When you visit an art museum, you admire the beautiful masterpieces around you. But do you ever think about how they didn’t just teleport there?
Bubbler Talk listener Jane Harrington-Heide has always wondered how art gets to a museum’s walls.
“How are priceless works of art transferred to Milwaukee Art Museum for exhibits, and [how are they] preventing them from being stolen in transit?” Harrington-Heide asked Bubbler Talk.
Truth is: There’s no magic. Behind each object is an intricate web of logistics and a team of people who have dedicated their lives to art.
To figure out where the process starts, I visited Emma Fulce, the director of registration at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
“The very first thing that needs to happen is our curators need to decide what [artwork] they want,” Fulce says. “Once we know what they want, we will reach out to whoever the owner is, and we will work on an agreement with them.”
Depending on where an art piece is coming from, Fulce says, coordinating how to get it to the Milwaukee Art Museum can take from a few months to a year of planning.
In other words, Fulce’s job takes a ton of documentation.
On top of overseeing more than 30,000 items in MAM’s permanent collection, Fulce keeps track of all incoming and outgoing agreements and insurance for each artwork.
She also coordinates with teams of curators, preparators and conservators to ensure everything is safely transported and carefully installed.
“I have to know where everything is at any point in time,” Fulce says. “I'm also responsible for making sure that we are caring for the objects properly so that we're housing them correctly, we're displaying them in a way that's safe, and that our team is using proper handling techniques.”
Once the paperwork is hammered out, the packing process begins.
No slacking in packing
Many museums work with fine art shipping companies like Milwaukee’s very own Guardian Fine Art Services.
They have a team of experts, called preparators, who are trained in building and packing crates. They’re also trained to drive artwork around and install it.
“Packaging is one of the most important parts of object handling or object moving,” says Katie Steffan, the company’s chief operating officer. “In museum studies, they always tell you that you want to touch an object as few times as you possibly can. So the packing method that we choose for a particular object is going to try to achieve that.”
Figuring out what wooden crate or cardboard box to build, and how much foam to put in it, is one big math puzzle. It all depends on different factors, like what the artwork is made of, how much it weighs and what size it is.
Once the art is packed, crates are carefully loaded into a climate-controlled truck.
Artwork is extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity, so these factors are monitored throughout the journey.
“The back of our truck is always 70 degrees with maybe a two-degree variation as it's going down the road,” Steffan says. “That's really important in the summer and winter months, especially in the Midwest, just because it's either so hot or so cold, and we don't want to shock the object.”
Safe travels
Once everything is loaded up, it’s time to hit the road.
The trucks that transport fine art typically have extra shock absorption to guarantee a smooth ride.
Obviously, you have to be a good driver to do this kind of work — Steffan says every driver at Guardian Fine Art Services is an art handler first and a truck driver second.
“What it means for you, the client, is that the people you are interacting with, they know what to do with that artwork,” Steffan says.
And, of course, security is important.
It’s an industry standard to always have at least two drivers per truck to make sure that artwork in transit is never left alone.
Some works of art are so fragile and valuable that a museum professional, like a registrar, curator or conservator, has to travel with it as a courier.
“We need it to be somebody who's really familiar with that art object,” says Fulce from MAM. “We want them to know exactly what it looks like, how it was packed, at what points it's fragile and how it should be handled.”
Couriers serve as the guardian of the artwork, especially when it’s traveling internationally.
“I had a friend once who was on a courier trip, and there was a live horse on the pallet next to hers,” Fulce says. “So she had [the ramp agents] rearrange the order of the pallets. So you're really paying attention to how they're handling your art and what they're putting it near. The courier will watch as the art gets loaded into the airplane. You cannot board that plane yourself until you see the art is loaded in.”
That means the courier can’t even go to sleep on long travel days transporting art. They escort the piece until it arrives at the museum, and make sure it’s handled and cared for properly the entire time.
“It's incredibly satisfying to see our art on the walls at museums across the country and overseas,” Fulce says. “And it's incredibly satisfying when we finish installing an exhibition here.”
Once a museum receives a crate, Fulce says it’s usually not opened for 24 to 48 hours so it can acclimate to its new environment.
“We want to maintain that temperature and humidity,” Fulce says. “As you know, from being on an airplane, the air pressure changes, your ears pop – we want to make sure that the art is not being shocked by its change in location.”
After the crate is opened, a conservator will take notes of its condition post-transit. The registrar will then work with preparators and the curator to install the artwork.
If everything goes according to plan, the effort of dozens of people will be completely invisible.
Bubbler Talk listener Harrington-Heide is astounded to learn about the process.
“I just can't believe that there are so many moving parts to this,” she says. “It's just fascinating when you think you're in the museum as a guest looking at an exhibit, whether it's one of several pieces or the exhibit as a whole, just fascinated by how it comes to the visitor, and to be able to appreciate everything that happens behind the scenes.”
Now that you know the process, take a step back and appreciate not just the artwork itself, but also the art of getting it there.
The Milwaukee Art Museum is a financial supporter of WUWM.
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