Throne of the Kingdom of Heaven Smithsonian American Art Museum

This lecture is function of the Divine Disorder Conference held February 24-26, 2015.

"James Hampton's Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly" by Helen Ingalls

Alley view of Hampton'southward garage.

Helen Ingalls: I want to start this talk with a little bit of a personal note. In about 1971-72, my female parent, Mikee Ingalls dragged a very disaffected teenager to the Montgomery Alabama Museum of Fine art telling me that there was something I really had to come across and I said, "Oh, yeah, I don't desire to go. I'm not going." She persisted and we went and it was James Hampton's Throne. In a curious quirk of life and fate, when I began working at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1988, this came under my care as an object conservator. Who knew? This afternoon, I'yard going to talk to you about the James Hampton Throne. I'll be discussing the discovery of the Throne, a picayune scrap well-nigh James Hampton's biography, the materials that the Throne is made of, aluminum foil industry, the Throne conditions and deterioration, conservation and maintenance and a conclusion.

In 1964, James Hampton, a reclusive worker at the General Services Administration in Washington, died of stomach cancer. His rented garage lay unopened until the landlord decided to rent it out and opened it to detect a trove of glittering silverish objects. Reluctant to dispose of the strange drove, the landlord contacted museums, local newspapers and even the New York Times.
Eventually, the National Collection of Fine Arts, now the Smithsonian American Art Museum, agreed to pay the past due rental fees for the garage and caused in 1970 the indescribably horde later known to the globe as the Throne of the Tertiary Heaven Nations' Millennium General Assembly or simply the Hampton Throne. The silvery gleam was acquired, of course, by reflections from the aluminum foil covering nigh every surface. It'southward similar had never been seen.

Acting museum director, Harry Lowe, later said they didn't know what it was or what to telephone call it only they knew it was something special. Indeed, it was an ambitious scheme to create an ecclesiastical environment to serve as a staging for the 2nd coming of Christ as foretold in the Revelations book of The Bible. Here are some examples of Hampton's work, a schematic program at the upper left of the slide shows the location of the items.

Crown

Here y'all accept what we generally refer to as but the pocket-size items. There are a lot of plaques peradventure 15 or 20 plaques. There are most 10 crowns. The medium-sized objects, so chosen, a star, an chantry table plaque holder so you lot tin can have a plaque of the day. Those come in and out are held by something that looks suspiciously similar a Kleenex box. Then in that location are the larger elements. I was really struck during today's lectures about the frequency of winged figures and angels. Hampton used a lot of that type of imagery in his work as you'll see. Here, you have a butterfly stand up and a middle pulpit. Since it was an ecclesiastical space, obviously there has to be somewhere for the minister to stand and deliver the sermon. This was the big central pulpit.

Extensive research was conducted was conducted on the Throne by Lynda Hartigan, who worked as an intern, a registrar and a curator at the National Collection of Fine Arts and the Smithsonian American Fine art Museum and we're indebted to her for the background information that she unearthed and provided on Hampton. The artist's early on life by all accounts was unremarkable. He was born in Elloree, South Carolina in 1909. He moved to Washington, DC in 1931 at the historic period of 22. I recollect that must've been a very disrupted alter for a land male child and indeed in 1931, he had his outset vision. He had a series of visions and he recorded them on cardboard tags such every bit the ane y'all see on the right side of the screen. This 1 hung from one of the Throne's large stands named for the prophet Moses.

After his inflow in Washington, he did a series of menial jobs including being a short order cook at a local eatery, but he was inducted into an army air squadron during Globe War Ii and he had a adventure to travel quite a bit. He went to Texas, Seattle, Saipan, Honolulu and Guam. I've ofttimes wondered if those sort of Asiatic sites immune him to see some of the glittery works of art made at especially in places like Guam and Hong Kong. It must've been quite exotic for him.

His only dated sculpture and peradventure the first of the entire ensemble is labelled 'Fabricated on Guam' April 1945 and information technology's about two feet by one foot perhaps. He was honorably discharged from the ground forces in 1945, returned to DC later on the war and constitute work as a night janitor at the General Services Administration. In 1950, he rented a garage in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington and created his life'southward work there from 1950 to 1964.

Center Pulpit.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that later on his late shift, the artist combed the street for discarded materials on the way to his garage studio. There, he would continue working into the night on his projection. Co-ordinate to those who knew him, he spoke of one twenty-four hours setting up a storefront ministry building, no doubt incorporating his mitt-fabricated objects into a spiritual environment to serve God.

