Mission: Mural Rescue – Conserving 50 Years of Edmonton Public Art
On a freezing afternoon in February, the Edmonton Arts Council Conservation lab, tucked in the corner of a west-end industrial park, looks like Command HQ for a complex recovery operation. Rubbermaid tubs full of equipment – spray bottles, brushes, knives, tissue paper – are neatly stacked next to plastic sheeting cut in complex shapes, and protective apparel. Public Art Conservator Andrea Bowes is busily diluting odiferous bottles of Lee Valley Codfish glue, while Conservation Director David Turnbull scans his workplan for what could be the most complex project ever undertaken by his department.
Their mission is to remove, restore, and reinstall a 50-year-old, 1600 square foot, 10,000lb mural. The untitled artwork, created by Alberta artist Norman Yates in 1967, is painted directly on a semi-loadbearing wall in the Stanley A. Milner Library Circulation Department on the main floor. The location places the artwork directly in the path of the extensive renovations which will reshape and transform the building, so the team is working against the clock to remove the art.
(Mural section)
“This is the only known surviving artwork in Edmonton’s Public Art Collection commissioned for Canada’s Centennial, so I feel we’re preserving an important part of Edmonton’s art history,” says David. “Norman Yates was an important artist in the city. He founded the graduate program in the University of Alberta’s Department of Fine Arts, mentored generations of artists, and before he died in 2014, also kept up a thriving art practice.”
