Harvard's Glass Flowers To Get New Gleam

After more than a century on display, Harvard's world-famous glass flower collection will get a delicate but much-needed facelift.

In a three-day process that began last night, the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH) will take 40 percent of its 3,000-piece collection off display to await restoration work.

Restoring the entire collection--which even by conservative estimates will require more than 15,000 hours of labor--will take years and millions of dollars to complete.

The glass flowers exhibit--formally called the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants--is one of the University's most popular art collections and has been on continuous display in its entirety since 1936.

The flowers were commissioned in 1886 by a Harvard professor who wanted to teach from lifelike samples year-round. A father and son team of master glass-blowers took a half-century to create the collection.

But time and an enthusiastic public, however, have taken their toll on the delicate masterpieces.

"Some [of the pieces] have sustained damage from reverberations of the staircase," said Emer McCourt, head of marketing and public relations for HMNH. "We have 200 school-kids running up and down the stairs every day. Leaves or other parts are snapping off."

The footfalls of the museum's 120,000 annual visitors are not solely to blame. The glass creations also contain paint, glue and wire--materials that decay over time.

One model of a diseased strawberry has acquired a white glaze, McCloud said.

"It's ironic--the diseased strawberries are now actually diseased strawberries," she said.

Conservation efforts have been some time in coming. The Harvard University Herbarium Executive Committee commissioned a study in 1998 to determine how best to conserve the flowers.

Joshua P. Basseches, executive director of the HMNH, said technological limitations and the organizational structure of Harvard's museums have slowed the process.

"The problem is one that's been known about for some time. The solution has been longer in coming," Basseches said. "The sorts of things required to conserve a collection like that are not what these museums were built for."

He said that there has been an increased effort to preserve the flowers in recent years, including covering windows and fluorescent lights with a protective film.

Restoring the flowers will be a massive job.

The herbarium committee's study predicted that it would take about 15,000 conservator hours to restore the entire collection, a figure that McCourt calls "really conservative."

The full cost of the project is so far undetermined, but is expected to run into the millions, she said.

The University and the Museum will begin a joint fundraising project later this year to help pay for the enormous project.

The task is complicated by the scarcity of qualified conservators for this kind of glasswork.

"The work can only be done by extremely highly-qualified conservators, of which I'd guess there are only a few in the country," McCourt said.

Even last night's work of opening display cases and removing the flowers required specialized machinery and highly trained workers.

Basseches said the public will have access to at least some of the glass flowers throughout the process.

"We feel it's critically important that not only we do the conservation work well, but quickly," he said. "It's time to ensure that we're being good stewards."