Here'southward a list of the artist's basic construction materials. He would buy furniture at a used furniture store on 14th Street in Washington. Sometimes he would, for example, purchase a round tabular array and cutting it in half and then he would take 2 semicircular tables. He would buy dressers and pull the drawers out, invert them and in that manner get more than height for low pieces. Iron casters, he probably got from function chairs at the GSA. Poster board, insulation board, cellulose acetate overlay film, desk blotter paper, Kraft construction paper, nails, brads, tacks, pins.

These are very humble materials and he probably got just about all of them free. Here's an example of a re-purposed chair that served as the Throne. It'south actually hard to see in the pictures of the overall Throne because in that location's then many pieces effectually information technology, but indeed this is commonly shown at the back between the two tall butterfly stands. This is being worked on, treated by 2 pre-program volunteers. Not quite sure where he got that cushion. I gauge it's a burrow cushion or something.

In improver to the basic materials that I just talked about, he added a lot of embellishments, things like inks and paints, dye-based mark, pen, pencil, lite bulbs covered with foil, glass jars and vases covered with foil, electrical conduit covered with foil for used as rounded beading on the plain furniture to clothes it upwards. Did I say foil? Aluminum foil. This is a pic of the conduit, electrical conduit there. Even a little chip of twine at that place.

He was obviously trying to dress up the straight edge and and so he probably first used a twine and then that didn't give it the roundness that he wanted so he used the conduit. This is the kind of jar that I believe jams and jellies were sold in and y'all could keep the jar. That's a Blue Bird one and there's another bird featured on those jars. The sources of Hampton's decorative foils varied widely. Some came into use pristine, some following use as display materials in liquor stores or floral shops or packaging for cigarettes or food stuffs. Whether Hampton's compulsion for foils would have caused him to select food wrappings from the GSA office trash where he worked is conceivable simply non documented. Merely if so, acidic food stuffs or fatty residues could've fabricated their manner into the works causing impairment afterward on.

According to Alcoa Aluminum Company publication from 1953, "In general, nutrient products are non corrosive to aluminum, simply many hygroscopic products packaged in sparse foil may cause some reaction particularly if the production contains salt or table salt and some mild organic acid in the example of cheese or mayonnaise. The most important and undecayed sources of Hampton's raw fabric however were rolls of household aluminum foil."

Here yous encounter a tab. This usage is signaled by tell tale tabs remaining at the end of rolls advising the buyer that they were but vi feet now, six feet left, order now Reynolds Wrap. These warnings were incorporated by the artist into the foil wrappings and remained unseen at the dorsum of some of the Throne elements. I sometimes moving-picture show him- I'm sure he had unlike working phases, but I sometimes picturing him just working feverishly and just pulling out the foil rolls and not having fourth dimension to even tear off the tab before he started a new one. Clean and shiny, the household foil provided a reliable raw material that the creative person could spontaneously model and sculpt in pursuit of his creative vision.

Hampton'south utilise of aluminum foil coincided with its increasing availability and affordability and packaging trends which favored the use of aluminum. Food packaging in the early 20th century shifted abroad from bulk to individual packaging. There was a demand for meliorate sanitation, better brandish, storage and inventory of consumer goods, better protection of product quality, positive identification of packaged foods and in that location was pure nutrient and drug legislation.

James Hampton with the Throne.

The first industries to really take advantage of the use of aluminum foil for packaging were the tobacco fancy box and greeting card industries and the confectionery industry using plain and laminated foil for chewing gum and other confections. In 1911, the Swiss company, Tobler, began packaging its chocolates in foil and and then Life Savers followed suit in the US in 1913. In 1947- I was surprised by this tardily engagement, Reynolds Wrap alloy number 79 became bachelor to consumers, just in '47. Hampton started work 3 years later on in 1950 and in 1980, the alloy was changed to number 8111. This is less important to us, but manifestly to connoisseurs of aluminum, this is very important. I'yard just going to very quickly run you through the production of aluminum simply because information technology'south then critical to perception of this grouping of artifacts.

Foil production begins with billets or ingots of majority aluminum metal. They're rolled and re-rolled to a sparse gauge on cold rolls using lubrication. Foil is mostly defined by US manufacturers or having thickness of between 6 mils and .25 mils or thousandths of an inch. Kitchen foil today is usually less than than 1 mil thick. The rolled foil intended for industrial applications is work hardened, but the household products is heated to anneal it prior to terminal inspection.

