In a recent interview with The Art Newspaper, Glenstone's head of conservation pulled back the curtain on caring for outdoor sculptures. We spoke with Director of Conservation Steven O'Banion about the surprising challenges and delights of conserving outdoor works.

Visitors spend time moving between the galleries and the landscape. From your vantage point, what makes Glenstone a uniquely rewarding—and sometimes challenging—place to show and care for art, and how does that shape what people encounter here?

Displaying art the way an artist intended is a defining characteristic of Glenstone’s visitor experience. Stanchions or other physical barriers are used very sparingly. But this also presents a challenge: there are fewer visual cues to remind visitors of their surroundings. Glenstone has many artworks that are immersive, but not interactive. Occasionally, this leads to visitors getting too close for comfort to an artwork. But we have found that when our Guides actively engage with a visitor, while also modeling appropriate viewing behavior, it results in fewer incidents and a richer visitor experience.  

Glenstone really wants to promote engagement with the artworks and with our Guides, so we have minimal wall text. Guides can share lots of great information and encourage visitors to, for example, take a piece of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ candy and eat it, but they can also clarify that perhaps visitors shouldn't be picking up a pile of newspapers in an installation that's not meant to be touched.  

Can you share a moment when an artist’s guidance changed how a work is presented or cared for at Glenstone—and what a visitor might notice because of that decision?

One example that comes to mind is Richard Serra’s sculpture, Contour 290, which is a site-specific work in the landscape. It follows the topographical line of 290 feet above sea level. It was carefully placed to bisect the tip of an outcrop of forest. After installation, five sycamore trees were neatly planted in front of the sculpture. When the artist noticed this, he actually reached out to let us know that while beautiful, that affected the meaning of the artwork: Contour 290 was no longer bisecting the edge of the forest. Rather, the trees there were acting as sculptures themselves sitting in front of it. So, it was a quick pivot. Glenstone's founders and curators and landscape architects, PWP Landscape Architecture, all got together and the grounds team moved the trees and redesigned the landscape around Contour 290 so that it was a mix of trees more consistent with the native woodland on the other side.  

Outdoor works evolve with seasons, light, and weather. How do you decide when natural change should be part of the story of a piece, and when it’s time to step in?

This is a case-by-case decision, and it's never a one-size-fits-all rule. Each artwork has its own tolerances of how much weathering and aging are permissible before intervention. On one side of the spectrum, you have Andy Goldsworthy’s Clay Houses, which are meant to look like springhouses near a creek that someone happens upon. Intentionally, we don't maintain them to a pristine finish, because the fronts are supposed to look weathered. Could we varnish the wood doors every year? Of course. Could we make sure every stone is pristine and no moss is growing on it? Yes. Could we trim the trees back so that you can see all the way around the structures? Yes. But then they wouldn't look like timeworn huts nestled into the hillside, as the artist intended. So, we let the landscape grow around them, and when we make interventions, it's more to keep the structures safe. If a few shingles break off, for example, we replace them so that no water is getting in through the roof. 

Another example is Robert Gober’s Two Partially Buried Sinks. The work consists of two cast iron sinks coated with enamel paint that are half embedded in the forest floor. It's not dictated by the artist that they must look pristine. But if they get too dirty, they don't pop visually and won’t catch the attention of the viewer the same way. So, as we do our outdoor sculpture maintenance walks, we will wipe off the glossy white surfaces and brush accumulations of leaves away from the bottom of the sculptures.

When a sculpture looks perfectly placed and at ease, there’s a lot happening behind the scenes. How do conservation, grounds, and visitor experience teams collaborate to create that feeling for guests?

At Glenstone, when we're thinking about putting an artwork in the landscape, the process usually starts with inviting the artist to Glenstone to just spend time in the landscape. What happens next varies. Glenstone or PWP, our landscape architects, may suggest a location or set of locations. Sometimes an artist will have a really strong vision of where they want their artwork to be. Either way, a lot of details need to be worked out before you install sculptures that can weigh hundreds, or even thousands of pounds. 

