February 4, 2015
Preservation and repair of the Tokyo National Museum collection
Kenjiro Okimatsu, Principal Researcher, Tokyo National Museum
The Tokyo National Museum performs the following three functions as core principles of its preservation and restoration activities, in order to pass on the cultural properties in its collection to future generations.
(1) Investigation and diagnosis of the condition of cultural properties, as well as the environmental conditions in exhibit rooms and archives.
(2) Conservation and preservation of the exhibit room and archive environment based on the results of investigation and diagnosis.
(3) Repair of cultural properties as necessary in order to present and store under more stable conditions, including repair from insect damage and bindings, smoothing folds, and re-gluing sections that have separated. The repairs can range from minor fixes (partial repair) to complete dismantling (full-scale repair).
In this special collection, we present a portion of the paintings, writings, crafts, and antiques that have undergone full-scale repairs in recent years. We have included information on the key points regarding the repair, creative methods for solving challenging problems, and the information we gathered during the course of these repair exercises. We also included some examples of partial repairs, such as rebinding of books and constructing preservation boxes for foreign books.
<left: before repair; right: after repair>
Important Cultural Property
Landscapes of the Four Seasons: Summer, Sesshu Toyo, Muromachi Period, 15th century
Tokyo National Museum collection
Exhibition Period: February 17 to March 15
Special Room 1, Main Hall
In full-scale repairs requiring dismantling of the artwork, you can find traces of past repairs that are normally hidden on the inside, as well as other information regarding the construction, materials, and techniques. This information is valuable to gain a deeper understanding of the artwork, as well as performing the appropriate repairs. The Four Seasons Landscape (important cultural property, 4 panels; ink in light color on silk, Sesshu Toyo; Muromachi Period, 15th century; Spring and Summer on display) differed in impressions based on how the four panels were viewed and the cause of these differences were not clear. When we dismantled the artwork, we discovered that a differently colored backing paper had been used for each piece; furthermore, we found that there was a clear paste applied in a patchwork fashion on the back side of Spring and Summer, while a brown paste was applied thoroughly throughout the entire canvas on the back side of Autumn and Winter. This led to differences in the impressions that each panel gave, and we were able to use this information to improve our methods. Our repairs restored the artwork to their former, unified views.
<post-repair>
National Treasure
Cypress Tree, Kano Eitoku, Azuchi-Momoyama Period, 1590
Tokyo National Museum collection
Exhibition Period: February 17 to March 15
National Treasure Room, Main Hall Room 2
Additionally, the Cypress Tree (National Treasure, four folded screens; color on gold paper, Kano Eitoku, Azuchi-Momoyama Period, 1590), on which we completed repairs in March 2014, is on display at the same time as the special collection in Room 2 of the Main Hall (National Treasure Room). The repairs for this piece were funded by the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch Art Conservation Project. The details of the repairs are described in the panels and we prepared blocks of wood used to make the new sliding screens, borrowed from the Kyoto Office of the Imperial Household Agency, the actual sliding screens made from such wood blocks, as well as the old and new frame fittings. This is another example where we used the information gathered during the investigation and applied it to the repair and construction of the sliding screen.
Please enjoy this exhibition.
Tokyo National Museum
13-9 Ueno Park, Taito-ku, Tokyo 110-8712
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