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By Rose McIlveen and Jayne Spencer
 Art historian Kathy Foster stands before a section of one of the Thomas Hart Benton murals created for the 1933 Century of Progress Chicago World's Fair exhibit. Foster is involved in the restoration of the Benton murals that hang in the foyer of the Auditorium, the University Theatre and Woodburn Hall. Benton's "backwards" paint mixing technique has made the mural restoration project that much more sticky. Photo by Heather Hill |
As a curator of 19th- and 20th-century art at the IU Art Museum, the subject of eggs has become intertwined with the study of Hoosier muralist Thomas Hart Benton.
Foster is involved in the restoration of the Benton murals that hang in the foyer of the Auditorium, the University Theatre and Woodburn Hall. Many who have visited the Bloomington campus are familiar with the panels, which were commissioned by the State of Indiana and displayed at the 1933 Century of Progress, the Chicago World's Fair.
For years, Benton (1889-1975) imagined a vast, panoramic cycle of paintings expressing the "people's" American history; the dream became reality when the artist completed murals for the Indiana display at the fair. And despite criticisms at the time that Benton's pioneer woman wasn't pretty enough and the pigs weren't of the best breed, the murals were installed at the new IU Auditorium in 1941, following their recovery by then-President Herman B Wells from obscurity in a horse barn at the Indiana State Fairgrounds.
"The governor was glad to get rid of them, because they had been controversial, and the state didn't know what to do with them," she said.
Now back to eggs.
The catch in the restoration project was coming up with the formula Benton used when he mixed his medium of pigments and eggs.
"He turned the recipe backwards," explained Foster. "Usually the pigment is mixed with egg yolk and the whites are used as a glaze over that."
Foster doesn't know why Benton chose to do it the other way around, but it has presented a serious problem for restorers, including Margaret Contompasis, painting conservator at the IU Art Museum, and a team of restorers from Indianapolis.
"The egg yolk glaze seems to have contracted and pulled the paint surface right off the ground in many places," said Foster. "These blisters and curled edges had to be gently reattached to the surface before cleaning and restoration could begin." Restoration of the Benton murals is close to Foster's heart, since she and Contompasis wrote the grant that brought in money from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Getty Grant Program.
The curator/senior scholar and graduate study faculty member knows of what she speaks. The holder of four degrees from Wellesley College and Yale University, Foster had a hard time deciding whether to be a studio artist or an art historian.
It was at Wellesley that Foster first encountered the art work of the 19th-century Philadelphian photographer and painter Thomas Eakins, and that was a major factor in her choice of art history.
Foster's study of Eakins led to a book, Thomas Eakins Rediscovered, and the book to a prestigious distinction this past year.
The book garnered a 1998 Eric Mitchell Prize, awarded annually by the Mitchell Foundation to authors of books in English which have made outstanding and original contributions to the study and understanding of the visual arts.
The book was published in 1997 by Yale University Press. The Mitchell Prizes were founded in 1977 by Jan Mitchell, an art collector, philanthropist and businessman, who wanted to draw attention to exceptional published achievements in the history of art in the United States and the United Kingdom. The 1998 prizes were presented at a reception in the National Portrait Gallery in London, England.
Foster shared her $5,000 award with Andrew Butterfield, author of the co-winning The Sculptures of Verrocchio, also published by Yale University Press. Butterfield is a specialist in sculpture and 19th-century art at Christie's in New York.
Foster has many memories of her work on the Eakins book.
"After Eakins' death, his major works had been removed from his house. What was left--sketchbooks, notes, photographs and unfinished works--were to be thrown into the trash or burned. One of Eakins' students, Charles Bregler, went through the house and gathered those things up. Years later, his widow was still keeping those things, but had gained a reputation for being paranoid about the collection," explained Foster.
Authority figure types had come to the widow's door inquiring about the materials, and she had turned them away. Foster and a classmate went to the widow's house and asked gently about her hoard of Eakins' things.
"We were not the intimidating men in suits who had come to her door in the past, and she let us see what she had stubbornly protected through the years. Some of the things were hidden behind the washing machine and under a bed."
After a year of gentle negotiation, the widow was persuaded to turn the Eakins materials over to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts for safekeeping. The academy purchased the collection in 1985.
The prize-winning book about Eakins is not the end of Foster's involvement with that particular artist. She will be contributing to a catalog for a future exhibition of the artist's sculptures and photographs.
And then there is the book on American water color painting she is planning to write, as well as teaching classes at the university. She is also heavily involved in Bloomington's Historic Preservation Commission, an organization whose aim is to save the best of the city's architectural past for future generations. She is a member of the Bloomington Community Art Commission, is managing the new "percent for the arts" program in Bloomington, and two new public art projects are in the works this year.
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