We sometimes prepare for placing artwork outdoors by making a to-scale mockup. For example, when we were considering multiple locations for Charles Ray’s Horse and rider, the artist made a lightweight model of the work, and we actually moved that model around the site so he could see it in different locations. He settled on a location that's on a grassy area adjacent to a walkway, but the grass and walkway are part of a green roof for an underground structure. So, before we could place the sculpture, we actually had to reinforce the roof that it sits on. When visitors walk by, they just see the sculpture resting upon granite pavers in a grassy setting, but underneath that, there's actually a lot of engineering! 

We also use digital renderings. For example, when Simone Leigh’s Satellite was being sited, we essentially made 2-d mockups that got a sense of the height, but you can't make a full-scale replica of that work easily. So making a digital representation helped visualize how angled towards or away from the pond and path the sculpture should be. That's another artwork that looks incredibly simple, but underneath, we actually had to prepare for it way in advance. We needed to pour a concrete footing that would support the sculpture as the ground goes through cycles of freezing and thawing and make it look like the sculpture is resting exactly on the earth. In actuality, it’s supported by that buried concrete pad and a series of large metal pins.

Your path runs from biochemistry to objects conservation. Where has that material science lens led you in terms appreciating artwork? 

I’m an objects conservator with a background in biochemistry. When you first hear that, those two things seem incongruous, but in a Venn diagram, conservation is where art meets science. If you add another circle to that Venn diagram, it's where science and art also meet art history. In order to preserve an artwork, you have to understand the materials from which the work is made and how they age. Only then can you devise a strategy to slow down the degradation process. 

We used all of our understanding of science and art to develop a strategy to preserve Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Untitled, outside of the Gallery building. This was actually a project of our very first graduate intern, Caitlin Richeson. Glenstone’s iteration of this artwork is composed of two concave Carerra marble discs that barely touch at one edge and are filled to the brim with water. That’s where it gets tricky. If you fill them with tap water, it becomes a question of pH. Pure water has a pH of 7 and not many ions in it. Marble, however, has lots of ions in it. If we put regular water into the marble, all those ions are going to leach out of the marble and go into the water. Over time, that will result in what we call a “sugared” surface, damaging the marble. The other thing that happens with water is that it can host bio-growth: algae and things like that. A traditional way to deal with algae is to add a biocide, but Caitlin relied on chemistry and solved both the sugaring and algae problems. To create a more suitable water environment for the marble and less hospitable to bio-growth, the water is now buffered to a pH of 9-10. To accomplish this sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate decahydrate are added to the water every time our grounds team refreshes the water in the sculptures.

Looking ahead, what conservation project at Glenstone excites you most in the coming year—and what’s one simple thing every visitor can do that genuinely helps your team protect the works they love?

I'm looking forward to our annual summer wash of Tony Smith's Smug. It's fun, and it brings so many different departments from Glenstone together. We also get to include students from Montgomery County Public Schools’ Summer RISE Program. With the students, we focus on the added care that conservators take when performing routine tasks. For instance, we make sure that when you're washing a giant aluminum sculpture, there's no grit or stones caught in the sponges that would scratch the painted surface. We work together, watch each other, and teach each other. We now have it down to such a science that, even with teaching moments, we can do it all in one day and then go get popsicles afterwards. Best day ever. 

What can the visitors do to help protect the works that they love? Look, but don't touch. Even if it’s outside. Sometimes sculptures can look sturdy, but they have quite sensitive surfaces. An example of this would be Richard Serra’s Sylvester. It’s made of weathering steel, and sometimes a visitor unknowingly will touch the surface of the artwork with their hands. In response to cycles of wet and dry weather, a weathering steel surface actually forms a protective layer of rust or corrosion over the core of the metal. Putting your hand on the surface adds oils and salts, and that can cause a change in the way the surface reacts to the wet and dry cycles. You might not see a mark when you first touch the work, but a handprint can actually appear over time. You’re damaging the artwork, and you don't even know it. So: stay on the paths and look with your eyes. Always keep an arm’s distance between you and the artwork. Help us preserve the sculptures as their makers intended for generations to come.