Seeing the Lost Mural: How Damage and Restoration Inform Close Looking
Abstract
The 110-year-old Lost Mural, damaged by almost 30 years behind a false wall, is a patchwork of tones – some areas carefully cleaned by art conservators, other still dirty and showing chipped and missing paint. In this state, it exists simultaneously as an example of damage and restoration, and as both a significant cultural artifact and a work of religious art. This article shows how the conservation process and the practice of close looking allow us to better understand each of these aspects of the Lost Mural. After detailing the mural’s origins and subsequent damage, it pivots to explore the power of slow, careful examination to reveal an object’s secrets. Several findings made during conservation work are used to illustrate how art conservation allows for unique types of examination, further showing that some truths are revealed only by manipulating the artwork itself. Finally, this article considers the potential visual and emotional impact of a fully restored mural and the relationship between the mural’s perceived completeness and its ability to enchant or engage the public. This piece uses damage as an inroad for understanding; starting with flaked paint and darkened varnish, it explores how to both restore and interpret the Lost Mural.
Citation: West, Eliza. “Seeing the Lost Mural: How Damage and Restoration Inform Close Looking.” The Jugaad Project, 4 Mar. 2021, thejugaadproject.pub/lost-mural [date of access]
Suspended above head height in the lobby of a mid-century synagogue in Burlington, Vermont, is a twenty-one-foot-wide, eleven-foot-tall mural. Around the mural’s edges, it is possible to see the plaster, lathe, and roof beams which were cut when the “lost” mural was moved here in 2015 from the synagogue where it was originally painted. In places, grey plaster shows through where paint has flaked away. The artist’s composition appears dull in sections and vibrant in others, a side-effect of the partially completed cleaning of its surface. Despite this, its massive scale and colorful composition exude enthusiasm and its imagery evokes both theater and faith. Swags of drapery held up by golden ropes and marble pillars frame two rampant lions who flank the stone tablets of the Decalogue. The viewer cannot escape seeing all: the composition and also the areas lost to damage; sections which shine and others which remain dulled by age.
Figure 1: A 2016 photograph of the mural hanging in the lobby of Ohavi Zedek Synagogue. Photograph by Paul Gittlesohn. Courtesy of the Lost Mural Project & Ohavi Zedek Synagogue Archives.
Each aspect of the mural’s appearance contains a different story. While the curtains may be a nod to the artist’s own work in the theater, the colors revealed in some areas illustrate the vibrancy of the world in which he painted it. The religious iconography at center links the mural both to the entire Hebraic tradition and to generations of other artists who created similar artworks in synagogues across eastern Europe. Finally, both the areas of missing paint and those where the colors remain darkened by time hint at the events which have taken place since the object’s creation in 1910. Each of these stories present an opportunity to understand this single artifact in a new way, but much more literally, they also afford an opportunity to look at the physical object differently.
Careful observation, or “close looking,” is a tool used regularly by scholars of art, history, and anthropology to learn from material culture. Sometimes styled as “reading” an object, this type of looking derives from the expectation that an object’s materials and physical appearance contain information not only about it, but also about the society which created it. The damage which this mural has incurred during its life has required extensive and ongoing work by art conservators whose own observation and manipulation of the mural have led to new revelations about its creation and cultural significance. While scholars and conservators have been studying this artwork, it has also been shown the public. The fact of its existence has been used to illustrate the story of Jewish life in this New England town while its scale and imagery have enchanted observers. As the Lost Mural Project works toward enhancing the way the mural is displayed, conversations have arisen about how visitors to the mural are affected by its appearance.
This article explores different ways of looking at the Lost Mural, demonstrating that damage can create unexpected opportunities to learn from a piece of art, while also discussing how the level to which a work of art is restored can help it fulfill its potential to engage an audience. Starting from a perspective of historical inquiry with an end goal of interpreting the object to the public, it examines one object through a lens of close looking.
