When he looks at art, what does
George Bisacca ’77 see that others don’t?
George Bisacca in the conservation studio at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photograph by Jon Roemer, Middlebury Magazine
By Jeffrey Lott
Middlebury Magazine, Fall 2012
Editor: Matt Jennings
A painting is an image, but it is also an object. The image resides in a thin film of pigment bound by a medium, such as egg yolk or oil, to an underlying support: a taut piece of canvas or—in the case of many Western paintings before the late-15th century—a carefully prepared panel of wood.
For most of us, the painting is what we see on the surface, where light reflects the image into our eyes. George Bisacca ’77 sees that same image, but his vision of a painting penetrates more deeply, to the object beneath. As one of the world’s leading conservators of paintings on wood (often called “panel paintings”), Bisacca sees through the paint to the cracks, fissures, worm holes, and clumsy repairs of centuries past—yet he also sees the craftsmanship, history, cultural tradition, and immense beauty of these objects.
In the airy, north-facing conservation studio atop the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Bisacca stands among a dozen paintings. Some need minor repairs, removal of yellowed varnish, cleaning, or minor retouching. Others are in shockingly bad condition….
Read more.
Slideshow: Inside the conservation studio with George Bisacca ’77
Photographs by Jon Roemer for Middlebury Magazine