would put a protective rail about it. This was done, and in the autumn of 1956, I took the old varnish off the surface, repaired the abrasions, and put the work pretty well back into its original shape.

In June of 1968, I again visited the New School to receive an honorary degree. Looking over my mural room, I found that the mural's surface was again frightfully dirty and that most of the restorations I had made in 1956 had chipped off. I was not overly shocked, because a few years back one of my friends, who was an expert in the problems of picture preservation, had inspected the work and had warned me that the high temperatures of the mural room would so desiccate the egg-tempera paint films that they would, in time, break up. He said that only the installation of proper air, temperature, and humidity controls in the room would save the mural. 

The school was willing to install the controls. And this time, because of its superior adhesive power, I used an acrylic polymer emulsion paint, instead of egg-tempera. Fortunately a varnish, removable from such paint, had been made, so the mural can be easily cleaned when, and if, that again becomes necessary - and without affecting my restorations. With the newly controlled conditions in the room I believe the mural will have a long life. But with paint, as with other things, Man proposes, God disposes."

To be continued

(Excerpts are from "An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography" by Thomas Hart Benton.)