The opening section explores 100 years of the mural’s history, detailing its creation, damage, and path to restoration. In its current state of conservation, the Lost Mural’s appearance is disjointed, but on the cusp of visual unification. Using this as a vantage point, the second section investigates how the mural’s damaged state provides an opportunity for close looking and examination by a conservator. Finally, it discusses why an appearance of completeness, rather than damage, is a key aspect of making the mural a legible piece of cultural heritage for the public.
A Mural is Painted, Lost, and Found
The Lost Mural was painted in 1910, when the members of Burlington, Vermont’s second Lithuanian Jewish congregation, who called themselves Chai Adam, or “life of man,” decided to refresh the interior of their twenty-one-year-old synagogue at 105 Hyde St. The building had an unusual detail for a synagogue: a projecting apse at one end of the sanctuary where the bimah and ark were located (Gruber, “Rampant Lions”). The angled plaster ceiling of the apse was the canvas for the wall painting which, 100 years later, became known as the Lost Mural. Rendered in oil paint, it was part of a larger decorative scheme which included a blue sky on the ceiling and elegant art-nouveau Hebrew script on the walls (Samuelson 145-6).
Figure 2: The former Chai Adam Synagogue at 105 Hyde Street, Burlington, Vermont. The photo shows the projecting apse which once housed the mural. Photo by the author.
The mural’s central panel consists of classic Jewish iconography. In the center, rays of sunlight shine on the Crown of Torah and the twin tablets of Decalogue, which are flanked by rampant Lions of Judah. This composition is surrounded by three sets of curtains in purple, blue, and red, which are held up by four marble pillars, expertly painted in trompe l’oeil. This drapery clearly references the biblical Tent of the Tabernacle, which housed the Ark of the Covenant while the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, and is described in Exodus: “the Mishkan [Tabernacle] you shall make out of ten curtains of twisted fine linen, and blue, purple, and crimson wool” (The Jewish Bible, Exodus 26.1) While the mural’s composition was not taken directly from a specific source, all of its individual elements can also be documented in other eastern European or American synagogue wall paintings (Gruber, “1910 Synagogue Mural Revealed”). The prominence of the drapery and the trompe l’oeil style in which the pillars are rendered, however, may have something to do with the background of the artist, Ben Zion Black.
Black arrived in Burlington in 1910. Before immigrating from Kovno, Lithuania, he had worked in the theater. Likely he also received training as a painter, possibly from his father, who was himself an artist (Gruber, “Century-Old Jewish Mural”). In the years following his work on the interior of Chai Adam, Black “was prolific as a producer of culture,” (Gruber, “Rampant Lions”). He ran a mandolin orchestra and wrote poetry in Yiddish while making his living as a sign painter (Gruber, “Century-Old Jewish Mural”; “Ben Zion Black”). It is likely that Black had experience in painting theatrical scenery as well. While his mural in Chai Adam is part of a long tradition of synagogue decoration, its curtains also bear a strong resemblance to the painted theater curtains which were ubiquitous in opera houses and town halls around new England in during this period. Though Black painted the mural only months after arriving in Vermont, his creation also had a local artistic precedent (Hadsell 5).
In 1939, the Chai Adam congregation merged with the older Ohavi Zedek congregation and the synagogue at 105 Hyde Street was sold (Samuelson 176). It existed as a commercial space (most notably a carpet warehouse) for several decades, with the mural remaining in place on the ceiling. However, the building was sold in the mid-1980s and the new owners planned to convert the space into apartments. Aaron Goldberg, a descendant of those first Burlington congregations, and the mural’s greatest champion over the years, looked for a new home for Ben Zion Black’s work. After approaching the nearby Shelburne Museum, however, Goldberg realized that he would not be able to find a new home for the fragile and unwieldy plaster triptych. Instead, Goldberg worked to have the mural photographed, after which it was enclosed behind a false wall, set just inches in front of the painted surface. There the mural sat for 26 years (Kerschner and Silver, 38).
Figure 3: Archival slide of the mural, taken in 1986, prior to the conversion of 105 Hyde Street into apartments. Courtesy of Ohavi Zedek Synagogue Archives & the Lost Mural Project.
