From Student to Teacher: A Conversation with Yi-Hsia Hsiao, Associate Conservator of Chinese Paintings
Growing up in Taiwan, Yi-Hsia Hsiao dreamed of being an artist.
She studied art in high school and majored in fine arts in college. But along the way, Hsiao, associate conservator of Chinese paintings at the Cleveland Museum of Art, developed a passion for conserving art to protect the legacy of those who came before her.
Her decision to switch career paths from creating art to conserving art meant that she would have to pursue a rigorous course of education and hands-on learning, beginning with a four-year program at the Institute of Conservation of Cultural Relics in the Tainan National University of the Arts in Taiwan.
Her extensive resume includes an internship and fellowship at the Asian Conservation Studio at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She was also the first Andrew W. Mellon fellow for Chinese paintings at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institutions in Washington, DC.
Hsiao joined the CMA in 2014. Since then, she has been training intensively with a succession of senior Chinese painting conservators invited from China to share their techniques with Hsiao before they retire or pass away. In 2019, Hsiao will have completed the 10 years of study required to become a master. At that time, she moves from student to teacher.
Chinese painting conservation is a priority at the CMA, which has a notable collection of Chinese art. To uphold the tradition and essence of the conservation and restoration methods used by Chinese art conservators, in 2015 the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation gave the museum a $1.5 million endowment challenge grant to bring a succession of master conservators from Beijing and Shanghai to the museum to teach their very distinctive tradition to Hsiao.
And just this year, the CMA received a matching $1.5 million gift from June and Simon K. C. Li, a philanthropic California couple. The gift establishes the June and Simon K. C. Li Center for Chinese Painting Conservation, from which Hsiao will train aspiring Chinese art conservators from around the world in the very best traditional and Western methods.
We sat down with Hsiao to learn more about her passion for conservation projects and to learn what’s happening in the CMA conservation lab right now.
What made you switch from creating art to preserving art?
When I was about to graduate from college, I read an article about the owner of a historic house who secretly started to tear it down in the middle of the night after learning that the city government was going to list it as a cultural monument. By Taiwanese law, a historic house cannot be remodeled or rebuilt once it is listed as a monument. The news that this house was damaged affected me greatly, and I started to think that people either didn’t understand the concept of protecting heritage or didn’t want to understand. I worried that people could easily lose a part of their cultural identity by doing nothing. I wondered, what could I do to help?
“I worried that people could easily lose a part of their cultural identity by doing nothing. I wondered, what could I do to help? “— Yi-Hsia Hsiao, Associate Conservator of Chinese Paintings
So I began researching cultural heritage preservation. It led me to the conservation field to preserve cultural relics, and that’s how I found the conservation program at Tainan National University of Arts in Tainan, Taiwan. By the time I enrolled in 2002, the program had only been open for three years. I thought being a conservator was quite cool, and I began to develop a strong sense of my personal mission to protect cultural relics.
How would you describe your passion for your role as a conservator of these ancient Chinese paintings?
Sometimes I look at a work of art and just think about how many people over the years, over the centuries, have looked at this particular painting. It makes me feel good to know that I am helping to preserve it. And sometimes, I talk to the people in the picture and pray for the success of conservators so that this image will continue to exist for many more generations.
“Sometimes I look at a work of art and just think about how many people over the years, over the centuries, have looked at this particular painting. It makes me feel good to know that I am helping to preserve it.” — Yi-Hsia Hsiao, Associate Conservator of Chinese Paintings
How does Chinese painting conservation compare in this country with that of Taiwan/China?
One of the biggest differences has to do with acquiring the materials I need. I have to fly to China to buy mounting silk and paper because the materials aren’t available here — you can’t just order them online or get them in a store. I have to make sure that what I purchase is under quality control, and I have to build a good relationship with the provider to get special materials and the highest quality goods.
Second, the concept of inpainting (retouching) paint losses has been cause for some disagreements among conservators in the United States and China. I gave a talk at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 2016 about the way we do inpainting in the United States. Here, we accept that losses and damages are a part of the history of the painting. But many in China don’t want to accept these damages, so they are keen to disguise them.
