Coronavirus: Silver lining in National Gallery of Australia’s lockdown blues
The National Gallery of Australia has been hit hard by the triple whammy of the summer bushfire crisis, a damaging hailstorm and coronavirus closures.
The coronavirus pandemic has closed down the National Gallery of Australia for the past nine weeks, but it has also thrown up a rare opportunity – a chance for conservators and curators to conduct the first major conservation study of the institution’s most valuable and controversial painting, Blue poles.
Blue poles, created by US abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, split the nation after the Whitlam Government paid $US2 million for it in 1973 – then a record price for an American painting.
NGA director Nick Mitzevich said Blue poles was “Australia’s most talked about work of art’’ and “one of the most important paintings of the 20th century’’. He said its insurance value was more than $US300 million and, while it was hard to put a price on it, he speculated it would “exceed that’’ figure on the open market.
Because the painting is so high-profile, it is always on display. But when the gallery was shuttered, for the first time, the gallery’s conservators and curators had “the luxury of time’’ to conduct an in-depth study that will lay the groundwork for a major clean: they are using a high-powered microscrope and infra-red and ultraviolet digital photography to investigate how the painting was created and its different layers and colour tones.
From next week, when the gallery re-opens, visitors will be able to see staff at work on the painting. “This is very exciting … We thought the audience would find it fascinating to witness and be a part of the work as it’s investigated and (eventually) cleaned,’’ Mr Mitzevich said.
News of the conservation project emerged as the NGA – which has endured the triple whammy of the summer bushfire crisis, a damaging hailstorm and coronavirus closures – announced it would reopen on Tuesday.
In a candid interview, Mr Mitzevich said the past five months – which have seen the gallery twice shut its doors and forced the early closure of its blockbuster exhibition Matisse & Picasso – have been “very disappointing for us. I think it was probably more disappointing for the audience, because smoke, hail and now COVID-19 have been ravaging us since the 31st of December.’’
He revealed the gallery was “in discussions’’ with the Federal Government about securing funds to deal with these setbacks, adding: “We will have to recalibrate, post-Covid.’’ He did not say whether this recalibration would involve job losses, but a blockbuster entitled Botticelli to Van Gogh, Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London, that was to open in November, is up in the air, because of the pandemic. “We are currently in very detailed negotiations,’’ he revealed. “It’s a very, very important exhibition and we’ll probably have some clear air on that by next week.’’
The pandemic-related, premature closure of the Matisse & Picasso show, which had been five years in the making, was “particularly painful’’, and after temporarily closing because of bushfire smoke in January, the institution was damaged by “an unprecedented hail storm, where we had damage to the exterior of the building, and damage to some of our sculptures in the sculpture garden’’.
Visitor numbers have been badly affected by the setbacks. Because of the bushfires, “they were 30 per cent down and then we’ve gone to zero’’.
When the gallery re-opens, the number of visitors will be regulated through timed ticketing.