In 2010, Goldberg, along with fellow Ohavi Zedek archivist Jeff Potash, formed the Lost Shul Mural Committee, as part of ongoing work to preserve the mural. (Today the group operates as the ‘Lost Mural Project’). Two years later, 105 Hyde Street changed hands. It was bought by the property management company Offenhartz Inc., which offered to donate the mural to the Ohavi Zedek congregation as long as they could remove it from the building. While efforts to relocate the mural in 1986 had failed, in 2012, new scholarship had come to light which greatly increased the significance of this example of Jewish wall art.
Scholar of Jewish monuments, Samuel Gruber, identified Black’s work as part of a centuries-long tradition of synagogue decoration. In a 2014 article for The Forward, Gruber wrote:
Nothing quite like this survives in Europe, and no mural in the United States equals the Lost Shul Mural in size, scope, completeness and Jewish meaning. Only a few highly damaged painted fragments survive from all the synagogues in Lithuania, most notably from Cekiske, the town of origin for many of Burlington’s Jews.
For Gruber, the Lost Mural has international artistic significance because it has survived more fully intact than almost any other example of this once-prolific art form. Hidden away in a small New England town, this mural escaped the destruction which obliterated so many of its European siblings during the twentieth century. But the mural also has a local story to tell. When presented as a piece of Vermont history, it makes an eloquent argument about the role of immigrants in Vermont’s cultural landscape, a narrative that often evades the history books in the state. Both of these stories made the Lost Mural a worthy candidate for preservation, but they didn’t simplify the logistics of stabilizing and relocating a large, three-dimensional section of plaster wall with an extremely fragile painted surface.
When the mural had been enclosed, the false wall and a layer of insulation were set too close, trapping moisture. As the decades passed, the oil paint began to cup and crack away from the plaster onto which it had been applied (Kerschner and Silver 37-8). Saving the mural meant raising the funds to extract it, in one piece, from the building, after first treating the flaking paint. As a team of engineers, architects, and builders prepared to cut the mural from the building, conservator Constance Silver painstakingly re-adhered as much as possible of the mural’s flaking paint, a process known as consolidation. Unfortunately, about 10% of the painted surface had already flaked away, resulting in large areas of raw plaster across the mural’s surface (Kerschner and Silver 39-41).
On May 5th, 2015, a crane transferred the mural to a truck which then moved it less than half a mile to the Ohavi Zedek synagogue at 188 North Prospect Street. There it was hung from the lobby ceiling, 11 feet above the ground, replicating the height at which it had hung in Chai Adam (Kerschner and Silver 50). While the mural had originally occupied a sacred and highly regulated part of a synagogue, its location at Ohavi Zedek illustrated a new cultural meaning for the object. While many religious sites must balance religious uses with a secular interest in their historic objects or works of art (Antohin), the Lost Mural’s new home in the Ohavi Zedek lobby – a space which opens onto not only the sanctuary, but also classrooms and a community hall used for a wide range of (often non-religious) activities – positions it not as a sacred object, but as a cultural one.
The mural had a new home and a new context, but its damage was still evident. Both before and after the move, Silver began the work of restoring the mural to how it had looked when 105 Hyde Street was an operating synagogue. The most obvious issue in the mural’s condition were the large areas of missing paint. Luckily, the archival images taken in 1986 meant that it would be possible to restore the missing portions of the design. A more complex issue was the mural’s colors, which had changed dramatically in the 100 years since Black had painted it. In 1986, the mural had appeared dark and yellowish. Scientific analysis showed that the mural’s paint was covered in multiple layers of varnish which had darkened with age. Additionally, in the years that the mural was on view in 105 Hyde street, its surface had been dirtied by smoke from coal heating (Kerschner and Silver 41-2). Together varnish and grime had shifted the mural’s colors, obscuring what were originally vibrant hues. It was only once Silver had cleaned several “windows” on the mural that it became obvious that the drapes which had appeared green and brown were in fact blue and purple. (Only at this juncture was the connection made between the imagery of the mural and the story of the tabernacle in Exodus.) In a video filmed in 2014, Silver describes the process of stripping away the dirt and varnish on the mural’s surface. She was the first person to experience the vibrant hues of the drapery as they emerged. What Silver discovered about the mural enriched our understanding of it and allowed scholars like Gruber, as well as Goldberg and Potash, to deepen their understanding of Black’s work.
