A Steele Concealed
~by Tom Rhea
“An Old Garden” by T.C. Steele.
26 INto ART • July–Sept. 2012
“Untitled”by T.C. Steele.
I
n a 40-year career as a fine art conservator, Barry Bauman has done routine conservation tasks for the Indiana State Museum collection dozens of times. As paintings from their collection were rotated in his care, he would usually pull the painting off its stretcher in order to remount and stabilize the canvas, remove old, yellowed varnish where needed and consolidate and repair any cracked or flaking paint. In April of this year, Bauman had a conservation experience that was anything but routine, one that he called “the highlight of my career.” As he untacked the T. C. Steele painting “An Old Garden” from 1887 and began to pull the canvas away from its stretcher, he made what was, for him, a once-in-alifetime discovery. “The discovery was a personal reward for me and an even greater reward for the museum,” Bauman remarked