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Thomas Doncourt

The first floor of The Hall of Fishes. Photo courtesy of the Vanderbilt Museum

CENTERPORT: The first floor of The Hall of Fishes at the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Marine Museum has reopened following the Marine Collections Conservation Project. The second floor remains closed temporarily while the nearly 1,500 wet specimens, recently conserved, are organized and returned to their exhibition cases.

Supported by a $135,000 grant from The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, the conservation project began in the summer of 2015. Work included conserving five taxidermied flamingos and a group of dry-mounted fish specimens, the repair of three shore bird dioramas and restoration of the diorama background paintings, and the creation of a new undersea painting for a large-scale exhibition case.

“We’re indeed fortunate to have some of the finest restoration experts from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City to help us with the conservation and preservation of the collection,” said Stephanie Gress, director of curatorial affairs for the Vanderbilt. 

“Their exceptional skills allow us to be the careful stewards of Mr. Vanderbilt’s legacy, a marine and natural history museum for the education and enjoyment of the people of Long Island and beyond,” she said.

The first floor of The Hall of Fishes. Photo courtesy of the Vanderbilt Museum

The specimen conservation work was completed in New Jersey at Wildlife Preservations, the studio of taxidermist George Dante. He and his colleagues cleaned decades of dust from the specimens, touched up fins and feathers, and returned them to the Vanderbilt.

Sean Murtha, an artist who specializes in fine-art background paintings for museum dioramas, recreated an 8×10-foot painting of the ocean floor to replace the faded original created in 1924. Thomas Doncourt, a foreground artist, restored the habitat in the Caribbean shore bird dioramas, which included recreating a crumbled section of beach in one diorama. Murtha also restored sections of the paintings in those dioramas.

Murtha and Doncourt are both former staff members of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), and Dante is a top AMNH taxidermy consultant. The three are part of the continuous, century-long Vanderbilt-AMNH collaboration that began when William K. Vanderbilt II (1878–1944) hired artisans and scientists from the museum to design the habitat dioramas in his own new museum in the 1920s. Vanderbilt also hired artist William Belanske, who accompanied him on his world voyages and became his resident artist and curator.

Over the past several years, the three artists also completed extensive work on the wild-animal dioramas in the museum’s Stoll Wing, funded by two $100,000 grants from the Roy M. Speer Foundation.

The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum is located at 180 Little Neck Road in Centerport. Summer hours are Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m.   

General museum admission is $8 for adults, $7 for students with ID and seniors (62 and older), and $5 for children 12 and under, which includes estate-grounds access to the Marine Museum, Memorial Wing natural-history and ethnographic-artifact galleries, Nursery Wing, Habitat Room, Egyptian mummy and Stoll Wing animal-habitat dioramas. For a mansion tour, add $6 per ticket. 

For further information, call 631-854-5579 or visit www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.

Artist Thomas Doncourt restores flamingo mud nests in the Marine Museum’s Hall of Fishes.
Creating an undersea mural, conserving flamingos

Small photos of a vintage, 8-by-10-foot painting of the ocean floor are taped to Sean Murtha’s easel. He glances at the photos, dips his brush onto his palette and applies paint to a stand of tall sea grass. He is creating a new version of the faded, original 1924 painting — lying nearby on the marble floor of the Hall of Fishes on the first floor of the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum’s Marine Museum in Centerport.

Just steps away from Murtha, Thomas Doncourt, a foreground artist, lies inside a small exhibition case on a slender platform he built. The device allows him to work in the diorama that contains a group of preserved tropical shore birds without damaging the surrounding foliage and other objects. Using steel mesh, plaster, sand and paint, he is reconstructing a section of beach that, after nearly a century, has crumbled, leaving a hole in the scene.

These two accomplished artists, along with Stephanie Gress, the Vanderbilt’s director of curatorial affairs, and her staff, are engaged in the Marine Collections Conservation Project.

