10 The Key / September 2021
School News
From RUFFLES® to restoration University of Delaware restores treasured Jimmie Mosely painting
A new / old painting now hangs outside the secondfloor office of the dean of the School of Education, Social Sciences and the Arts in Hazel Hall. “New” in the sense it was placed there this summer -- for first the time -- after a three-year restoration slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic. “Old” in that the oil-on-canvas painting is an original work by Jimmie Mosely Sr., the late faculty member after whom the campus art gallery in the Thomas & Briggs Arts and Technology Center is named. “Korean War Scene,” painted in 1953, depicts a wounded American soldier being carried to safety by what appears to be Korean peasants. Mosely’s work was inspired by a black-and-white photo taken by the late David Douglas Duncan that is housed at the University of Texas. Duncan’s pictures were widely published in American print media because they captured the horrors of the conflict the Korean peninsula was experiencing just a decade following World War II. Mosely’s 41-by-59 inch piece was stored in an archive room when a torrential rainstorm rolled across the lower Eastern Shore in mid-May 2018. The storm dumped nearly three inches of rain on Princess Anne, exposing an aging roof that subsequently allowed water to leak in. The following day, Mosely gallery Director Susan Holt discovered “extensive water damage,” and sprang into action by “calling museum contacts.” That led to the University of Delaware, which takes on such projects to give hands-on experience to students training to be art conservators. Restoration was overseen by Dr. Joyce Hill Stoner, director of the university’s Preservation Studies Doctoral Program.
The flaked paint – Stoner described as the “potato chip” effect – was typical of water damage. The Mosely painting took a painstaking 229 hours to restore, including 28 hours in a special humidity chamber, consolidating the raised “potato chip” curls, which took 65 hours, and another 60 hours of paint retouching. Storer said Delaware has an interest in helping preserve and restore works by Black artists and is looking to recruit students of color to help diversify the profession. In addition to a humanities background, graduate students need to have a grasp of chemistry, too. The conservators did not charge for the work. By this past March, restoration was complete. Holt received a 15-page report with “detailed color photos.” “The UDel program is one of the best in the country,” Holt said. “We were so lucky.” Marshall Stevenson, a historian and dean of the School of Education, Social Sciences and the Arts, said the Mosley painting resonated with him for several reasons; it reflects the creativity of a talented artist who captured an image from the Cold War’s early days that justified preservation.
The original black and white image that inspired this painting is in the archives of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
