SEATTLE, WASHINGTON.- The Seattle Art Museum announces the launch of The Conservator’s Studio, an interactive web site exploring four of the paintings in the Gelman collection, three by Frida Kahlo and one by Diego Rivera. The web site can be found at www.seattleartmuseum.org/conservatorstudio/ and was created in conjunction with the exhibition Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism: The Jaques and Natasha Gelman Collection on view at SAM from October 17,  2002 through January 5, 2003.

 

The web site’s goal is to introduce the general audience to the field of conservation and it allows the visitors to experience some of the finds that conservators uncover when they analyze and treat paintings.  The site was developed with contributions by SAM’s own conservation department as well as experts from other art institutions including Will Shank who was lead conservator at SFMOMA when the original conservation work was done on the

Gelman collection.  This project is the beginning of a collaboration between the museum’s Conservation and New Media departments in order to build a conservation presence on the SAM web site. It is also the first time SAM has created a web site using Macromedia Flash, a development tool for creating visually engaging and dynamic interfaces.

 

"We hope this web site will inspire our visitors to look at these paintings differently and enjoy the extraordinary variety of brushstrokes and surface effects that distinguish the works of art in this collection," said Nicholas Dorman, Chief Paintings Conservator at SAM.

The web site features an introduction to conservation concepts, interactives about each painting, and an animated illustrated "toolbox" which visually explains conservation terms and tools used throughout the site. For example, with Frida Kahlo’s Self-portrait with Braid (1941) people can interact with the painting by using a slider bar that shows how transmitted light illustrates both Frida’s thin and thick brushstrokes.  In Kahlo’s The Bride who became frightened when she saw life opened (1943), people can see how the artist worked on the painting after it was framed. The first interactive shows details of the old background and there is a magnifying glass that allows people look closely at the painting’s details.

 

The web site is on view in kiosks in the Mexican Modernism gallery until Jan. 5, 2003 and is also available on the SAM web site www.seattleartmuseum.org/conservatorstudio/  The web site will continue to be available on the site even after the exhibition leaves SAM.