Figure 4: The left side of the mural, photographed in 2020, showing a number of areas cleaned to different degrees. Photo by the author.
Unfortunately, before Silver could launch into a second phase of conservation work, the project was paused. The Lost Shul Mural Committee was out of funds for the time being and opted to put their energies towards sharing the mural’s story with the community until further fundraising could take place (Kerschner and Silver 42). The mural had, after all, already waited decades. The paint was no longer in danger of flaking off and the original colors were, if not fully restored, then at least known. The final conservation could wait a little longer. It is this complex view of a saved-yet-damaged and partially restored-yet-still-incomplete mural which sets the stage for the remainder of this article.
Seeing Through Damage: Close Looking and Conservation
One approach to material culture studies involves engaging with object through observation and description of their materiality. For at least sixty years, connoisseurs, curators, and material culturalist and have been developing systems for organizing that process of observation and study. In 1961, art connoisseur, teacher, and scholar Charles Montgomery listed fourteen points of analysis for decorative arts objects, laying out a series of elements to consider when carrying out the study of an object, including appearance, materials, the details of manufacture, function, style, history, and condition (Montgomery 145-52). The majority of Montgomery’s categories derive from physical observation of the object, while a smaller number rely on outside research. In his 1982 article, “Mind in Matter,” Jules Prown presented a more developed methodology for object analysis involving three steps: description, deduction, and speculation (7). Prown had studied English prior to earning his MA from the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in Early American Culture (where Montgomery taught) and his methodology drew much from the practice of close reading familiar to scholars of literature (Berger 114). Today students in the Winterthur Program (the author included) are taught a version of Prown’s method under the name “close looking.”
Description, Prown’s first step, is fairly straightforward, encompassing much of Montgomery’s list of discrete observations to make about an object. For deduction, “the analyst contemplates what it would be like to use or interact with the object, or, in the case of a representational object, to be transported empathetically into the depicted world” while speculation involves creating hypotheses about the object and conducting research to test them (Prown 7-10). For both Montgomery and Prown, description of the object is an essential first step but, aside from mentioning the acceptability of assistive tools like measuring tapes and magnifying lenses (Montgomery 147; Prown 8), neither goes into detail on how best to conduct this observation.
It seems obvious, when discussing an object, that to understand it we must first observe it, but the quality of that observation is less often described. In its simplest form, close looking involves prolonged, focused observation of an object, with the sole goal of learning as much about it as possible. It is characterized by a lengthy series of observations or discoveries, made without pressure to “get it right” from the beginning. The observer’s role is to note down all of their observations and avoid drawing conclusions too soon that might influence which observations are deemed significant. When possible, close looking uses more senses than just sight: touch, sound, smell, and (very infrequently) taste can also reveal information about an object. For Prown, handling the object, and imagining how it might have been handled or used in its original context, is part of the process, as is paying attention to one’s own impressions or reactions to a work (8). From here, speculation is allowed to drive research based not only on observation (internal evidence) but also research into other sources (external evidence). Whenever possible, these steps should be conducted in order (Prown 7). To the best of my knowledge, no curator has ever sat down in front of the Lost Mural and formally followed Prown’s methodology or Montgomery’s fourteen-point analysis, but despite that, it has been subjected to many different types of close looking throughout its life. The most in-depth of these have come about because of the damage the mural has incurred and the need to explore it as an object in order to restore it.