This produces foil in the full soft condition able to dead fold and that means stay where information technology'southward put without springing back or cracking. This annealing also burns off any oil lubricants used in the rolling process. The purity of nearly packaging foil is about 99.35 to 99.55 percent aluminum with minute parts of other elements such as silicon and fe to strengthen and harden the aluminum.
This very high level of purity suggests that aluminum foil deterioration is due primarily not to the foil itself merely to the laminates, adhesives and coatings used in the production of varied consumer products every bit well as the atmospheric condition of its usage. Paper laminates are used in the manufacture to reinforce thin foils assuasive the use of less metal thereby reducing costs while maintaining moisture and permeability imparted by even the thinnest metal films. The foil may be laminated to a carrier or backing sheet with all kinds of adhesives. The actual paper and foil laminating adhesives for Hampton'southward foils are unknown, but one paper backing did test positive for polyvinyl acetate resin, peradventure originally intended for heat sealing applications.

Foils used in the fabrication of the Hampton Throne appear to be of four full general types: out of the box Reynolds household foil used and new, textured foils which were mainly silverish colored as seen in the image on the right, silver foil and paper laminates and newspaper laminated foils with gold toned coatings. The bulk of the Throne has a silver coloration, simply there are some really strategically placed gold-toned foils that really enhanced the depth and the sense of richness of the entire ensemble. Y'all tin see the textured roll in that location. I can't assistance just think that looks a lot like the Washington Monument, that textured piece there. Thin foils whose carrier or laminate deteriorates take piffling concrete supports. I'k sure we've all experienced this from trying to tear into some Christmas candy and become vulnerable to mechanical vesture, violent and loss such equally that seen in frequently handled areas of the Throne.

The Throne of the Third Sky of the Nations' Millennium General Associates ca. 1950-1964.

See, that's the paper backing and the foil's been torn away or has come away. Coatings are applied to manifestly or laminated foil products to provide additional gloss to the surface or as in Hampton's aureate foils to change the color of the aluminum metal for decorative purposes. Analysis of gold foil samples from the Throne reveal that cellulose nitrate was the toned coating used in these three combined spectra of cellulose nitrate. The Throne foil sample's in ruddy, a degraded known sample of cellulose nitrate is in royal. Those lines are pretty shut. An undegraded merely however nitrocellulose standard is seen in the aqua colored spectrum. It'due south the same fabric, but it's non erstwhile. The cause of deterioration, Hampton'due south artistic methods didn't utilize traditional carpentry techniques. In about cases, his structural attachments were made with insubstantial items such as thick cardboard straps, tinned iron tabs from adhesive tape rolls or canned appurtenances and thin iron brads, which sometimes did not penetrate all the intended layers.

An early inventory of the Throne component materials in American Arts Conservation files from July 1974 listed no screws used past the artist to aid in structural stability. A few screws were added by museum staff in 1974 to secure the taller pieces to withstand travel and loan. The structural textile Hampton most relied upon however is hide glue found on 4 discrete Throne samples and identified past FTIR analysis by comparison with the spectrum of a known sample of degraded hibernate mucilage. He may accept discovered the utility of this material in discussion with the used article of furniture purveyors he's known to have frequented in the used furniture district. This fabric would've been cheap and readily available in bulk to exist mixed up in individual batches as needed. The strength of this agglutinative served Hampton well to some degree securing layered papers and foils to wooden substrates and to other decorative layers.

Nonetheless, its contractile forces also worked to the artist'due south disadvantage considering glue applied to paper backed foils crusade the shiny surfaces to shrivel and misconstrue, resulting in a withered appearance. Balls with kerfed foil tabs are torn away here. Hampton'southward method for creating- I know this is a complicated epitome and it's probably a fiddling hard for you lot to decipher, merely it'south basically a cantankerous slice there covered with a top layer of silver foil. Hampton would was up the foil balls and smash them down into his thumb to create a hemisphere and he would put them on surfaces. He would comprehend that rounded surface with gold foil. As you know, it's hard to go a flat canvass to accommodate to a rounded sail. He would kerf the edges and glue them down. He must've used hide glue to stick them down and they just shriveled upward and became very brittle and tore off. This is just one example of how the utilise of hide mucilage acquired some loss. This tendency to shrinkage would accept been exacerbated by the extremes of temperature and humidity endemic to the artist's workspace. In add-on, aluminum's corrosion resistant in the presence of neutral glues, merely acid or alkaline glues can cause some pitting. Moreover, a viscid blackness textile referred to past an early on conservator as tar, besides every bit several brown-toned house paints acquired distortion and staining of some paper elements and attracted dirt.

