Solving Art Mysteries

Scholastic Art: What is your job?

Narayan Khandekar: I study works of art to understand the materials that the artists used to make them. I’m like an art materials detective. For example, my team has just done a big survey of all of the plastic objects in the museums’ collection. It is very hard to identify a plastic just by looking at it. Using special equipment, we identified the plastics that make up 400 different objects in our collection. In one instance, even the artist thought his work was made with acetate. But our research proved that it was actually polystyrene, a different kind of plastic. Knowing exactly what art is made of changes how curators and conservators treat and store it.

SA: What are some cool projects that you have worked on?

NK: A few years ago, I worked on a series of panels by the 20th-century American artist Mark Rothko. Some of the panels had faded. My team took a sample from each painting to determine the pigments they contained and learn how and why their colors had deteriorated. We were then able to work with curators to develop a lighting system that would project the exact color of the missing pigments onto each of the paintings. This way, the paintings could be exhibited and viewed the way the artist intended them to (above). Another time, we were asked to confirm whether a newly discovered painting attributed to the American painter Jackson Pollock was authentic. We tested a sample from the painting and determined that it contained a pigment called PR254, which was used to give Ferrari sports cars their characteristic red color. This pigment wasn’t discovered until after Pollock’s death in 1956, which means he couldn’t have painted the work.

SA: What skills make you successful?

NK: I have a steady hand. This is a helpful skill when trying to take samples from a work of art. We collect the samples with a scalpel—a small, sharp knife used by surgeons. Remove too much paint and you could damage the artwork. A sample the size of the period at the end of this sentence, for instance, would be too big. We have to convince curators that taking a sample is worth the risk because of how much we’ll be able to learn. I also have a really good visual memory, which is good for studying art.