The penultimate point of analysis which Montgomery lists is condition, a term which describes the state of the object now relative to at its creation. He notes that “the older, the rarer, the less obtainable, and the finer the object, the more restoration, repairs, or blemishes the connoisseur is prepared to accept” (Montgomery 152). Obviously, in the case of the Lost Mural, a great degree of damage has been ‘accepted’ because the object itself is a unique representation of an almost entirely lost art form. Montgomery is writing from the perspective of a connoisseur, where condition effects value. When it comes to understanding the creation, history, and cultural context of an object, however, condition issues may also reveal information about an object that would never otherwise be discovered. While damage to an object may literally reveal hidden secrets (such as a damaged textile which allows the researcher to observe an otherwise obscured internal structure), it may also bring a new investigator to the game: the conservator.
According to the American Institute for Conservation, “conservation encompasses all those actions taken toward the long-term preservation of cultural heritage.” The conservator achieves this through “examination, documentation, treatment, and preventive care, supported by research and education,” (What is Conservation?). Conservator Madeleine Hours puts it another way, saying that her professional role is as “an expert searching primarily for the truth” (13). The role of the conservator is complimentary to that of the researcher or curator, and so are their observational skills. Conservators are trained in the use of scientific tools, such as paint analysis and various types of photography, in order to understand more than their senses can perceive (Hours 15). Perhaps most importantly, however, a conservator who is performing a treatment on an object must spend hours working closely with it. Helen Evans states “We start with the material itself; our understanding of objects stems from our interaction with the physicality of the artefact. Curators seldom get the opportunity to devote such long periods of time to individual objects” (16). This physical manipulation of the object itself allows for a type of deep understanding that even those who spent hours simply looking at an object cannot achieve.
In late 2019, the Lost Mural Project’s consulting conservator, Richard Kerschner advised that chemicals applied to the mural to help protect it during the 2015 move had made it so that as time passed, it would become more difficult to clean the rest of the mural. He advised that conservation work be resumed as soon as possible (Kerschner 1; Kerschner and Silver 51). Though Constance Silver had provided a quote in 2015 for completing the conservation of the mural, the Lost Mural Project felt it was important to get a second bid, in order to make a comparison. In the summer of 2020, we contacted Emily Phillips, an art conservator from nearby Essex, New York. Quickly realizing the complexities of the mural as an object, Phillips proposed a pilot project in which she would clean a small portion of the mural in order to learn more about its materials and craft an informed bid.
Figure 5: Conservator Emily Phillips cleaning the Lost Mural, August, 2020. Photo by the author.
Phillips spent one hundred hours with the Lost Mural during August and September of 2020. I spoke with Phillips and documented her progress several times during the month she worked on the mural. Because my own involvement with the Lost Mural Project had only begun in late 2019, this was my first chance to learn from a conservator as they themselves were discovering the intricacies of the Lost Mural. While Phillips was able to benefit from much of what had already been discovered about the Lost Mural, her own close observations added greatly to our understanding. Phillips worked extensively on two small areas of the mural. In the process, learned things about how the mural was made, and consequently how it once looked, that no other source was able to provide.
Spending several hours at a time working on a small scaffold just inched from the mural’s surface, Phillips was engaging in the primary activity of close looking. Her observations, carried out over the course of a month, led to a range of findings. It wasn’t until my second or third visit to her worksite, for example, that Phillips mentioned she had spotted Black’s preparatory underdrawings in certain areas of the mural. Along the leading edge of the innermost curtains, Black had not perfectly followed his own drawing when painting in the tasseled edge of the curtain. This was an observation Phillips was uniquely positioned to make, as both the woman on the scaffold, and an observer with specialized skill in reading paintings. Here, Phillips was not only an observer, but also a connoisseur, or expert with extensive visual knowledge of painted surfaces.
The first of the two areas which Phillips cleaned and began to restore during her pilot project was the lower portion of the righthand lion. Though this area has some missing paint, Phillips’ primary objective here was to clean away the layers of varnish on the mural’s surface and begin to familiarize herself with the mural’s materials. After using solvents to remove protective facing varnish that had been applied by Silver, Philips began working to carefully remove varnish which dated to the time of the mural’s creation (Kerschner and Silver 41; Phillips 2). As it was intended to do, this processed revealed the mural’s much brighter original colors. However, it wasn’t simply that the colors were brighter, they also demonstrated greater contrast between the highlights and the shadows. The result was that Black’s stylized depiction of a lion appeared much more three dimensional that it had previously.
