NEW YORK, NY.- Eli Wilner & Company’s most recent series of philanthropic efforts has greatly benefited a long list of museums and cultural institutions nationwide. Many smaller or moderately-sized institutions who are providing arts exhibitions and education to their local populations, are limited in their ability to afford the high-end framing and frame restoration that they need to optimally showcase their collection. Wilner’s museum funding program helps subsidize these costs to bring these projects within reach of each institution’s existing budget, providing framing services that meet the picture framing atelier’s four decades of high standards.
During 2017, Wilner museum projects included the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, which reframed a Ben Shahn artwork, and the Allen Memorial Museum at Oberlin College who worked with Wilner on reframing a Renoir oil painting. Frame restoration is also part of the ongoing outreach, and recent completed projects have included the restoration of prominent frames in the collections of the Aiken – Rhett House Museum, a property of Historic Charleston Foundation in South Carolina, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City.
The Wilner studio is already tackling many new projects for 2018, including restorating the frame for the Aiken – Rhett House Museum’s Madonna of the Chair and the frame for a large Albert Bierstadt painting for the The University of Denver Art Collections. Five reframing projects are also underway for the European collection at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at Oklahoma University, as well as for an important Old Master painting at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. Perhaps the most unique and challenging undertaking at the current moment is the creation of a gilded looking glass with border mirrors and an ornate carved crest for George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Working closely with curator Adam Erby, the Wilner team have been compiling research, through historical photographs and illustrations, along with site visits to various institutions whose collections contain similar objects, to build a historically and aesthetically accurate looking glass for the front parlor room of the house.
Exciting new requests are coming in weekly from institutions across the country as more curators and museum directors are made aware of the unique services Eli Wilner and his team can provide.
