Art at MIT
Keeping Up With Conservation
Alexander Calder's La Grande Voile (The Big Sail), 1965 Photo: List Visual Arts Center
It's hard to walk across MIT's campus without coming face to face with a piece of work by a major artist. Lipchitz's Birth of the Muses rises out of a pedestal near Hayden Library. Henry Moore's Reclining Figure stretches on the south lawn of the Fleischner Plaza. Public art is one of MIT's greatest assets, but conserving can be costly.
Patricia Fuller, public art curator at the List Center, says the center receives just $7,500 annually from MIT for conservation, yet it stewards more than 50 publicly accessible works on campus, 1500 works in offices and campus conference rooms, and more than 400 prints and photographs that are loaned to students during the academic year.
"We have to spend a lot of time and money keeping them in good repair," she says, "but maintenance isn't sexy."
Put in context, the cost of repainting just one of the Institute's iconic outdoor sculptures—Alexander Calder's La Grande Voile—alone exceeds $7,500.
"We simply don't have much money to invest in upkeep," says Fuller, "which is why we're grateful for anyone will help us do it."
Fortunately, several alumni have come forward to support the center's conservation work.
Eliott Wolk '57, a New York investor and arts benefactor, recently gave an endowment to support the care of works he has given to MIT, as well as a number of other pieces on campus, including the bell tower by Theodore Rosszak and altar screen by Harry Bertoia in the MIT chapel, a sculpture by Jean Robert Ipoustéguy, and a couple bronzes at the Hayden Library by Jacques Lipchitz.
The List Center has also secured an award from the Henry Luce Foundation for conservation work, as well as funds from the Council for the Arts at MIT.
Still, the demand for funding remains pressing, which raises a delicate question: If the cost of maintaining art, particularly outdoor, public art, is so significant, why go to the trouble?
Because it’s part of the List Center's mission, says Fuller. Exposure to a range of disciplines, everything from the visual arts, humanities, and social sciences to the hard sciences and engineering, is imperative to the development of a well-rounded person, she contends
"Also," notes Mark Linga, educational coordinator at the List, "visual artists and engineers tap into some of the same forms of creativity. They're not all that different—they're into problem solving, critical thinking, thinking outside the proverbial box."
For example, before Calder went to New York and began painting and sculpting, he was trained as a mechanical engineer at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.
The List Center staff recently obtained estimates for treating those works most in need of conservation over the next five years and found the average treatment cost to be approximately $4,500. Alumni interested in supporting particular works of art can make a donation in that amount, which will ensure that the piece will be properly conserved. An endowed gift of approximately $115,000 would provide ongoing treatment and maintenance well beyond the five-year mark.
By Liv Gold
Published September 10, 2009
