Inside The Labs

- Jeannette Cooperman

RAINA CHAO SPENT the last day of 2017 crawling around inside a massive sculpture, checking its structure before a crane inched it into place outside the Saint Louis Art Museum. She started 2018 working with museum engineers to drop the humidity by 2 degrees because the condensation forming on a gallery skylight might affect the art. Now she’s leading me through a security door and down a hallway, past the textile, painting, and paper conservation labs.

We step into the objects lab, where Chao is a conservator. She gleefully explains the new 3-D digital microscope, how it will “take a bunch of images and give us a cross section so we can see the layers of paint in order.” She’s about to begin cleaning a seated arhat—a figure of one who’s attained enlightenment but not yet full Buddhahood.

“Yeah, he looks disappointed,” I say.

“He’s meditating,” Chao corrects me.