A Hybrid Approach to the Digital Restoration of Large or Damaged Works of Art

Abstract

This paper will discuss the issues faced by the Rhode Island Historical Society (RIHS) in deciding how to handle the conservation and restoration needs of a very large and damaged work in their collection, and describe the innovative solution they came up with. The RIHS faced the decision of how to approach possible restoration of an 1812 painted drop scene or theater curtain, which had been conserved in the 1980s but was by now in need of cleaning and perhaps further restoration, to help celebrate the organization’s bicentennial in 2022. They had to decide what the limits of traditional restoration were for their object, if this restoration might significantly affect the integrity of the work, and whether the considerable cost of traditional restoration was too prohibitive for a smaller institution. In considering these questions the RIHS came to the conclusion that an alternative method of restoring a work such as theirs was needed, a method that would allow an institution to create a digital file of the work, and to “restore” it using a combination of photo-editing tools and traditional painting methods. Digital photo-editing on its own would not have been sufficient to produce an organic, realistic restoration of the work, and using this hybrid digital approach, which did not alter the original object in any way, was the ideal solution.