The Discussion and Treatment of Charles Burchfield's New Moon Watercolor

Curators and conservators collaborate when artwork in museum collections need conservation treatment. In 2013, Charles E. Burchfield’s mixed media work on paper, New Moon #10, was selected by the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s curatorial team in consultation with Judith C. Walsh, paper conservator and professor in the Art Conservation Department of SUNY Buffalo State. Burchfield had stored this unfinished painting in his studio. It was likely a preparatory study or the beginning of a future painting that was abandoned.

Professor Walsh examined New Moon #10 with Head of Collections Nancy Weekly and graduate student Christina Taylor, who had been selected to conserve the work. Weekly analyzed the painting stylistically in comparison with other Burchfield works to determine which marks were intentionally part of the working process, which indicated proposed changes, and which—such as charcoal smudges—seemed to be the result of storage in different places for many decades.

Conservator Christina Taylor and Curator Nancy Weekly will present an illustrated lecture about the history of New Moon #10, the conversation process, decision-making on the specific treatment plan, and various steps in the treatment that were carried out. 

Christina Taylor is a graduate student in the Buffalo State College Art Conservation Program where she specializes in paper conservation. In 2011 she received her B.F.A. in printmaking from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. She has worked in the conservation field for several years, including positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

NancyWeekly is the Head of Collections and the Charles Cary Rumsey Curator for the Burchfield Penney Art Center, the world’s only museum dedicated to American watercolor master Charles E. Burchfield and artists of the Buffalo Niagara region.  She also serves as the Burchfield Penney Instructor in Museum Studies for the Department of History and Social Studies Education at SUNY Buffalo State. She is recognized as the world’s leading expert on Burchfield, having organized nationally touring exhibitions of his work with accompanying catalogs, as well as a wide range of publications. 

Further information contact Kathy Gaye Shiroki at 716-878-3549 or email shirokkg@buffalostate.edu.

This lecture is free with general Center admission.