Artist Sean Murtha creates a new undersea background painting for a fish exhibition case.

Funded by a $135,000 grant from The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, the project has been underway for two years. The latest phase of work began last winter, when five flamingos and a dozen fish from the Marine Museum spent the winter in New Jersey at the studio of taxidermist George Dante. Dante and his colleagues at Wildlife Preservations cleaned decades of dust from the specimens, touched up fins and feathers, and returned them recently to their home at the Vanderbilt.

During the spring and summer, Murtha and Doncourt completed weeks of crucial repair and restoration on the background paintings and vegetation in the exhibition and diorama cases where the creatures live.

In the flamingo diorama, Doncourt repaired and repainted the birds’ pedestal-shaped mud nests after Murtha had finished the cleaning and spot restoration of the curved background painting that depicts the birds’ homes in inlets along the coast of Cuba.

Sean Murtha place fish on completed mural.

The painting was created in the early 1920s by William Belanske. Later, William K. Vanderbilt II hired Belanske, who had been working for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), to be his artist on the 1931-1932 global ocean journey of his ship, the Alva. Belanske later became the resident artist and first curator of the Vanderbilt Museum.

Murtha, Doncourt and Dante, like Belanske, are former members of the American Museum of Natural History staff, and the latest generation of the century-long Vanderbilt-AMNH collaboration. Over the past few years, the three also completed extensive work on the wild-animal dioramas in the museum’s Stoll Wing, funded by significant grants from the Roy M. Speer Foundation. That tradition began with Belanske in the early 1920s and continued with the artists and scientists Vanderbilt hired in the late 1920s to create his nine-diorama Habitat Room that depicts animal life from several continents. The centerpiece of the room is a 32-foot whale shark, the world’s largest taxidermied fish, caught off Fire Island in 1935.

The tradition resumed in the late 20th century, when AMNH artists were hired to restore the deteriorating habitat, which had been closed from 1996 to 2009. The project was made possible by a federal Save America’s Treasures grant, through the National Parks Service.

The finished project.

Murtha restored the flamingo diorama painting by carefully painting over the numerous water streaks. “The case is located on a wall of the building,” he said. “The painting was created on the surface of the plaster wall itself. The heat and outside moisture leached through the wall from the outside, then through the surface of the painting, which caused streaking over the decades.”

Murtha’s work makes the nearly century-old painting look bright and vibrant. “Now, with the streaks covered, there is no distraction from the birds and the marsh,” he said. “Plus, the flamingos, which are now re-installed, cover most of the streaks I was unable to paint over.”

Murtha also created a new version of the 8-by-10-foot, 1924 canvas background painting in the exhibit case titled “Fish from the Atlantic Ocean, the Madeira Islands and Bermuda.” The case contains about six dozen fish and nearly three dozen examples of coral lying on the sand of the “ocean floor” at the bottom of the case. The fish and coral were removed temporarily for cleaning and repairs, and their locations marked on the new canvas before Murtha began painting.

Doncourt also restored tropical foliage and rebuilt the crumbling beach in the diorama “Shore Group — Man O’War Birds and Pelicans (Lesser Sandpipers).” “The beach was originally created by placing a layer of sand over nongalvanized steel screen, which has rusted over the years and crumbled,” Doncourt said. “I rebuilt it with galvanized steel lath, which won’t rust.”

After removing the sand and other nearby materials, he cut heavier galvanized mesh to repair the hole. “I covered the mesh with a plaster bandage, painted it a base color, and then covered it with the sand and other foreground materials,” he said.

When the birds were back in place, Doncourt repaired the foreground and repainted it in two tones. “I went in with a brush on a long stick to add a third, darker color,” he said. “I have an extendable ‘claw’ like grandma used to get cans off a high shelf, and used it to place dried leaves and twigs on the ground around the birds.”

