AIC's 42nd Annual Meeting

In March 2013, news broke that the Palace Hotel in San Francisco would be selling its historic 1909 Maxfield Parrish wall painting at auction in New York City. Due to the public response the owners responded to the community and made the decision to keep the painting. Already en route to New York when the reversal came, the owner decided to proceed with the previously planned surface cleaning to be done on the east coast. The conservators at Rustin Levenson Art Conservation Associates were contracted for this treatment having cleaned and conserved Parrish’s 1906 New York City wall painting, Old King Cole, in the St. Regis Hotel. The opportunity to examine and analyze The Pied Piper of Hamelin, which has never been lined or had its original varnish removed, was a rare and fruitful endeavor. New information about Parrish’s materials and methods were discovered. The surfactant used for surface cleaning was water-soluble, readily biodegradable, and is considered an alternative by the EPA’s DfE and CleanGredients, 2011. In addition, an alternative to organic solvents was found when testing methods for removal of a non-original alkyd layer.