After the Fall: The Conservation of Tullio Lombardo’s

A presentation by George Wheeler Ph.D.,  the director of conservation, Columbia University; research scholar, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Less than an hour after the Metropolitan Museum of Art closed on the Sunday evening of October 6, 2002, the wooden base supporting Tullio Lombardo’s marble sculpture of Adam collasped – shattering the sculpture and sending 28 large fragments and hundreds of smaller ones across the gallery floor. After mapping and collecting the fragments, a long journey of research and discovery ensued that resulted in a new body of knowledge for the conservation of marble sculpture and a tour-de-force reconstruction of Lombardo’s 1495 figure.

The presentation will show how the team of scientists, conservators, and curators developed that knew knowledge and put it into practice.