Art Matters by Abbie Vandivere, Class of 2001

When I phoned my parents my sophomore year and said, “I want to become an art conservator who restores paintings,” it didn’t come out of the blue. I had always been interested in both science and art, but I’d come to Princeton wanting to be a dentist. Along with taking premed courses, I decided to major in visual arts. My junior project was a series of paintings based on views through the microscope, using images from my molecular biology classes. My senior thesis was a series of artworks in different media based on human X-rays.

One of the things that drew me to making art was working with different materials: charcoal sticks, etching ink, oil paint, wood. Art history classes were interesting, but I was most intrigued by the different materials that the artists used. One of my first encounters with the materiality of objects was in a Northern Renaissance art history class, taught by Professor Al Acres. I wondered how the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century painters from Northern Europe had managed to achieve such bright colors and incredible detail in their works. (This subject eventually became the topic of my PhD!)

In my sophomore year, we took a tour behind the scenes at the Art Museum. When we walked into the conservation studio on the third floor, with its overhead windows that flooded diffuse natural light onto a large Italian altarpiece, it felt like a space where you could get really close to the artworks. Yet we were also surrounded by scientific instruments—microscopes, a light box with X-rays taped to it, and some camera-like equipment on a tripod. The conservator, Norman Muller, explained how his work combined art and science: the chemistry of paints, varnishes, and solvents, and the physics of paint degradation. In that moment, I knew this was the field for me. After the visit, I approached Norman to find out more about the field of art conservation. He became my teacher and mentor for a tutorial course during which I had the opportunity to examine works from the Museum’s collections under the microscope, with X-rays and infrared, and to understand how they had changed over time.

I graduated in 2001 knowing that I wanted to pursue conservation, but first I wanted to gain experience working in a museum. I worked in different areas of the Art Museum: Prints and Drawings, the Museum Store, preparation and art handling, and as a secretary. My experience at the Museum certainly helped me to be one of five students admitted to the easel paintings conservation program at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. During summer vacations, I returned to Princeton to get a few weeks of hands-on experience treating small paintings from the Museum’s collections, including the Italian fourteenth-century Beheading of Saint Paul by Lorenzo Monaco.

After the three-year training program at the Courtauld, I moved to Amsterdam in 2005. I worked as a freelance paintings conservator at different museums and private studios and for the government art collection. In 2015 I got a job at the Mauritshuis, a small museum full of masterpieces from the Dutch golden age (the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). I have had the honor of treating the oldest painting in our collection, the Lamentation by Rogier van der Weyden (ca. 1460), and will soon be working on a painting attributed to Rembrandt. Last year, I was the head researcher for the technical examination of the museum’s most beloved painting: Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer (ca. 1665).

Just as the collection of the Art Museum is a wonderful resource for Princeton students, I make sure that the conservation I do at the Mauritshuis informs the students I teach. Alongside my work as a conservator, I provide academic coordination for the master’s program in Technical Art History at the University of Amsterdam. This emerging discipline encourages the students to examine different types of artwork and to discover how they were made, the materials the artists used, and how they might have changed over time.

A painting is not simply an image in a book (or a slide in a projector, for those of us old enough to remember lectures given in the days before PowerPoint). It is a tangible three-dimensional object made up of layered materials, which have specific properties and undergo deterioration. It was made by an extremely skilled person, someone who was taught within a long tradition in order to gain a deep understanding of materials. Just as materials, careful observation, and training bring artworks to life, my career has been inspired by the materiality of art and the valuable opportunities provided by museums.

Abbie Vandivere, Class of 2001