Graduate students team up with Getty

Coming from her homeland of Turkey to the hills of Malibu, Ozge
Gencay-Ustun arrived at the Getty Villa as hundreds of visitors
made their way to the opening.

But unlike those expecting to leisurely stroll amid the
sumptuous gardens and ancient art, she came to work.

Part of the first class of a graduate conservation program
jointly sponsored by the Getty Trust and the Cotsen Institute of
Archaeology at UCLA, Gencay-Ustun has been making frequent trips to
the ocean-side museum ““ that is, of course, when she’s
not walking to campus for class.

The new UCLA/Getty Program in archaeological and ethnographic
conservation is one of a handful of graduate conservation programs
in the world, and its dual emphasis on theory and practical
experience makes it even more rare.

In tandem with the opening of Getty Villa, the students began
their lab work this quarter at the newly furnished,
state-of-the-art facility overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

The six students in the program can frequently be found in the
labs of the Villa where they are working on the conservation of
wooden and ceramic objects this quarter.

One student, Steven Pickman, is currently working with a
Guatemalan mask, while Gencay-Ustun is in the process of
dismantling a ceramic water jug that was repaired earlier but is
now flaking apart.

“I’m testing to see what adhesive was used. That
will tell me how to take it apart and which solvents to use.
Without harming the objects, I’ll re-adhere the object by
using another appropriate solvent,” she said.

Across town, in the basement of the Fowler Museum, UCLA faculty
also teach the handful of students everything from cultural theory
to the principles of conservation and its documentation.

“You can’t be admitted without a technical
background, but we try to go beyond the technical background …
holistic here is the word,” said Charles Stanish, the
director of the Cotsen Institute.

The idea for such a program began nine years ago when members of
the UCLA faculty and conservators at the Villa saw the need for a
thorough program in ethnographic conservation, said Julia Sanchez,
assistant director at the Cotsen Institute.

Ethnographic materials can range from intricate necklaces to
tribal masks to headdresses. Often, these objects have a cultural
value in addition to their aesthetic worth, Stanish said.

Working to preserve and restore such objects can be especially
challenging because of their composition.

“With something like an oil painting you only have one
medium … with ethnographic conservation, you can have leather
straps, feathers and copper,” he said, describing a
headdress.

Due to the cultural sensitivity and technical expertise needed
to preserve such artifacts, the three-year joint masters program
was established as a means of supporting aspiring conservators in
their desire to preserve history.

“Archaeology is often called a destructive science. When
you dig something up you destroy the equilibrium it was in. …
Conservation tries to get that object back into some state of
equilibrium so that it can survive,” Pickman said.

That spirit of care and sensitivity is another hallmark of the
program. Thus, when UCLA faculty members did field work with
students last summer at a burial site in Chile, they didn’t
just treat the bones as “some abstract decontextualized
thing,” Stanish said

Instead, attempts to incorporate indigenous populations into the
excavation and conservation work led to a local priest preforming
sacred rituals over the bodies before further work ensued, Stanish
said.

This past fall, the graduate students discussed such ethical and
cultural issues when they took a course on the repatriation of
American Indian remains and cultural objects.

“Sensitivity needs to be carried out. … For me,
conservation is constantly having a dialogue between people, the
artifact and its environment,” Pickman said.

With easy access to UCLA faculty and Villa conservators,
artifacts from the Fowler Museum and private collections, a 20,000
volume library at the Villa and new labs, the six students will
have what they need to continue conserving and preserving.