PORT LUDLOW — Elisabeth Mention, who led the restoration team that repaired a damaged painting at the National Museum of Art in Bucharest in Romania, will speak at the Port Ludlow Beach Club at 1 p.m. Wednesday.
Mention, who was an associate conservator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Calif., will speak to the Port Ludlow Art League at the Beach Club at 121 Marina View Drive. Guests are welcome to attend for a fee of $5.
In 1989, “Madonna and Child,” a painting by Orazio Gentileschi, was on exhibit at the National Museum of Art in Bucharest when it and over 150 other paintings were severely damaged by bullets and shrapnel during the Romanian Revolution.
The Gentileschi might have been deemed a total loss, but — at the request of a Romanian cultural delegation — the Getty museum’s conservation laboratory accepted the task of repairing the painting, according to an art league press release.
The Port Ludlow Art League is honored to welcome Elisabeth to their September 15, program at the Port Ludlow Beach Club.
Mention will talk about the painstaking and innovative process of restoring “Madonna and Child” at The Getty’s conservation studio, the unique challenges of restoring this painting, and the art, art history, and science of restoring old masters’ work.
Mention studied art history and fine arts at the University of California at Santa Barbara and graduated from the University of California Berkeley. Her professional life was spent at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles for more than 30 years as a painting conservator and brief periods as a visiting conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Conn.
