Volume 6, Number 2, May 1984, pp.15-16

In the News

Museum Textiles May Be Saved by "Quilters"

In the Arizona Daily Star it was reported 5 April 1984 that the Ariz. Historical Society would hold that weekend a benefit performance of the Arizona Theatre Company's production of "Quilters" in order to raise money for a five-year program to conserve their textile collection. The museum's textile and costume collection contains 2,200 objects which constitute an important record of life in the Southwest.

Mystery of the Missing Millet

An interesting article appeared in the Christian Science Monitor 15 February 1984 which recounted an unusual case of a long-lost painting by Jean-Francois Millet titled, The Captivity of the Jews in Babylon, painted in 1848.

The curious twist to the mystery is that the missing painting has been hanging in (the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) for over a hundred years with one of Millet's most important later pictures, The Young Shepherdess (1870), painted over it. An x-ray revealed the first clue to the whereabouts of the earlier painting. The Captivity of the Jews in Babylon was 'one of Millet's most ambitious paintings,' says Alexandra Murphy, assistant curator of European paintings at the Boston museum. 'He spent a good deal of time preparing it for the major Paris Salon of 1848.' But 1848 was also the great year of revolutions, and perhaps in that spirit of defiance the critics had few kind words to say for Millet's work. It was to be his last brush with academic history painting, and marked his transition to the peasant and agricultural scenes for which he is known today... [The painting] was never seen again ...until Pam England, a research scientist at the museum, made an x-ray of one section of The Young Shepherdess and discovered a confusing tangle of arms... A full scale x-ray of the complete picture has now been pieced together, and the museum may exhibit the composite x-ray next to The Young Shepherdess.

Association for Preservation Technology

The Association for Preservation Technology (APT) was founded over 10 years ago and has over 1700 members in the United States and Canada. It is dedicated to sharing preservation technology. The Western Chapter of APT (WC APT) was founded on 24 February 1983 at the Western Regional Office of the National Park Service in San Francisco. Membership is open to anyone interested in preservation technology in California and surrounding states.