Last Friday marked a meaningful milestone at West Lake as we welcomed our first-ever institutional tour to the new conservation labs on Owasco Lake.
The visiting group: the docents of the Barrow Gallery, one of our most longstanding partners. Our relationship with Barrow runs deep – West Lake co-founder Susan Blakney was instrumental in its revival in the 1970s – and this visit felt like a return as much as a beginning.
Among the guests was Margaret Sutton, Barrow docent and also a co-founder of West Lake Conservators, who was seeing the new lab for the first time.
Led by Head Docent Rich Westover, the group spent the morning touring the labs and heard from Paintings Conservators Chiara Kuhns, Raphael Shea, and Nathan Sutton, who shared behind-the-scenes insights into the process of conservation, from analysis to treatment.
We’re thrilled to begin offering conservation tours to other institutions, schools, and private individuals who want to learn more about preserving the art and objects that shape our shared history. Contact us to schedule a visit!
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- Raphael Shea shows Barrow docents how he looks for structural damage to paintings.
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- The Barrow docents took a full tour of the lab before settling in for presentations by our paintings conservators.
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- Margaret Sutton, co-founder of West Lake Conservators, chats with Raphael Shea about The Vale of the Elms (1872) by Lemuel Maynard Wiles.
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- The view across the paintings lab at West Lake.
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- Nathan Sutton presents an overview of Barrow painting conservations past, marking the first official event in our brand-new conference room.
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- Barrow Gallery docents were given a lab tour by Executive Director Joey Ellis.
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- Chiara Kuhns talks to Barrow docents about how she would approach piecing together Bitsy, our demonstration painting.
Senior Paintings Conservator Chiara Kuhns explains to Barrow Gallery Docents how she would approach repairing a painting that looks more like a jigsaw puzzle. For more clips, visit our YouTube channel.
