Vermont

We completed the first of a 2-year project. Here’s what we’ve learned so far.

1. Stretching Grant Dollars

We used high school and college students and created an internship program to stretch grant dollars and introduce an exciting and unusual career option. Using inexperienced and inexpensive workers and minimizing expensive conservators and contractors turned out to be a huge success when coupled with careful training and supervision.

This was also the case with the use of specialized equipment such as steam cleaners and pressure washers – training and supervision of inexperienced workers proved to stretch grant dollars without compromising quality.

In addition to consulting with art conservators, we also consulted with experts outside the field of art conservation such as experienced sandblasting, pressure washing, and concrete repair contractors. This resulted in efficiencies and cost savings.

2. Advancing Conservation Practices

We made a significant contribution in the field of concrete conservation by carefully comparing several cleaning techniques – steam vs D2 vs steam and D2 vs water pressure: each is effective in particular situations. A research paper to share these findings is in development.

3. The Importance of Planning

We carefully planned before any work began, and this turned out to result in tremendous cost and time savings. We analyzed the composition of the concrete, confirmed the appropriate products, equipment, and methods, hired a dedicated team of workers, created an internship program, and carefully trained 2 teams – one which cleaned the sculptures and the other which repaired them. This pre-planning enabled us to get right to work the very day that outdoor weather warmed, and then over the next 6 months of warm weather temperatures enabled us to exceed our very-ambitious objectives.

4. Unexpected Benefits of Embracing the Public

Our 2 teams – repair and cleaning – were very busy, working full-time Monday thru Friday, sometimes even Saturdays when on a few occasions too many rainy days put us behind schedule. It’s important to understand that we have a particularly tight schedule due to unavoidable delays in implementing the grant since receiving it in 2021. We have only 2 seasons to complete the restoration of all 16 sculptures. By the way we are ahead of schedule after our first season.

Despite this busy schedule we always welcomed and made time for anyone who stopped by to chat. Each morning before work we set up our sandwich board of basic info welcoming people to stop, look, and ask questions. Many did including children, neighbors, and reporters. This strategy turned out to be more beneficial than we ever imagined!

There are too many wonderful stories to mention all of them so here are just a few. We connected with the person who ran the inn that housed all the sculptors during the first symposium in 1968. Though her husband passed away and she is quite elderly, she clearly recalled wonderful memories of the 2 months that the artists stayed with her. One such recollection was quite incredible! She remembered one occasion where a man came to briefly visit his Japanese friends – the 3 Japanese sculptors in our symposium. She remembered that he introduced himself and she welcomed Mr… ‘No!” he interrupted her kindly. “No mister. Just call me as my friends do, Noguchi.”

Here’s another story. A visitor to our worksite mentioned a half-buried piece of stone near the original grounds where all the artists crafted their sculptures so many years ago. On close inspection this turned out to a long-lost sculpture. Why it was buried remains a mystery. We are now raising funds to excavate it and move it to another rest area along our highway and restoring it to the collection.

We connected with a wonderful artist-photographer in this way, and 3 of the artists’ apprentices! These are just a few of the many amazing stories and discoveries that resulted from embracing the public throughout this restoration process despite the stress on our time and energy. I think that these unexpected outcomes additionally energized our work.

The use of inexperienced and inexpensive local labor not only stretched grant dollars, but also created unexpected local ‘buzz’ resulting in support and pr which in turn has greatly helped our fundraising for the matching part of this grant. It also led to a surprising contact with a visiting marble conservator from Romania whom we quickly hired to restore our most important marble sculpture (‘Stones for Meditation’ by Karl Prantl) which also happened to be the most damaged and thus most in need of specialized care, just the kind of care this conservator could provide! I must add an odd but true observation: ever since this project began for me in 2020 as I provided assessments and estimates for the grant application to Save America’s Treasures, amazing people and opportunities keep coming our way as if the artists are up there looking down upon us, sending us marvelous people and resources and experiences!

5. The Challenges of Cost Increases and Delayed Start Dates

Cost increases and project delays has now resulted in challenges to affording all the work needed. We will address this challenge in our next and final year of conservation work, not by cutting corners but by stepping up our fundraising efforts.

Delayed involvement of Vermont’s Agency of Transportation (AOT) for foundations and rest area improvements is an added stress to completing the conservation on time. We are focusing all our efforts at the present time to overcome this obstacle.

6. The Importance of Second Opinions

The review of our conservation plan – methods and products – by a local group of experts and a reputable conservation institute (Getty Conservation Institute) was critical for insuring quality and efficiency. As a conservator of many decades specializing in contemporary sculpture, it was tempting to eliminate the added cost of hiring consultants to review my plan. But as in the field of medicine, it is always best to get a second opinion! And sure enough, despite my advanced knowledge and experience with the exact types of sculpture I was about to restore, I learned a great deal from our thorough and reputable second opinions, and our outcomes would not have been as successful.

7. Can’t Do Without a Website  

We found that a website was critical for regular communication with our many overseas friends and families of the artists – most of the artists have passed away.

The website was donated by Midnightsons Designs. We were careful not to use any of this grant funding for non-conservation needs such as this website so it was donated by a local web development team. The website is also very helpful in generating members for our non-profit ‘Friends of Sculpture on the Highway’. This non-profit allows us to continue to raise funds for our many long-range plans after this conservation is complete. For instance, our dreams include interpreting the collection with rest area signage and audio-visual presentations, re-creating one of the original sculptures which was completely destroyed many years ago, integrating the collection into Vermont’s vital economic engine of tourism, and organizing another symposium of granite honoring Vermont’s storied past as the granite capital of the world! A wonderful result of the monthly blog posts of progress was contact with the daughter of Karl Prantl. Katharina Prantl traveled from her home in Austria to visit us for a week to meet the conservation team and see the exciting restoration of her father’s sculpture. It was an absolutely joyful time for everyone involved and quite a boost in morale for our hard-working cleaning and repair teams. She remembered so many moments with the artists and her father though she was only 10 years old when she came here to America with her father and mother in 1968 and stayed 2 months as her father created the sculpture we just restored. She even remembered the title her father gave to the piece, ‘Stones for Meditation’, which we thought was untitled!

8. Adding An Artful Eye  

We carefully documented our work with before and after images which along with a detailed record of our methods and products, is critical for ongoing maintenance. We enhanced this documentation with an artist’s viewpoint. A professional artist-photographer, Eric Killorin, followed our progress throughout the summer resulting in a beautifully striking series of photos of all of us in action moving, cleaning, and repairing the collection. We plan to turn this into a travelling exhibition to increase the exposure, appreciation, and support of this project particularly for our ongoing fundraising efforts.