This is a tarry substance. You come across a lot of staining on the paper. Here's some house pigment with some sand embedded in it. It was just, in general, kind of difficult material to work with. These experimental materials would sometimes necessitate redoing past roofing with foil or with additional foil covered paper-thin layers. This is particularly evident in some of the small early plaques.
Here's one of the plaques. Again, we have this tarry substance here around the border. This is an archival photo. Information technology'due south a little hard to encounter the detail, but these little aluminum tabs have been degraded either by hide glue or past the tar that they sit in. Hampton said, "No trouble." He only super imposed another layer. You tin can actually probably see a little residual tab forms there that were covered over when he just made an improver.

It's suspected that these materials were used early on in the artist's process and abandoned. Hampton made continual adjustments to find workable methods and materials like all of the artists that we've been discussing today. He made changes based on years long feel with the inherent vice of his chosen materials. I don't need to tell anybody in this room that the storage surround of these large installations is never very good.

Foil delamination and impairment from treatment.

The unheated garage Hampton rented at seventh Street in Washington betwixt M and N Street shown in this picture featuring the creative person was partially furnished, lit with raw calorie-free bulbs. I retrieve you lot tin meet there and accessed by large carriage firm double doors. Hampton died in 1964 and the National Collection of Fine Arts or SAM acquired the entire piece of work in 1970. Components were housed for an extended time in the garage during fabrication and after the creative person's death and they would've encountered many of the agents of deterioration: unstable climate including wide extremes of temperature and relative humidity and low-cal UV and visible.

If as seems likely that uninhabited building envelope was not sealed, street dust, insects, rodents and other agents of deterioration could accept negatively impacted the materials of the Throne. No insect impairment has been observed on the Throne elements surprisingly, but some paper components show meaning water staining and tide lines. Apply of inexpensive construction papers colored with fugitive dyes led to fading early on on of colored elements of many Throne components. In fact, when the Throne was first acquired, there was some delamination of some of the layered winged figures. Some of the staff people noticed that underneath some of the layers of winged figures, there were these bright colors, in that location were roses and purples and greens and already at that fourth dimension, these materials, not having been chosen for their immovability, had faded. Information technology was originally, as the creative person conceived it, a much more colorful ensemble.

After discovery of the Throne'south existence following Hampton'southward death, man factors such equally handling, packing, storage, travel and display would intervene to stress the delicate constructions further. The ensemble was first displayed publicly in 1971 in the National Collection of Fine Arts exhibition "Hidden Aspects". Subsequently extensive structural repairs, a portion of the Throne circuitous, roughly 50 of 180 components, traveled packaged in cardboard boxes and crates to 8 venues. I won't list them, but they include the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, The Whitney, Fine Arts in Boston, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. Parts take been loaned since 1982 to at least 10 museums. Major complex was concluding loaned to Colonial Williamsburg in 2000. Information technology'southward been effectually the cake a few times. The Throne has moved at least 4 times within the museum. All that handling and shuttling around cannot have benefited these very fragile constructions.

The deterioration of the foil, although in full general the argent colored household foils survived well, the artist appears to have been discontented with dust and dirt embedded in the interstices considering he took steps to stop the alteration of the shiny surfaces past covering some with plastic overlay picture and some with new household foil right out of the box. In time, as he covered over the dulled surfaces, there were leaf details lost their crispness and complexity. Other reasons for covering the existing foils may have been corrosion stimulated by tar and paints equally I've already referred to. Structural weaknesses caused by repeated folding and manipulation during structure could return the foils vulnerable to corrosion and acidic nutrient residues could accept attacked weak areas of the foil. We did run into some filiform corrosion- This is a care for for all you conservators out in that location. You lot can't e'er accept enough pictures of filiform corrosion- Appearing like mole tunnels on the surface of the metal was observed on a few silver-colored samples.

Throne armchair during conservation treatment by pre-program volunteers Leah Bright and Gaby Irving in 2012.

Many of the paper laminated sheets accept not held upwards well either, some due to mechanical stresses associated with handling while moving the rusty bike components. The poor environment would accept played an important part in furthering delamination, weakening the paper supports of the thin foils and furthering their trend to tear with pressure. Foil with gold toned coatings perhaps fared the worst considering of sensitivity of the cellulose nitrate coatings to dust, light and debrasion. That's a deteriorated gold-toned coating. Furthermore, cellulose nitrate's listed by the Aluminum Association as one of the materials slightly corrosive to aluminum in certain solvents. Maintenance and treatment of the Throne over the decade since its acquisition in 1970 has been challenging due to the sheer scale of the installation, the nearly constant display of the iconic ensemble and difficult admission due to the close packing of the elements went on display.

