Art: Anhydrous Glue

Many men of many nations have made many suggestions as to the greatest need of the art world, ranging from state museums and traveling scholarships to compulsory art education and the coming of a second Leonardo. The International Office of Museums of the League of Nations, meeting in Rome last week, decided that one of the greatest would be the invention of anhydrous glue—glue without water.

Precise, scientific gentlemen from 20 nations sat in a congress hall listening to papers not on the creation of future art, but the preservation of the art of the past.

A Mr. Kennedy-North, London expert, wished it to be understood that he was an art Preserver, not a Restorer.

“Let me draw a sharp distinction,” said Preserver Kennedy-North, “Restorers often ruin perfectly good pictures. For example an enormous number of paintings are being ruined by the application of new backings with glue when they are being rebuilt. This practice is absolutely ruinous because the glue attracts dampness.*Let me point out to the chemists of the world that there is an excellent field for them in the search for a non-hydrous glue.” Mechanical-minded Professor Koegel of the Karlsruhe Technical High School came forward with a new method of registering the authenticity of paintings: two wafer-thin sections are to be sawed from a steel cable, one inlaid in the painting, the other deposited in a central identification office. Microphotography will identify the adjacent surfaces of the cable.

Interesting was the fact that great international art exhibitions (Burlington House Exhibition, London; Rembrandt Exhibition, Amsterdam) have not been given without serious damage to some of the works exhibited. Jan Vermeer’s “Head of a Young Girl” was returned to The Hague badly cracked from sudden changes in temperature due to numerous trips. A Flemish portrait by Emanuel de Witte went back to Leipzig with a large nail-hole through the canvas.

* Reporters last week were startled to see crateloads of dental soap carried into the Chamber of Deputies building in Paris, learned that preservers (not restorers) insisted on using dental soap to cleanse the murky murals of Eugene Delacroix, because it was acidless, would not affect pigments.