The first time Joy Mazurek walked into the science labs at the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI), she was “blown away.”
The lab, with its bright interior and ultramodern scientific instruments, was the most awe-inspiring thing she’d ever seen.
The year was 1998. The Getty Center had opened the previous year, and Mazurek was a recent college graduate who had just joined the GCI as a scientist. Compared to her previous job working in a windowless lab, these brand-new GCI labs were, as she put it, “beautiful.”
“The high ceilings, everything was just aesthetically perfect,” Mazurek said. “I didn't even believe a place like this existed.”
Over the last 25 years, the lab has fostered countless experiments and discoveries in the field of cultural heritage conservation—that is, how to prevent or treat deterioration of works of art or built heritage. But while the GCI lab remains a state-of-the-art facility, it’s begun to show its age.
It was time to update the lab’s layout and equipment to use the space more efficiently, making the lab more flexible, modern, and collaborative. Renovations have already begun, and the lab is expected to be complete by the end of 2023.
“It’s about the people”
While conservation labs exist at many art institutions around the world, the GCI labs offer not only an impressive array of scientific instruments, but also a uniquely broad research focus. GCI scientists study built heritage—historic buildings and sites around the world—as well as works of art like paintings and sculpture. At Getty, you’ll find a scientist researching ancient Mediterranean mosaic pavements, as well as a scientist examining Jackson Pollock’s favorite paint.
When scientist Davide Gulotta joined Getty in 2019 to work on the Built Heritage Research Initiative, he immediately felt the collegial atmosphere.
“We have very state-of-the-art instrumentation, and it will get better after the renovation, but it's also about the people,” Gulotta said. “It‘s an incredibly collaborative environment.”
Past GCI projects that have involved the Science department include the conservation and management of the Tomb of Tutankhamun, Museum Lighting Research, the conservation of the St. Vitus Mosaic in Prague, and Jackson Pollock’s Mural. If the lab’s walls could talk, they’d tell tales of scientists working for months or years on a project, peering into microscopes and analyzing data from historical sites around the world—punctuated by “Eureka!” moments when research results come in.
Mazurek still remembers the first time she identified a binding medium—the ingredient that is mixed with a dry pigment to form paint—in a sample. While researching an ancient Egyptian paint, she discovered that the binding medium was plant gum, from the acacia tree.
“I remember running down the hallways saying ‘I found plant gum! Ahh!’ I was so excited,” Mazurek said.
A New Era of the GCI Labs
The lab renovation began with a small request. While looking for additional workspaces for his team, the GCI’s head of science, Tom Learner, realized that an office space next to one of the main labs could house four convenient workstations if the two spaces could be connected. As others at the GCI became involved in the discussion, they noticed many more inefficiencies in the lab’s layout, and the project soon snowballed.
“We started noticing so many areas of unused—or under-utilized—space and it very, very quickly became, ‘I think you should do a renovation of the entire science labs and spaces,’” Learner said.
The redesign will create a more open floor plan and interconnected lab spaces, and will eliminate the lab’s narrow passageways and crowded storage areas. These changes will help facilitate more interaction among scientists within the department, and among visiting scientists and scholars from other institutions. Windows will make it easier to see into the labs and give tour groups an opportunity to see the work.
When the renovation is complete, scientists will enjoy access to up-to-date instrumentation and work areas, including dedicated microscopy areas with full black-out capabilities, a dedicated sample preparation area, improved spaces for built heritage research with dedicated dirty/noisy areas, and three new walk-in environmental chambers to enable monitoring of materials.
Better air flow and ventilation and improved LED lighting will make the lab more energy efficient. Upgraded acoustics will help reduce noise from louder instruments.
Preparing for the largest construction project ever undertaken at the Getty Center required staff to clean out their workspaces, send items to storage facilities, and move lab equipment to other locations around Getty. The scientists’ work will continue throughout the renovation. But when the construction is complete, they’ll return to a lab that reflects and supports how scientific research is conducted today, as well as giving flexibility for the future.
The labs were designed 25 years ago, when instruments and workflows were different than they are now—scientists now need smaller samples of materials for analysis, for example, and can share information with each other and other institutions easier than they could decades ago. The new design will help usher the GCI’s science department into a new era of discovery and innovation.
“It has all the things that you would want to do if you started from scratch,” Learner said. “The labs of our new redesign are going to be stunning in terms of function, look, feel, and design.”
