Here is an interesting article and idea. A major art museum had the missing portions of a significant picture frame recreated.

Last Sunday in the Los Angeles Times "Calendar", its movie and arts supplement, there is was an article about the Getty Museum restoring a 18th Century gilded picture frame. This orginal frame had been cut down at some time in its life to a simple rectangular shape. The Getty had the missing portions recreated (with only a preliminary sketch of the orginal crafter as a guide). Since few 18th century frames exist the Getty values the frame more than the picture it contains.

Here is a link to the article. It is in the free recent article section of the LA Times website.

Brian Norden

Piecing It Together
bnorden49@earthlink.net

Brian,
In the museum world there are the Art Museums at the top, follwed by the Science Museums and way behind are the Historical Museums. And I thinkk that at the tail end are the Industrial Archaeology museums. That is Trains, Ships and Planes.

Does not surprise me a bit that Getty did a project like that. They have endowment money and operating money like you would hardly believe.
They have the countries best Art Conservation School there.

People, does your your museum have an endowment fund? You should! The sooner you start the sooner it might have enough money in it to do something for you.

ted_miles@nps.gov

It would seem that if the art world can find this much time and money to lavish on a simple picture frame, we should be able to do a little better with the 4-8-4 rusting away down in the park. The total costs of conserving them are probably similar.

ryarger@rypn.org

Ted-

The key there is ENDOWMENT. Our Director fought for twenty years to get ours going. From not having a DIME when he came, we now have a better than 2 1/2 million dollar one. That's still small folks (consider that the restoration of 6325 took more than that, I believe) but its a start. Endowment ensure the future of what you are doing today. Part of the reason I now have a job is because of a portion of that endowment that was set up for improving employee salaries!

TJG

> Brian,
> In the museum world there are the Art
> Museums at the top, follwed by the Science
> Museums and way behind are the Historical
> Museums. And I thinkk that at the tail end
> are the Industrial Archaeology museums. That
> is Trains, Ships and Planes.

> Does not surprise me a bit that Getty did a
> project like that. They have endowment money
> and operating money like you would hardly
> believe.
> They have the countries best Art
> Conservation School there.

> People, does your your museum have an
> endowment fund? You should! The sooner you
> start the sooner it might have enough money
> in it to do something for you.


Port Huron Museum

tjgaffney@phmuseum.org

> It would seem that if the art world can find
> this much time and money to lavish on a
> simple picture frame, we should be able to
> do a little better with the 4-8-4 rusting
> away down in the park. The total costs of
> conserving them are probably similar.

True, but then there's the cost of the temperature-controlled, humidity-controlled vault to keep it in once conservation and restoration are complete. Seems the same building/real estate that would house 10-15 steam locomotives can display 200-5,000 art works plus have controlled storage for 5,000-25,000 more. Also, it's fairly difficult to build said "locomotive gallery" in the heart of a city's downtown with several floors of exhibits. (Sorry, but I just got in from a visit to the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore........)

lner4472@bcpl.net

Ted,

Your point is well taken. Our society is very much into preserving art. In fact if the local art gallery wants to raise a couple of million to acquire a Vermeer or a Rembrandt, every fat cat in town not only wants to donate, but preferably wants his picture in the paper presenting the check to the Curator.

However, if the local railroad museum needs $50,000 for a restoration project, these same people are no where to be found. They won't get their picture on Society Page for helping to restore "Old 375."

While as a nation, we have a decent track record at preserving historic homes, our ability to preserve heavy industrial artifacts is abysmal. The same problem that railroad museums have are faced by groups trying to preserve historic aircraft and ships as well. These industrial artifacts, be they a 4-8-4 rusting in a park, an F-86 vandalized and neglected in front of an airport, or great warships like the USS Olympia desparately need the support of the same people who donate millions to the Getty Foundation and like organizations. And after all, these industrial or military artifacts are respresentatives of AMERICAN history, not that of Holland, France, Italy etc.

No doubt endowments are the way to go, but we need to find a way to make "sexy" these things that the posters on this and like forums care about.

Suggestions anyone?

kevin.r.gillespie@verizon.net

Lets See ... there was the art train ...no reason that has to be restricted to the west coast.

Then there can be a special first class charter trip something like AOE from city X to visit special art exhibits in city Y.

Same sort of projects so the artsy folks pay the cost of the trip and the "foamers" get to take the pictures.



lamontdc@adelphia.net

> Lets See ... there was the art train ...no
> reason that has to be restricted to the west
> coast.

The Artrain is based in Ann Arbor Mich, and travels the USA in geographic sections. The displays rotate every two years. This time they're taking a year off so the can totally revamp the cars, retire the caboose, and add the new round end obs in the caboose's place. The new exhibit will be Native American Art. The next time the Artrain will be in Oregon will be 2005, in time for the celebration of the Lewis and Clack bicentennial. The 4449 and Artrain crews are looking forward to seeing each other again...

Smokebox

"orhf dot org"

It's been said that most corporations give most of their money at home. I wonder if there isn't also a correlation with their line of business. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has donated a lot of computers to schools. Monsanto and their ilk have given a goodly amount of money to the local botanical garden and local bio and ag research organizations. Now's not the best of times to be hitting up the steel mills, but maybe EMD abd GE could be canvasssed for donations. GE in particulair seems to have been advertising heavily on their rial business lately. Maybe they'd be willing to give a bit to rail museums, especially if they are made aware of the fact that a good number of current and former rail execs volunteer their time at these
museums, and it would look good for them with just exactly the people that they want to impress to sell big multi-million dollar contracts.

Sincerely,
David Ackerman

david_ackerman@yahoo.com