Figure 6: After being cleaned by Phillips, the colors of right-hand lion are more vibrant and the work appears to be more technically advanced the left-hand lion, which has yet to be cleaned.
As she worked, Phillips confirmed one of Silver’s earlier findings, that Black had used glazes—pigments mixed into varnish—to add depth to the image. By adding these semi-transparent layers on top of the oil paint layer, he was able to refine his composition after it was largely complete. To Phillips, whose work involves understanding how artists build up the layers of an image, this was a clear indication that Black had received at least some formal education in painting. In her words, “while working in the lion area and surrounding decorative elements it became apparent that there is a much higher technical level of painting than originally thought. The artist has gone back in and reinforced shadows and depth using glazing techniques over previously varnished areas” (2). This, in turn, helped the mural’s historians build a more developed sense of the artist’s background and training. By manipulating the very material that the artist had used to create the mural’s imagery, Phillips was able to learn something about his artistic process that would otherwise have remained obscured.
The second area which Phillips cleaned was a two-foot by three-foot section on the left-hand panel which encompassed the base of the inner column and the bottom of the blue drapery. Here she was able to not only reveal the mural’s original colors, but also inpaint losses in the paint surface to fully restore this small section. To do this, Phillips approximated the colors and textures surrounding the missing areas, meaning that even though her restoration work isn’t a stroke-for-stroke recreation of Black’s brushwork, it is now possible for the eye to glide over the formerly missing areas and take in the whole composition without being distracted by losses (Phillips 3).1 Because much of the mural is a trompe l’oeil illusion, completion of at least a small portion of the mural restoration was an important part of Phillips’ pilot project. Even small areas of damage disturb the illusion of the pillars and drapery, ruining the overall effect. Though the fully restored area was only six square feet – a fraction of the mural’s hundred and fifty square feet – it was still large enough to allow members of the project to better visualize how a fully restored mural might look.
Figures 7 and 8: These before and after images illustrate the restoration carried out by Phillips on a small section of the mural. The second image shows both how cleaning reveals the mural’s original bright colors, and how Phillips’ inpainting work allows the viewer to once again see the mural as whole. Photos by the author.
After seeing the restored portion of the mural, Lost Mural Project board member and retired History professor Jeff Potash found it possible to envision the mural fully restored. Imagining the visual effect of all four of the mural’s pillars uninterrupted by areas of paint loss, Potash observed that the viewer would be literally drawn into the mural. Though originally designed to be viewed from a distance, today one walks into the U-shaped space below the triptych’s three panels. In doing so, the viewer moves between the mural’s four pillars and subsequently through three sets of drapes, entering the space within the tabernacle. In this way, the mural is a democratizing object, welcoming any and all to “stand within the tent” which it depicts. Though it is unlikely that this welcoming narrative was part of the mural’s original intent (the space directly below the mural in Chai Adam synagogue would have been off limits to the majority of the community), thanks to the more secular lobby space which it now occupies at Ohavi Zedek, it is part of the mural’s story today (Potash).
Phillips, and Silver before her, were brought in to work on the mural because of the damage it had incurred. The time required by the painstaking work of conservation, combined with their expertise in the materials of the mural itself meant that the two conservators were literally able to see and experience things that previous observers of the mural, including historians and curators, could not (Evans 15). Ironically, therefore, it was the Lost Mural’s damaged surface that has led to new ways of seeing the work. The observations made by Phillips and Silver have allowed the author, along with Potash and other members of the Lost Mural Project, to write improved description of the mural, and have provided the seeds of new historical investigations which will eventually lead to more nuanced interpretation for the public.
