Want to experience the calm and quiet of Shofuso while it’s closed off to regular visitors? Join our special members-only admission hours to Shofuso on Friday, June 2!
June will mark one year since Shofuso’s vandalism incident, during which Hiroshi Senju’s waterfall murals were severely damaged. Thanks to a crowdfunding campaign launched by JASGP in July 2022, and to the outpouring of support from our donors and community members, the paintings were successfully restored by the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) and reinstalled in time for our Spring reopening.
This event will be an opportunity for members to meet Heather Hendry, Senior Paper Conservator who led the restoration process using an innovative technique developed by the CCAHA Team. Light refreshments will be served.
Registration is requested to secure a spot. Not a member? Join now to register and enjoy this and other benefits! Members at $150 level and above can bring guests for free.
About Heather Hendry
Heather’s work with Japanese art and culture began in 1998, when she worked as a curator for Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden in Lethbridge, Alberta. In addition to offering interpretive tours, Heather brought in exhibits of local traditional Japanese artisans and contemporary artists of Japanese descent. She left that position to study art conservation, specializing in paper conservation, at Queen’s University.
The field of paper conservation draws heavily on Japanese traditions and materials, particularly wheat starch paste and mulberry papers, but there is generally a divide between conservation of Western and Asian works of art on paper. In particular, the tradition of remounting screens and scrolls is understood to take years of study and apprenticeship under master conservators. There are very few specialists in Asian art paper conservation in the United States. In her career, Heather has worked on many projects in Western paper conservation labs that have needed to bridge that divide, including Inuit prints on mulberry paper at the National Gallery of Canada, chine collé prints at the Yale Center for British Art, Chinese rubbings at the Harvard University Weissman Preservation Center, and many items belonging to individual collectors during her time in private practice.
After joining CCAHA in 2015, Heather worked on Japanese, Chinese, and Indian works of art, where each paper tradition has unique characteristics and needs. However, CCAHA would refer major structural treatments, such as remounting, to specialized Asian conservation studios in Washington DC. In 2018, working with CCAHA fellows and consulting with the Restorient Japanese conservation studio in the Netherlands, Heather introduced a method of local screen repair suitable for Western paper conservators that could avert the need for full remounting in some cases. This technique was presented at the American Institute of Conservation Annual Meeting and published in the Journal of Paper Conservation. A modification of this mending technique was used on Shofuso House’s damaged screens.
