Deborah touches up some stained bricks surrounding a painted sign. Image source: Deborah Uhl
Whether it’s bringing community theaters back to life in small town Nebraska or saving opulent rooms in Washington, DC, Conservator Deborah Uhl has a passion for protecting historic places and artwork so that they can be enjoyed by future generations.
The Ford Conservation Center is excited to announce that Deborah is the newest member of its team. Deborah specializes in the care of paintings and painted surfaces. She comes back to her hometown of Omaha after spending 25 years working on conservation projects around the country.
She began studying painting at the Joslyn Art Museum and the Bemis Center, then went on to receive a Bachelor’s degree in Painting and Art History from the University of Iowa. It was here that Deborah was first introduced to the field of art conservation.
Deborah went on to turn her focus to the conservation of murals and wall paintings. She earned an MA in Art Conservation with a specialization in Painted Surfaces from Buffalo State College in 2005.
Much of Deborah’s training and work involves being a detective. Specifically, she has made historic paint studies to determine the original colors and decorations hidden beneath decades of paint layers in historic buildings. A prime example is her work with the Midwest Theater in Scottsbluff, NE. The theater, built in 1946, has a lobby that underwent multiple restoration campaigns over the years that disguised its original decorative details and color scheme.
Restoring the lobby to its 1946 appearance had been a long-term goal after a restoration of the auditorium in 2006. Only a handful of black and white photos remain from the theater’s opening days, so an investigation was needed to determine the location and extent of the decoration. When applying light to the wall from an angle, the original curved shapes were visible under several later paint layers along the two stairwells. Two test “windows” were used to strip off the overlying acrylic paint to reveal the original oil painted designs. The two stairwells proved to be mirror images of each other.
During- and after-treatment photos of the staircase at the Midwest Theater in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. In the image on the left, two small squares of the modern paint layers have been removed to expose the original design beneath. Image source: Deborah Uhl.
On another occasion, Deborah performed a paint study in the West Point, NE auditorium. The goal was to expose stencil patterns painted on the walls and ceiling when the building was first built. She stripped modern paint layers off the original painted plaster surface. The patterns she found were transferred onto clear film, traced onto oil boards, and then new stencils were cut from these boards. This is the same process that decorative painters would have used for the original project. The stencils were later used to bring the artwork back to the walls and ceiling of the auditorium.
Deborah has also been called upon to preserve stage decorations in many rural community theaters throughout Nebraska. She has cleaned and repaired tears in painted proscenium curtains and backdrops in West Point, Ashland, Clarkson, and Kimball. Proscenium curtains are also referred to as “grand drapes” or “front curtains” as they hang in front of the stage, rather than serving as a scenic backdrop. Community theaters were popular from the 1880s through the World War II era. They are often the only communal spaces still standing that date to a town’s founding. Proscenium curtains usually depict a scene from a community member’s home country. Many were funded by businesses that would pay to have an advertising block along the curtain’s perimeter.
The image above is a detail of the center of the Wilber (NE) Opera House proscenium curtain with a layout typical of early American stage scenery. This curtain blends a Prague cityscape with advertisements for local businesses. Wilber’s founders were predominantly from Czechoslovakia. This curtain was painted by Crete, NE artist Jack Ballard in 1923.
The process of conserving a curtain for its continued use requires that the curtain is structurally stable. Damage often occurred along the two side edges and lower areas where performers would come into physical contact with the draping fabric when walking onstage. These can be repaired and reinforced using patches of a material similar to the original fabric.
Four theater curtains in the process of being cleaned and repaired in the Hoffman Building in Ashland, NE. The theater auditorium is located on the second floor of this historic building. The proscenium curtain is in the foreground on the left. The curtain behind it was used to project movies. Deborah conserved these curtains in 2015 after they were discovered rolled up behind the stage, where they’d been stored for decades. Image source: Deborah Uhl
Deborah also has tackled projects outside of Nebraska. While working for Page Conservation Inc., of Washington DC, she worked with other painting conservators and technicians to remove 26 layers of paint from the ceiling and cove surrounds in the historic Secretary of War’s Office. This office is in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House.
The aim of the 18-month project was to uncover hand-painted decorations done by an artist from Germany in 1888. As the project progressed, the conservators were surprised to find that Mars, the Roman God of War, and the chariot-riding Roman Goddess were the focal points of the ceiling decoration.
Four flags from foreign countries were depicted alongside the American flag in each corner of the ceiling. After some detective work by the conservators, it was discovered that the design for one of the flags that had seemed inaccurate for the time period was correct, as the artist likely based the flag on an image from an atlas in the Executive Office Building’s collection at the time the work was designed.
The historic Secretary of War Suite after the removal of 26 layers of paint. Image source: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/
Deborah also spent eight years working alongside an archeological conservator to remove graffiti from rock imagery sites on public lands throughout the western United States. She helped conserve an interior room from Damascus with the Los Angeles Museum of Art, as well as one of the first public murals painted in the United States – a 1932 work in Los Angeles – through the J.P. Getty Museum.
While in private practice, Deborah found that she was receiving referrals for not only murals and wall paintings, but also for theater curtains and historic outdoor advertisements, called “ghost signs” because of their faded appearance. She found a niche conserving historically significant outdoor advertisements.
Rather than repainting them as new, as is often done, she is able to clean up the appearance of a century-old sign while still allowing it to look aged and authentic. Typically, she conserves the original material and then restores the missing elements just to the point where the ads are once again legible. Accurately reconstructing deteriorated signage often involves historical research – more detective work.
Deborah will rely on this extensive experience to continue to conserve painted works throughout the state and region. If you have a painting or painted surface in need of treatment, please feel free to reach out to us at 402-595-1180 or at [email protected].
Before- and after-treatment images of ghost signage on the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado. Note the “Dry Climate” ad in the top left corner. In order to highlight the chronology of the signs, Deborah and the project’s architect decided to depict the more recent advertisement as transparent so the older part of the sign (“Opera House Club Rooms”) would be legible. Image source: Deborah Uhl.
Here, Deborah removes residues from modern adhesives used to temporarily repair mortar joints. Image source: Deborah Uhl