The Power of the Mural as Heritage Object
While the completion of the cleaning work begun by Silver and Phillips is necessary for the long-term safety of the mural (Kerschner 1) – and therefore generally acknowledged as imperative – the restoration of the missing areas of the mural is not. Removed from its original context, where its function was that of decoration, the mural now holds a new kind of meaning. In addition to being an art object and a representation of a religious story, the Lost Mural is also a historical artifact and a piece of cultural heritage. As such, the damage it incurred over the course of its life is part of its story. However, visitors to the Lost Mural will come to it with different observational skills than the historians and conservators who have studied it in recent years. Their ability to find meaning or be moved by it must be considered. This final section deals with how the mural is, and will be, seen by the public.
In December 2019, the Lost Mural Project convened a retreat of local and national museum experts to discuss next steps for the mural. While all agreed that the mural’s cleaning must be a top priority, the conversation around restoration was not so clear cut, as recreating the areas of missing paint would inevitably affect people’s perceptions of the object. In the end, most felt that inpainting the areas of damage was the best solution if the mural’s function was to be as an artistic and cultural artifact. The vast majority of damage to the mural occurred after 1986 while the mural was behind a false wall and therefore does not illustrate a particularly active period in its history. Additionally, the damage is visually distracting, making it hard to focus on the composition (West, Personal Notes). The vibrant Litvak culture of early twentieth-century Burlington, not to mention the artistic tradition of which the Lost Mural is now a rare survivor, are most compellingly conveyed by means of a fully restored mural.2
On display in the comparatively secular space of the Ohavi Zedek lobby, the mural is positioned as a heritage object with a message to convey about the culture which created it. It also serves the quintessentially Jewish role of helping to preserve the memory of earlier generations of Burlington Jewry. Though the mural has been preserved as a piece of cultural heritage, it is important to recognize that the conservation process involves choices which effect how the mural is presented to the world: “physical changes to an object [cause] alterations to perceptions of meaning” (Evans 13) and conservation is “to some extent, the selection of one narrative over another, the preservation of some aspects of the materiality of the object and the removal of others” (Evans 22). In discussing whether or not to restore the damage that the Lost Mural has incurred, we must acknowledge that we are doing so with the goal of shaping viewers’ perceptions. Additionally, the preservation and restoration of the mural has not, and cannot, be achieved without altering it. Caitlyn DeSilvey warns that the work of “restoration, conservation, preservation, reconstruction” often achieves “not recuperations but change,” with final results “that draw on past precedents but move forward into new forms” (20). Removed from its original home, it is unquestionable that the way the mural is viewed today has been radically altered by the act of preservation. This, however, was the only path forward for the mural if it were to survive. Unable to preserve its original architectural context, the mural’s caretakers have worked to preserve its cultural context. In this way, the Lost Mural has become part of the heritage industry, in which “selected and desired pasts and histories [are mobilized] in the service of present-day agendas and interests” (Čamprag 176, Debary 131). While this description of modern heritage paints a distinctly self-interested picture, in this instance, the preservation of the mural by descendants of the very community which created it, in order to preserve the memory of their ancestors, must be perceived as a noble goal.
Another approach to the question of restoration involves change in relation to efficacy. Writing about the Vodun shrines of Bénin, Dana Rush explains that these sites are constantly changing. They are works in progress which often appear unfinished to the outside observer. However, “standard aesthetic assessments such as “how does it look?” and “what does it mean?” are of little concern.” Rather, Rush suggests that the relevant questions are “does it work?” and “‘will it continue to work?’ That is, will it continue to meet the needs and demands of the shrine owner and the individuals petitioning its guidance” (70). Though now largely divorced from any past religious power, the same question of efficacy can be applied to the mural. Today, the work we expect of the mural is the conveyance of culture. As an object that has already been altered by circumstance, we must accept that it will continue to change, and guide that change such that it is carried out responsibly and is done in a way to further the mural’s efficacy as a heritage site.