Finally, one of the challenges of treating Asian paintings is the lack of aged silk for infilling losses, an issue that has been raised by senior Chinese painting conservators. In China, they use silk from old paintings purchased from antique shops or leftover silk stored long ago to infill the losses. Here in the States, we don’t have any supply of aged silk. To address this issue, some labs are building their own aging chambers instead of purchasing very expensive aged silks from Japan. We hope to develop one at the CMA.
You grew up in Taiwan and still have family there. Why did you decide to move to the United States and work at the CMA?
When I first learned about the conservation position at the CMA, I was very impressed to learn that Per Knutås, chief of the CMA’s conservation department, decided to invest in the training of a junior conservator like me instead of hiring a senior conservator from China who was nearing retirement.
I wanted the job so I committed myself to improving my English language skills. I took ESL (English as a Second Language) classes for a year. I hung out with my ESL classmates and we practiced our English skills with each other. I knew that I had made progress when I had my first dream in English.
Four years ago, I was hired as the first Chinese painting conservator at the CMA. Now, I am ready to pass on what I’ve learned from the people who have trained me, and I will continue my own education so that I can become an even better conservator and take good care of our well-known Chinese collections.
How do you envision your master conservator role at the CMA within the June and Simon K. C. Li Center for Chinese Painting Conservation?
I will be the “teacher” and my students will make tea for me every morning. Kidding! Apprenticeships were like that in the past. I remember my first year: we had to make tea for the whole studio and cook wheat starch paste for the conservators every 2 or 3 days for the first year. There was an “upper” and “lower” class in my learning path. In Western culture, there is no such hierarchy in the conservation lab, which I think is good.
However, learning the proper mounting technique for Chinese scrolls is important. After studying at university and working with the master conservators from China, I am ready to pass along my hands-on skills to the next generation. There is much to learn! For example, a successful mounting requires more than 30 steps — basic mounting steps to be completed before the conservator can treat any Chinese painting.
In my role, I will train students to lift a very thin and wet xuan (rice) paper, which is like wet toilet paper; to cut very narrow noodle-like paper strips; to sharpen the knife; to make good quality paste; to masterfully handle the paste brush and smooth brush; to smooth the painting to xuan paper in order to bond them together well; to tone mounting silk and xuan paper evenly; and to sew scroll cords and to trim scroll wooden rollers. I will share all that I have learned from my teachers over the years.
“After studying at university and working with the master conservators from China, I am ready to pass along my hands-on skills to the next generation. There is much to learn! “— Yi-Hsia Hsiao, Associate Conservator of Chinese Paintings
What are you working on currently?
I just finished working on a 16th-century Buddhist scroll painting that was requested to go out on loan. The scroll was in poor shape, so we decided to treat it and remount it.
This very large scroll depicts Manjushri (in Buddhism, the bodhisattva or “Buddha-to-be,” personifying supreme wisdom) in the center of the painting. Due to its heavy pigment application, this scroll has had extensive loss to the thick layers of pigment, especially in the greens and blues. There were numerous small losses scattered through the painting, most heavily concentrated in the center.
A few vertical splits in the substrate had not been toned or inpainted and appeared as bright white lines. This told me that the original silk had fallen off after the latest conservation campaign. Large losses in the top left and right corners of the painting had been infilled with silk of a different weave, which was very flat, loosely woven, and inpainted to complete the image. There were numerous sharp horizontal creases throughout, most heavily concentrated through the top, center, and bottom of the painting. There was also some small delamination and bubbling.
The painting’s large size added to the complexity of the remounting (overall: 82 3/16 x 47 7/16 inches; painting, 48 13/16 x 42 3/16 inches). Fortunately, I was able to work with a visiting senior Chinese painting conservator, Pingfan Zhu, from Shanghai Museum, who has 45 years of experience remounting and treating Chinese ancient scrolls and albums.
We spent about four months treating and remounting this scroll, including stabilizing the paint layers to prevent loss and further damage for subsequent treatment steps. We then removed the lining layers on the back of the painting. It was mounted with new silk and will be ready for the galleries and for our visitors to enjoy in the future.
