Preparations are continuing to organize an exhibition, which the Fund plans to hold in 2021 at the Louvre Museum (Paris). From September 24 to October 1, restorers of the Louvre Museum arrived in Uzbekistan to carry out restoration work on exhibits at the Tashkent Museum and the Institute of Archaeological Research of Samarkand.
As we reported earlier, the Foundation has organized the exhibition "Civilizations and Culture on the Silk Road", which will be held at the Louvre Museum in 2021-2022. Preparations for this project are proceeding systematically, and have corresponded with this visit, in which the Louvre Museum specialists arrived. They included Rocco Rante, director of the French-Uzbek archaeological mission in Bukhara; Geraldine Frey, a mural restorer; and Anna Ligey and Dolphin Eli Lefebvre, restorers - conservatives. During their stay in Tashkent and Samarkand, the delegation carried out diagnostics of art objects, as well as the restoration works at the Institute of Archeological Research named after Y. Gulyamova of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan in Samarkand and at the State Museum of Art of Uzbekistan.
Rocco Rante, archaeologist in the Islamic art department of the Louvre Museum:
- It is not our first visit to Uzbekistan. We are gradually preparing for the exhibition at the Louvre Museum and, from our part and from the part of the Foundation, painstaking preparatory restoration and scientific processes are underway. If we talk about the time of work on each exhibit, then it is worth noting that for some objects, such as small sculptures, it takes one to two days, and for frescoes, such as, for example, "Varakhsha", it will take at least a month. There are also difficult-to-repair items that will take a year to be restored. We are actively working in this direction with museum specialists and scientists from Uzbekistan, and restorers of the Louvre Museum will soon join us in all the necessary types of exhibits.
Geraldine Frey, Mural Restorer:
- We are glad that we were able to complete the tasks that we aimed to complete for this visit and prepared an action plan for our next working visit. We carried out diagnostics of several exhibits and restored the "Garland-bearer" figurine from the collection of the State Museum of Art of Uzbekistan. In addition, work was started and a methodology was set for the restoration of the charred wood panel from the "Kafir Kala" settlement in Samarkand. We plan to prepare exhibits from Uzbekistan to present in the exhibition in the Louvre, and more than 100 of them need to be restored here in Uzbekistan. Of course, not all exhibits will be restored due to their excellent condition. The staff of museums and institutes have actively helped us in our work, as well as the entire logistics of the stay and the program were worked out by the team of the Art and Culture Development Foundation under the Ministry of Culture and we are very grateful to them.
Dolphin Eli Lefebvre, conservator-restorer:
- I spent a week at the Institute of Archaeological Research named after Y. Gulyamova of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan in Samarkand, working on the restoration of a charred wooden panel from the "Kafir Kala" settlement. Marina Reutova, the restorer and the head of the restoration department of the institute, helped me in working on the panel. As a result of a joint study of the surface of the charred panel, we worked out methods for proper restoration. Our initial restoration work at this stage was more about cleaning the surface of the panel, and then I will return to Samarkand every 3 months to work on restoring the structure and basis of the panel. It is worth mentioning that the restoration work on the charred panel requires painstaking work for two years. I am grateful to all the specialists involved in this process and the Fund for providing all the necessary materials for the first stage of restoration.
The next stage of restoration is planned in November this year at the "Mui Mubarak" Museum in Tashkent, where work will be carried out on the conservation and restoration of the Katta-Langar Quran.
