Conservation

From March 1–July 11, 2020, the Museum of Modern Art in New York will host a retrospective of the work of Donald Judd. The Chinati Foundation has loaned a horizontal wall work, also known as a "progression," from our permanent collection for this important exhibition.

Shortly before Chinati’s summer solstice event this year in Robert Irwin’s installation untitled (dawn to dusk), the scrim on the dark side was damaged by an impact. The impact left a 37-inch long tear at the bottom of the scrim. It was repaired with the aid of Chinati’s former Director of Conservation Bettina Landgrebe and Vickie Arndt, a former art installer of the Dia Foundation.

Terra Mare Conservation, LLC (TMC) was contracted by the Chinati Foundation to undertake a site visit to assess the condition of 15 untitled works in concrete (1980–1984) by Donald Judd. The assessment was carried out on April 10–16, 2019, by conservators Claudia Chemello and Paul Mardikian, with Chinati's Director of Conservation Shelley M. Smith and Chinati's conservation department intern, Christopher Gonzales.

The images presented here demonstrate the general treatment model for Chinati's collection of John Chamberlain sculptures. John Chamberlain created Roxanne Loup in 1979 in his characteristic collage technique, with scrap material he formed, fitted, and held together by quick tack-welds. Before executing the stabilization repair in March 2018, thorough archival research was done to understand how it evolved over 40 years into its present condition.

With the wholesale restoration of the artillery sheds still some years away, Chinati has implemented an annual maintenance program for the buildings' gutters. This work keeps up to date an extensive cleaning and recoating treatment that was performed over the summer of 2016. The work is done every spring by museum staff using materials and methods spelled out by the team that designed the re-coating system.

The Chinati Foundation is pleased to announce that it has chosen the firm of Sasaki to partner with the museum on the creation of a master plan. The plan will provide a framework for the conservation, restoration, maintenance, and development of the entire Chinati site.

Natural light is essential for the art experience at Chinati. Most installations at the museum employ the natural light of the reliably strong West Texas Sun as their sole source of illumination year round. While the natural light is a crucial component in the viewing of the installations at Chinati, it simultaneously presents challenges for preserving the art works, particularly the permanent installations in which paper is central to the work, like the Carl Andre and Ilya Kabakov installations.