Artist, Nina Katchadourian: MoMA’s conservation lab is like a hospital for wounded and ailing artworks, and it’s one of my favorite places in the Museum. They have powerful microscopes for analyzing miniscule fragments of artworks, but no one had really looked at a regular clump of dust before. When we did, we made a big discovery.
Conservator, Ellen Davis: My name is Ellen Davis, and I’m a graduate intern in Paintings Conservation. I’ve dusted in a lot of institutions. And MoMA has very unique dust. It’s mostly the greyness of it and the consistency. It’s very regular. Like, it’s always the same, everywhere in the museum. The greyness of MoMA dust has been sort of this mystery to us. When I first came here, I was like, oh, it’s probably because New Yorkers just always wear black or whatever. But then I was like, it can’t be that because it’s not just New Yorkers who are here. So I’ve discovered the answer to this grey mystery today, and I’m so excited about it.
Nina Katchadourian: Ellen sat me down at the microscope and showed me how to focus the lens.
Ellen Davis: So what you’ll do is turn this knob in this direction, to zoom in. And then you’ll see the great mystery reveal itself.
Nina Katchadourian: Oh my God, it’s so colorful.
Ellen Davis: Yeah, exactly.
Nina Katchadourian: It’s so colorful. I see red, I see blue, I see silvery strands.
Ellen Davis: It’s amazing.
Nina Katchadourian: Oh my God! It’s colorful dust.
Ellen Davis: It’s all the colors of the rainbow. Yeah.
Nina Katchadourian: It’s incredible.
Ellen Davis: There are so many people in this museum—so many people—and they’re all different. They’re all wearing something different, they’re like, very colorful. When I see dust in the museum, I think of the vast number of people that come through the galleries every day, because it’s a direct result of their visitation. And it’s a wonderful thing. Conservators get sort of, like, holed up in their, like, fancy, private labs. But the reason we’re doing this work is for those people. And so if there was no dust collecting on art, then what would our job be? For so many reasons.
Nina Katchadourian: If you would like to hear an allergist talk about dust mites, press 7050 on the Audio+ device, or go to the next track on the MoMA app.