Vilnius - Inside the door of the Polychrome Sculpture Department at the Gudynas Restoration Center stands a freshly restored, life-sized statue of St. Peter from the 17th century. In his hands he holds the keys to heaven. Here and there, newly carved blocks blend into the construction to replace wood that couldn't be saved.
On an easel stands an 18th-century double-sided painting that Greta Zickuviene, who has been working here since 1992, has recently finished. Divine rays from the heavens once again pierce the hands and body of a devout monk. Though the piece was once carried in a frame during church processions, when it returns to the Trakai History Museum, "it will probably just be put in a single frame for display," she says.
The Guydimas Restoration Center, which is part of the Lithuanian Museum of Art, is also filled with giant x-rays and fantastically-shaped glass laboratory equipment. There's a lot of hard science that goes into saving art.
For Yunhui Singer, a Chinese-born American who moved to Vilnius last year with her husband, this place is heaven. She works in the sculpture department part-time.
"You study [a piece] and it's like getting to know a friend," she says. "You learn to appreciate [the] particular culture… the ingenuity of the people who make [the piece]."
Of course, there is a lot of pressure involved in her work.
"Most everything that comes into a museum had to be purchased," she says. "They all have a dollar tag. You're working on a million dollars worth of artifacts and you're actually examining it and cleaning it and touching it. It's mind-boggling. It makes your heart beat like 'thump, thump, thump.' "
Every piece the center works on requires a long investigation. Each piece presents its own history and challenges. "Even I, after all these years, am still learning new things," says Janina Lukseniene, head of the science department and a one-time director of the center. Lukseniene did her training as a chemist and is now considered an expert restorer.
While the center, funded by the Ministry of Culture, is primarily responsible for restoring museum pieces, some items are brought in from private collections and restored for a fee, paid to the Ministry. Some pieces brought by churches will be used in services after being restored.
Some of the equipment at the center looks outdated and a little worn - like it could belong in a museum itself. Those whose job it is to restore and conserve the art look forward to the day of a much needed renovation. But there's urgent work to be done in the mean time, and many of their "patients" from the past are in far worse shape than the equipment.
The restoration process requires patience and fortitude. In every work of art, the restorer's main code is to honor the intention of the original artist. "If you don't know what's there, don't ever add your personal interpretation to the piece," says Singer. "To me, the process of investigation before the restoration starts is the hardest part."
Every layer of pigment on a painting or a sculpture must be individually identified and dated by the science department to determine which work was originally the artist's intention and which is the work of a later era's touch-ups. Biological infestations like bacteria and fungi must be identified.
In one room, x-rays are taken using glass plates spread with sensitive material. After being exposed the plates are printed onto ordinary paper, which is much cheaper than film and doesn't require a light table for viewing.
Sometimes x-rays show the artist's original pencil marks or multiple heads that were painted while the artist was deciding what looked best. Sometimes they reveal a completely unrelated painting.
The work on one painting revealed the importance of strict adherence to conservation ethics. Lukseniene pointed out a set of before and after pictures on one of the conference posters at the center. There was a slight difference in the face. When pressed she admitted that "yes, to me this one [the retouched face] is a more Russian face. This older one is more Lithuanian." Though the change could have been a sign of racial politics, it could just have easily been a benign subconscious act.
With large church canvases the most interesting or beautiful details have often been cut out and stolen. Once, on Christmas day, the museum received a call from a priest. Two elderly women, who had heard about the problems of stolen paintings on television, had brought in some lost pieces. Such stories are rare. Most such paintings are never recovered.
The conservators repeatedly emphasized that everything a restorer does should be reversible. "Yes, even all this polymer used to fill in this crack could be removed later," says Zickuviene.
One ancient map of Lithuania that was being handled by the Paper Department had been repaired by an amateur using polymer glue. Restorers cleaned and reinforced the map, but were unable to remove the ugly brown glue. "It's tragic, really," said one conservator.
Singer did most of her work in the U.S.A., working on American colonial paintings in a Delaware museum. She has just finished restoring a small statue of St. John Nepomukas, the like of which once peered out of small chapels across Lithuania. "We don't have exact information on where it's from and who made it. You can make an educated guess based on the stylistic of the carving that it's from a particular region. But even on my report they don't put on a date." Many of these wooden statues simply deteriorated after long exposure to the elements.
Such figures, whose aesthetic roots may be pre-Christian, are often the product of several craftspeople, according to Skaidre Urboniene, an ethnographer at the National Museum. Other, more complex pieces, are the work of known masters. Urboniene, a Catholic herself, says that "these statues are more objects of investigation than objects of faith."
"My favorites are the simple ones," Uboniene says.
"They may not have had artistic training but it makes it really touching," says Singer.
The sculptures "make you feel personal and humble," Singer says. "They could be modeled on [the artist's] brother or neighbors."
Often people don't realize the extent of the contribution made by conservators.
"Every time you step into a museum, probably 99 percent of the things you see have a conservators touch," says Singer.
"If not for conservators things could just rot away in storage and be lost to the culture."
