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Sketchbook: Conservation

[Slim] Whoa. That looks like a damsel in distress if I ever saw one. Looks like she could use a hand, or an arm, or you know, like two arms. Ugh, maybe I'd better leave it to the professionals.

I'm not the first one to mess things up like that. There have been some pretty famous examples where everyday folks have tried to fix art on their own, like a woman who tried to touch up this painting of Jesus. Her version, well, didn't turn out too good.

Saving art from deteriorating or making it look new again is what we call conservation. Take this 1660 painting by Charles Le Brun. When you do conservation right, the art is brought back to its original state. Looks as good as new. For this painting, it took 10 months to get Everhard Jabach and His Family looking good again.

It takes professionals with special training and tools to do the job right. In fact, the Cleveland Museum of Art has an entire center for conserving Chinese art. Take a look.

[Narrator] Yi-Hsia Hsiao is smoothing out the creases on a wet piece of pattered silk in the Asian Painting Lab.

- I'm art doctor. I save art life.

[Narrator] Her work requires precision. She studies the fabric for any debris, and when she finds something, she carefully plucks it away with tweezers.

- So we actually don't wear a sweater when we're doing this process. Because you will imagine if this is, you know, and the bits of sweater, and it's like, oh.

[Narrator] She is preparing one of three new linings or layers for an 18th century silk painting the Cleveland Museum of Art acquired in June.

- The painting's condition is fair. It's not bad. But the mounting itself, it was very bad. It was short, and then the color was not right.

[Narrator] She has been working on the new mounting for several weeks. That included removing the backing of the painting, which had become rumpled and faded. She is replacing it with new linings made of silk glued to a special paper.

- When it's even out, the paste is even out, then we apply the very thin xuan paper on the back and then just laminate that together. And when it's dry, then it's time for toning.

[Narrator] After the new linings are colored and dry, she measures and cuts a border for the painting and tries not to make any mistakes.

- It would redo everything, so you better not screw up

[Narrator] The painting was purchased from a gallery in New York, and the museum staff knew then it needed work before going on display.

- We are preserving not only the object, but the story of the object. So we are trying to slow down the inevitable deterioration of an object. Everything will age, as we do, and we're here to just slow down that process as much as we can, so we can pass on our collection to the generations to come.

- Now that it's nice and flat with two colors, mounting would be appropriate for this painting, especially for this lady I'm happy with that.