UvA buildings | The Atelier Building: A sanctuary for (aspiring) restorers
A view of the Rijksmuseum National Gallery and the Van Gogh Museum in the back. Anyone walking on Museumplein is soon dazzled by the stately buildings, the green Museum Promenade, and droves of tourists. But in between, UvA students also make their way to a building at the back of the Rijksmuseum: the Atelier Building on Hobbemastraat.
Some 15 years ago, de Volkskrant wrote that the UvA and the Rijksmuseum were “in advanced negotiations” about a close collaboration in the new Atelier Building on Hobbemastraat, behind the Rijksmuseum. This was in response to an order from then-PvdA education minister Ronald Plasterk. By now, many students and staff have come to know the building as a home away from home. The Atelier Building is a prominent teaching location of the UvA’s Conservation and Restoration program.
.jpg)
Other entities are also at home in the building: the National Cultural Heritage Agency (RCE), which has laboratories in the building and provides extensive advice to agencies that own works of art, and the research department and restoration studios of the Rijksmuseum. It also houses scientists from the NICAS (Netherlands Institute for Conservation, Art, and Science), an institute that conducts natural science research, among other things, and of which the UvA is a founding partner. Funding comes from the Dutch Research Council NWO.
The Thinker
Joen Hermans, an associate professor of chemistry and researcher, also knows this. In addition to his professorship, he works as a researcher at the Rijks and at the Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and Computer Science. “The Atelier Building consists of a mixture of offices and studios. The front looks old, but at the back, there is a big chunk of new construction,” he says. “Because we are all next to each other, cross-pollination occurs. For example, sometimes the different parties can share equipment, such as the electron microscope in the basement.” Each party has a different focus: the UvA wants to educate students as well as possible, scientists want to do the best possible research, et cetera. “You can easily drop in on other parties, which makes it a nice working environment.”
What specifically is being restored in the Atelier Building? In 2009, for example, The Thinker, the famous statue by French sculptor Auguste Rodin, for the Singer Laren art museum. Students also worked on the restoration. Such gigantic famous sculptures do not come along every day, but students always study and restore real objects in the studios. A few years ago, for example, Folia wrote about students working on an eighteenth-century celestial globe during the summer.
(Text continues below image)
Sophie Glerum can regularly be found in the Atelier Building teaching wood and furniture restoration. She too mentions the interaction in the building. “The Rijksmuseum facilitates internships, for example, and students are helped with material-technical research by the RCE. Very nice. Our program has nine different specializations in different studios: paintings, contemporary art, historical interiors, wood and furniture, glass and ceramics, textiles, book and paper, metal, and photography. Then there is the technical art history specialization; They are in the Bushuis.” In textile restoration, for example, students learn about washing and bleaching, and metal restoration deals with enameling techniques.
Turtle veneer
The wood and furniture workshop has workbenches and tools. Students learn traditional production techniques, such as gilding and woodworking, as well as state-of-the-art restoration methods in this specialization. Glerum's expertise includes all kinds of wooden objects from furniture and mirror frames to archaeological objects. “During my training here, I restored an 18th -century cylinder desk. We now have a 19th-century table decorated with the French Boulle technique, whereby the wood is plated with a thin layer of tortoiseshell veneer combined with brass. We have also handled several 17th-century tabernacles from Utrecht's Catharijneconvent, the last of which, after restoration, will be reinstalled in a church in Weesp.” Some objects have been in storage for a long time and are not often requested for exhibitions. Other objects have been donated or found.
The best thing about restoring? That you are working with the objects themselves, Glerum believes. “One of the first objects I restored after my studies was a five-year-old chair by Piet Hein Eek, but I have also worked on centuries-old objects. It varies from a tiny horn whistle to the paneling of an interior. In addition, you often have to deal with a multitude of different materials, and that versatility makes it all very interesting.”