For the Lost Mural to continue to work it has to be seen. The mural’s original function was to embed worship and its practices and experiences in a space. Today the Lost Mural Project aims to use the mural in a representational manner to discuss the culture that created and worshiped in that space. The role of the mural in both contexts—what we can gloss as temple and museum—is to evoke a connection or sense of reverence in the viewer. Put another way, the mural’s job is to enchant us. David Morgan (building on the work of Alfred Gell and others) describes enchantment as a person giving up control to another entity. We can choose to partake in two different kinds of enchantment, that of belief, and that of make-believe or “as-if.” (Many museum exhibits and heritage spaces are constructed on this premise of as-if, with the visitor encountering these two registers or contexts simultaneously.) In either case, to be enchanted by the Lost Mural, a person must have a desire for it to affect them. The enchantment of belief as desire means that we seek to accept something as certain, no matter how otherworldly it may appear. In a realm of make-believe, we find it enjoyable to act as if that something is real. With practice, our view of an idea or image which first enchanted us as make-believe may also grown until our perception shifts to the enchantment of belief (27-8, 30). As both a work of art and a cultural object, the Lost Mural effects us most strongly when we believe in it.
Aesthetics is a powerful way to effect enchantment. Trompe l’oeil, for instance, is the artistic effect used to make a two-dimensional surface appear to have three-dimensional elements. Viewers of the Lost Mural are asked to pretend that the mural contains four real marble pillars and yards of vibrant drapery; that the triptych is in fact a dessert tabernacle in which sun shines on two stone tablets flanked by lions. It is the viewer’s choice to be taken in by this depiction. Seeing Ben Zion Black’s artwork as an old testament scene is an act of make-believe but, as a work of religious art, it is also deeply connected to religious belief. In its original context of synagogue interior decoration, the Lost Mural represented and reinforced belief in the ten commandments. The traditional Jewish visual language of the mural’s central panel helped to maintain the belief of the Chai Adam congregation.
Morgan tells us that context and interpretation play an important role here. While the congregants of Chai Adam could read the iconography of the mural with ease, we cannot expect that the Lost Mural will hold religious significance for its modern viewers, or even that they will be able to interpret its iconography without assistance (35-6). We can, however, present them with the context in which it was created, and allow them to participate in whatever level of enchantment is comfortable to them. Restoring the mural’s trompe l’oeil effect gives its viewers an opportunity to more easily participate in the enchantment of make-believe. Providing them with information about how the mural was originally viewed by the congregants in Chai Adam synagogue allows them to engage in their own deduction about the mural and “be transported empathetically into the depicted world,” (Prown 8).
Conclusion
In 1986, viewed without a sense of its international artistic significance, no one stepped forward to offer the Lost Mural a new home. It took another quarter century of scholarship, and one historian who was able to see this object as part of a ‘global’ tradition (itself a process that required an evolution of ideas about heritage), to make a case for the Lost Mural’s value. The vast majority of works of this genre no longer survive, emphasizing that notions of scarcity are still paramount in assessing an object’s value. Simultaneously, the uncertain status of the mural and the extent of damage has complicated this narrative of discovery and rebirth. Large, unwieldy, and damaged, the mural’s survival has depended on people’s ability to truly ‘see’ it through processes of physical sight as well as historical insight. Having been seen as remarkable, however, close looking has continued to reveal its secrets. Through the bad luck of its damage, it has been able to benefit from the eye of multiple conservators who, spending many hours at a time manipulating the very material of the object, have made it possible to understand not only how it was made, but have given depth to our understanding of its maker. Finally, careful consideration of how its appearance effects the way that it is seen have helped shape an idea of how it is presented to the public, and what we might expect them to see in it.
The conservation of the Lost Mural is ongoing and funded by donations. To contribute, visit the Lost Mural Project’s website.
End Notes
1 It is important to note here that conservators Silver’s and Phillps' in-painting and varnishing work is fully reversible. The conservation-grade paints they used are isolated from Ben Zion Black’s original oil paint by a layer of modern varnish and a similar varnish is applied to protect the final surface of the restored mural. All added materials can be removed by a conservator in the future.
2 Lest information about the mural’s damaged state be lost, several areas of plaster from the wall surrounding the mural triptych were also removed from 105 Hyde Street, and will eventually be displayed in order to illustrate the materials which make up the mural.
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