Old murals get a makeover

When the students and faculty of the art conservation department lent their hands for the preservation of two nurals in Smyrna, Del., they didn't realize they would be restoring an important piece of community history.

Culminating in May, doctoral student Dawn Rogala led a team of conservators in a two-month effort to preserve the murals created by Willard Borow at the John Bassett Intermediate School. Students from the university were recruited by professors.

In 1948, the murals, depicting images of Delaware and its white-coifed residents in the 1700s, graced the walls of Smyrna Theatre.  However, in the 1980s the theater was sold and the murals were shuffled around until they found a home at the John Bassett Intermediate School.  

Those moves proved detrimental to the paintings. Rogala says there were many tears and punctures, with significant structural damages.

She says the Smyrna community initiated the restoration and has been strong support for the project since the beginning. Since their creation in the 1940s, the Borow murals have had a longstanding place in the community.

"The community members paid for the conservation of these murals by purchasing prints of the WPA-murals," Rogala says. "Those prints were sold specifically to raise money for the treatment of the Borrow murals."

Armed with cotton swabs covered with a chemical component, the students went to work removing the soot, grease and gritty exterior.  

"We are trying to use the most gentle materials as possible, and materials that let us spend as little contact with paint as possible," Rogala says.

Though it was painstaking work, Rogala says it was invaluable for the students to master the intricacies of conservation techniques.

"Conservation sits on three legs; artistry, science and studio," she says. "You have to know the art history to understand the materials you are working with," she says.

Graduate student Angela Cloud says the team worked diligently on the humidification and flattening of the paintings as well as structurally stabilizing them with a wood backing.

"This was a very large project and we had six people working on it at any given time," Cloud says.

    Not only did the students help preserve history, they gained valuable experience for their future education and careers. Nationally, there are only a handful of graduate programs in art conservation, and admittance to these programs requires firsthand preservation work.

"We are trying to get enough experience hours in order to apply," Cloud says referring to her past graduate school application. "There are only three graduate programs and [we need] 400 hours to apply to the UD program."

After the efforts of Cloud, Rogala and the rest of the preservation crew, the characters in the murals should have their perfectly coiffed wigs standing strong for quite a while.

"What we did was enough to preserve them for what purpose the school district wanted," Cloud says. "They are now structurally stable and in the environmental conditions they are in, they shouldn't deteriorate any further."

In addition to the success of this semester-long restoration, the university graduates were able to make some community connections by getting in touch with Willard Borrow's son.  

"I was eventually able to establish contact with him through another family member," Rogala says. "He was very helpful, interested in the project and generous with his time and his father's archives."

The project culminated with a rededication of the murals on May 21 as a part of the spring concert at John Bassett Moore.  

Joyce Hill Stoner, director of the university's Preservation Studies Doctoral Program, says the ceremony was packed with people with different backgrounds.

"It was a happy and celebratory event," Stoner stated in an e-mail message. "It was a wonderful opportunity for a large percentage of the school population to hear about the murals, the profession of art conservation and the involvement of the University of Delaware in this Smyrna project."

Rogala also says the community's involvement with the murals, from their funding efforts to the rededication ceremony, solidifies the fact that these murals have become a part of their shared history.

"The school district has a history of supporting and encouraging heritage preservation," she says. "This is the perfect home for these murals."