Rose petals for the lost
Narayan Khandekar, Harvard’s head art conservation scientist, thought he had seen, analyzed, and repaired just about everything, from ancient broken pottery to faded Impressionist masterpieces to indigenous Australian bark paintings to human hair woven into modernist works. Then came a fresh challenge. The Harvard Art Museums acquired the evocative “A Flor de Piel,” a room-size tapestry by contemporary Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, consisting of thousands of dyed rose petals stitched together to form a burial shroud. “I’ve never worked with anything like this,” said Khandekar, director of Harvard’s Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, as he donned gray rubber gloves to gently examine a sample swatch of the work that will go on display Nov. 4 as part of the museums’ special exhibit “Doris Salcedo: The Materiality of Mourning.” “It’s entirely outside the realms of what I’ve experienced before.” Khandekar’s frank admission doesn’t mean he and the museums’ staff aren’t ready to...