The Conservation Center's private reception on September 12 welcomed such esteemed guests as Roxanne Decyk, Christie Hefner, Richard Hunt, Tony Karman, Steve Koch, Arlene Semel, and Joan Steel to help celebrate our three decades of achievements. We'd like to thank all who attended and made our event a huge success!
Three decades of art restoration and preservation for clients and collections around the country is a pretty big deal, so we’ve taken this opportunity to have our distinguished Advisory Board members and founder say a few kind words about The Conservation Center and why they’re proud to be involved with us.
John Warner Norton, a charter member of The Cliff Dwellers, became one of the most accomplished and sought-after muralists in Chicago and across the United States by 1920. Earlier, however, in 1910 as Norton’s career and The Cliff Dwellers were both newly beginning, one of his first commissions titled "Navaho" became one of the private club’s earliest acquisitions of art. "Navaho" was recently conserved by The Conservation Center.
At The Center, we treat items of great worth, historical artistic significance and shared cultural value. But perhaps some the most rewarding work we do is in preserving family heirlooms. These items very greatly from paintings to furniture and can be extremely valuable or purely sentimental, but all hold stories with meaning to the owners. We feel honored to assist families with preserving these items for future generations, and allowing their stories to carry on, and would like to share a recent story from one of our clients.
A delicate glass vase by French artist Emile Galle (1846-1904), owned by the Glessner House Museum was brought to The Center after it was accidentally damaged and shattered. The vase broke into discrete fragments with extensive associated losses along the break edges, including an area of significant loss around the rim. There were also two running cracks as a result of a fracture.
This past month, Hurricane Sandy devastated the Eastern seaboard leaving homes and businesses severely damaged, and basements, storage spaces, and first floors flooded by water. In some areas, the water line reached nearly five feet. The Conservation Center was called onsite to New York City on October 29th, where we assisted both businesses and home owners with damaged art, heirlooms, and unique items affected by the flood waters. The Center's onsite crews worked to carefully remove and triage over two thousand works of art in order to mitigate additional damage.
Over the past 29 years The Conservation Center has developed a national reputation as the ‘go to’ place for the rescue of some of the nation’s finest artworks and artifacts from fire and floods, as well as the restoration of cherished personal heirlooms. As of July, The Conservation Center has a space to match the breadth of their work: the company has recently moved into a newly designed, state-of-the-art 25,000 square foot space in Chicago’s upcoming arts district.
Now that our company move is completed, the administrative staff at The Center has been busy taking care of all the important details to ensure our business continues to run smoothly. Fortunately, we have moved into a spacious environment where we can better coordinate our daily tasks and client pick up and drop offs.
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