Museum uses micro explosions to save fine art from bird poop

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Science, Labor and Art had been living outdoors for more than a decade. They endured autumn rains and winter winds. In the springtime, pollen clung to their bodies and clothes. In the summer, beads of condensation streamed down the layer of wax that covers their motionless forms. Regardless of the season, uncouth humans touched them without permission. Occasionally, a bird pooped on one of their heads.

Such indignities are an occupational hazard of being a sculpture on display in a museum garden. The allegorical trio once graced the outdoor courtyard of the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art; a companion trio shows the embodiments of Love and Justice supporting a figure that represents Law. They were carved by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the celebrated American artist, and the figures all wear slightly disdainful expressions, as though they know they were made by a master sculptor and are too good for these reduced circumstances.

The Freer’s exhibits conservator Jenifer Bosworth wasn’t too concerned about the figures’ bad attitudes. “That’s just nature,” she said cheerfully, pointing to the bird droppings in the hair of the figure representing Art.

"[Works of art] could stay in storage in the dark locked away, and then they could last for much longer,” she acknowledged. “But that’s not the objective of a museum.”

Still, it was undeniable that the bronze statues were due for a cleaning. And since the Freer is approaching the end of a two-year renovation, now seemed an ideal time to do so. On a sweltering morning last week, the Saint-Gaudens sculptures were carted out in front of the museum for a surprisingly hardcore kind of bath.

“We’re going to be blasting them with dry ice,” Bosworth said with a laugh. “Which sounds harsh, but … it’s a comparatively delicate method.”

Yes, the most “delicate” way to spruce up century-old sculptures is to hit them with pellets of dry ice at supersonic speeds. That’s the badass science of fine art conservation for you.

The formal name for the technique is “carbon dioxide cleaning,” and it actually has all kinds of applications: removing particles from electric circuits, cleaning telescope mirrors, preparing laboratory samples, manufacturing metal parts. But at the Freer, the objective was to scour away the protective wax layer that coats the Saint-Gaudens statues. This would allow conservators to clean and polish the bronze underneath before applying a fresh wax coating and placing the figures back on their pedestals.

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