Traveling exhibitions take involved multiple campaigns of intensive handling and light exposure. First in 1988 with the hiring of a total time objects conservator at the American Fine art Museum regular maintenance was begun with a programme of dusting, in depth cleaning and repair campaigns occurred periodically in 1992, 2002 and 2012. Diverse grit preventive concepts have been considered over time. Dust is a really big problem with this.

One of the concepts for preventing dust was amalgam a Plexiglass barrier to protect the Throne from dust and company interaction, which was a exercise observed in historic rooms during the 1970s and 80s. Prior to the reopening of the renovated POB, renamed the Donna Williams Center, a positive pressure organization was conceived to prevent dust from entering the Throne enclosure and depositing on the foil elements, but financing did not materialize for this engineered solution. Display in a carpeted gallery exacerbates the common problem of dust influx into the gallery exhibition spaces. In order to reduce light-induced deterioration, advances in museum lighting have besides been considered and implemented. 1 of the advances that was considered was a motion detector calibrated to respond to man presence in the Throne gallery, merely a dark gallery waiting to exist movement activated was deemed uninviting to visitors and was non implemented. LED lighting, Laser Emitting Diode lighting, is being utilized to augment incandescent light sources in an effort to save energy and reduce the need for access to bulbs in areas with hard access.

In decision, in spite of poor quality materials, experimental methods, non-standard joinery, constant revision by the creative person, poor storage, frequent loans and long term brandish, the Throne has endured from its inception in a garage workshop in 1950 until the present. The artist was a poor homo and could only use what he could scavenge or purchase second hand with the exception of one textile. Abundantly available, high quality, yet inexpensive household aluminum foil, whose inherent stability under deleterious weather is perhaps the element most responsible for preserving the spiritual and artistic vision of James Hampton. I encourage y'all to visit the Throne in Washington DC, currently on view in the American Art Museum Starting time Floor Folk Art Galleries and I'd like to give thanks the following people for their assist with this paper. Thank you for your attention.

Abstract:
The Hampton Throne, produced between 1950 and 1964, was the life's work of self-taught artist James Hampton. The 80-slice installation appears to be made of aluminum foil, though in fact it forms just the pare covering wooden and cardboard structural elements, bought second-manus or found on the streets of Washington DC. The plain, colored, and textured foils derive from store-bought rolls of kitchen foil but likewise from liquor store displays, candy wrappers and cigarette packs. They were secured in place by ways of crimping, pressing, gluing and nailing. The components were adorned with paint, glue, colored papers, and toned varnish coatings. Various forms of corrosion are nowadays on the foil, and some of the paints and glues accept acquired severe deterioration.

Grit has been a abiding in the environment of the Throne, and was problematic enough for the artist that many of the elements were covered over again during his lifetime to refresh dust-embedded parts of the heavenly showpiece. The installation was created in an unheated garage oft opened to a dusty alleyway to provide light and air to the claustrophobic space. Extremes of temperature and humidity were owned to the creative person's workspace and surely have contributed to the deterioration of the not-archival components and the thin aluminum films.

Maintenance and treatment of the Throne over the decades since its accretion in 1970 has been impeded by difficult admission due to the close packing of the elements when on display, the sheer calibration of the installation and the nearly constant brandish of the iconic ensemble. Travelling exhibitions for large portions of the Throne and long-term exposure to light have damaged the colored elements of the Throne and hastened deterioration of adhesives and coatings.

The artist'south utilise of materials, deterioration, and maintenance strategies will be discussed in this look at the conservation of a unique, powerful, and vision-driven icon of American art.

Speaker Biography
Helen Ingalls began her training in a individual drinking glass and ceramics conservation studio. She acquired her formal grooming and Advanced Document in Conservation at the Cooperstown/Buffalo Graduate Program in Art Conservation. Afterwards internships at Colonial Williamsburg and the Walters Art Museum, and a Mellon Fellowship at the National Gallery of Art, she worked for 2 years at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, on Pre-Columbian archaeological metals and ceramics. Helen has practiced object conservation at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery since 1988.

Current projects include grooming of contemporary craft objects for the Renwick Gallery Permanent Collection postal service-renovation re-installation in 2016, and American Folk Art sculptures for a planned gallery re-installation in 2015. She is a member of the American Institute for Conservation (1981), INCCA-NA, ICOM, and the Washington Conservation Lodge (Board member 2010-2014). She served on the Editorial Board for the Guild's mid-atlantic directory, Conservation Resource for Fine art and Antiques, and contributed the chapter on Outdoor Sculpture conservation.

toddleck1974.blogspot.com

Source: https://ncptt.nps.gov/blog/james-hamptons-throne-of-the-third-heaven-of-the-nations-millennium-general-assembly/

Share this post