Restoration

The collection of the Staatliche Museum Schwerin as part of the Staatliche Schlösser, Gärten und Kunstsammlungen MV includes art of all kind, reflecting their diversity from the antiquity to the present. These include paintings, sculptures, objects of modern art, furniture, coins, artisinal d'objects and graphic works such as engravings, prints, drawings and photos.

The conservation and maintenance of these diverse collection is ensured by five restorer. The responsibilities depend significantly on speciality areas and materials of the objects in the collection: paintings and sculpture, graphic and paper, metal and crafts, furniture and wooden objects.

The preventive restoration play a particularly important role in the task field. The main focus lays on the optimisation of the environmental conditions to protect the object as much as possible from damaging influences. This includes conservational care during exhibitions, subject-related supervision of loan process and transport, monitoring climatic parameters and the lighting in the exhibition rooms, workshops and storage areas as well as pest monitoring. Currently the restorer provide there expert advice and support during the planning of new storage areas and workshops.

Each restoration work is preceded by a thorough preliminary examination of the item in question. Extensive knowledge of the techniques and materials used in the various epochs is required, as indeed of the ageing behaviour and historic restoration methods, in order to be able to judge the preservation status of the item and develop suitable plans for the restoration process. This is usually done in close cooperation with the curators, optionally supplemented with interdisciplinary exchange and international cooperation with restorers, art historians and scientists.

In this regard, a difference is fundamentally drawn between preservation and restoration measures. While the former measures serve to achieve the pure preservation of an item’s substance, the latter process is concerned with stabilisation, supplements and aesthetic corrections. The results of the preliminary examination, the measures carried out on the object and the materials used are documented in words and pictures.