Lori talked about the MSF’s plans for the sign. In other words, with a piece of furniture, they would never strip the old finish off and restore - they would only conserve what was there with reversible methods. This means everything they do is reversible, so if there are advancements in the future in conservation, their work can be undone.
Maria emphasized the distinction between restoration and conservation - The Conservation Center only does conservation. Bozena also did some in-painting with watercolors to make the surface more even. Bozena painstakingly cleaned the piece with warm water, and used an alcohol swab to kill areas with mold. She felt that the colors were water soluble and the lines were not sharp, so she doesn’t think it was screen printed or fully screen printed, but she is not sure. She found that many of the stains were fat or grease stains, so she feels the piece may have been inside, near cooking areas.
VIENNA BEEF FACTORY STORE PHOTOS PATCH
In certain areas, he put a caul, or patch of Kozo paper, which is a special paper used in conservation, on the back of the piece where the board was torn all the way through.īozena, the Head of Paper Conservation, had the actual sign behind her, and spoke about doing many initial tests to determine what the surfaces showed in terms of the composition of the stains. He used clamps to keep down any swelling. He treated these areas by injecting an acrylic resin in a solvent near the edges where there was damage, which wicked into the pores to shore up and stop further damage to these areas. Josh, the Head of Object Conservation, explained the condition of the piece with photos, showing the damage in terms of tears to the masonite. The Vienna Beef factory was in the Maxwell Street neighborhood starting in 1893 for many decades until they moved to their Damen location, and provided local street stands and restaurants that sold Vienna Beef products in the Market area with Vienna Beef signs. Lori was curious to know whether it might be the work of commercial artist Gus Korn, who worked for Vienna Beef doing advertising work. This was an item that we recorded as coming into our collection in 1996, two years after the move in 1994, and we do not know who donated it or where the piece was displayed at the Market.
When the market was moved from its historic location on Maxwell Street in 1994, the MSF was collecting a variety of artifacts with no dedicated central collection storage, and sometimes we received items from third parties. It is one of the few pieces in the MSF collection where there is no provenance. Lori Grove of the MSF spoke about our colorful “Vienna Beef” sign, which is about 3’ x 5 ½’ on paper & masonite. It’s located in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood in a former gold storage facility, with the adaptive reuse of the building designed by architect Jeanne Gang. Maria Ochalek, the Director of Client Services at the Center, welcomed the group and spoke about The Conservation Center as the largest private art conservation lab in the USA. The Maxwell Street Foundation (MSF) hosted a webinar on Zoom led by The Conservation Center on, where the Center’s conservators virtually walked us through their conservation process recently completed for the “Vienna Beef” sign from the MSF’s collection of Maxwell Street artifacts.
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