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Joyce Weinstein conserving Stanley Boxer painting

Despite our strict storage standards and endeavors to handle art objects extra-carefully (no small feat for a klutz like myself), artworks still tend to degrade over time. No matter how careful museums are with their collections, gravity and time just take over.

That is what happened with our painting, Havocpockedfeysnowboughs by Stanley Boxer. Mr. Boxer was an abstract artist known for his heavy application of paint. He focused on texture and form in his paintings, and the paint literally rises up off the canvas in waves.

Havocpockedfeysnowboughs was created in 1976 so it is over 30 years old. At that time, Boxer did not use a fixative to protect the oil paints he daubed so generously over his canvases. Time took its toll and much of the parrot green, the pink and the white oil paint have begun to flake slowly off of his work.

Boxer died in 2000, leaving a widow, Joyce Weinstein. She is also an artist and was kind enough to grace our museum with her presence at the recent opening, Rememberingstanleyboxer: A Retrospective Besides charming the patrons and members of the museum with her cheerful demeanor, she also agreed to touch up Stanley's painting.

See more of Joyce Weinstein's art.

Of course, we have several professionals in the area that we use for the array of conservation needs that can arise in a museum setting. But truly, having Boxer's wife fill in the missing portions seemed much more appropriate. In our art storage area, Ms. Weinstein studiously bent bent over Boxer's large canvas, 50 x 80 inches, and recreated the textured swirls and swathes of color for which he is best known.