Another expert who worked to conserve the flamingos was Marco Antonio Olcha, a skilled taxidermist and conservator from Cuba and a consultant to Dante. Olcha, who works for the National Center for Conservation, Restoration and Museology in Havana, said he gently vacuumed the flamingo feathers to remove decades of dust.

“I also used a brush, and finally a special conservator’s paper, moistened with a water-based soap solution, to complete the gentle process of cleaning the feathers,” Olcha said. “Then I repainted the flamingos’ beaks, legs, and feet.”

The earlier phases of the Marine Collections Conservation Project involved extensive conservation and preservation work by Vanderbilt curators on nearly 1,500 of the museum’s fluid-preserved ocean specimens.

The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum is located at 180 Little Neck Road, Centerport. Through Sept. 3, the museum will be open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. The Marine Museum is currently closed for further renovations but the Habitat Room and all other exhibits are open. For more information, call 631-854-5579 or visit www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.

All photos courtesy of Vanderbilt Museum

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Artist Sean Murtha restores a large painting. Photo from Vanderbilt Museum

Twelve fish and five flamingos recently left their home in The Hall of Fishes at Centerport’s Vanderbilt Museum in the care of taxidermist George Dante, for a trip to his Wilderness Preservations studio in West Paterson, N.J., and some much-needed care and repair.

Dante’s work is part of the Marine Collections Conservation Project, and complements the extensive work being completed during the next few months by staff curators on nearly 1,500 of the Vanderbilt’s fluid-preserved ocean specimens. Over the past several years, significant gifts from the Roy M. Speer Foundation and the Robert D.L. Gardiner Foundation have allowed the Vanderbilt to undertake these much-needed conservation and restoration efforts.

Above, taxidermist George Dante (left) and artist Thomas Doncourt in the Vanderbilt Museum’s Hall of Fishes. Photo from Vanderbilt Museum

Dante, an accomplished taxidermist, he has been working with the Vanderbilt over the past several years to conserve and preserve some of the animals in its Stoll Wing dioramas. Now he’s begun to work on some of the Museum’s critically damaged or decaying marine specimens, which Mr. Vanderbilt gathered during his global ocean voyages and collecting expeditions in the early 20th century. Collaborating with Dante are gifted artists Sean Murtha and Thomas Doncourt.

Murtha is repairing and restoring the background painting in a large Hall of Fishes diorama of flamingos and their clay pedestal nests along the coast of Cuba, Dante is cleaning and restoring the flamingos and Doncourt is restoring the clay flamingo nests and foreground vegetation.

“This phase of the project will address the dry mounted fish specimens that were originally prepared by Mr. Vanderbilt’s curator, William Belanske,” said Stephanie Gress, director of curatorial affairs for the Vanderbilt. “His original paintings of these fish, done at the time they were caught, served as a color reference for the mounted fish skins. A dozen have been removed from display and are being carefully conserved by George Dante. He will address not only the damage and loss to the hand-painted skins, but also restore missing fins and tails. As many of these specimens were prepared nearly a century ago, they are extremely fragile and difficult to work with.”

Sean Murtha said he is restoring the Flamingo diorama painting to its former appearance. “We’re not updating or changing it, but trying to erase the damage that has occurred to it over the past nearly 100 years,” he said. “The original was painted by William Belanske, and therefore has historic importance. Over the years, moisture has affected the background painting in a few different ways, discoloring it in many places and in a few areas causing the paint to crack and flake off.

“I am removing very loose chips of paint, stabilizing it with an acrylic polymer, and then painting in the missing areas, to match the color and style of the original. Meanwhile, George and Tom are conserving and restoring the birds and plants. When everything comes back together, it should have the impact that it did originally,” added Murtha.

Thomas Doncourt is consulting on foreground conditions and restoration, including ground surfaces and plant models, he said. “The challenge is to coordinate work between Sean and George,” he said. “I remove foreground objects and materials so they can have access to the specimens and the background painting.”

Doncourt’s restoration work will include repairing the clay nests, made of painted plaster, and the branches and leaves of the rhododendron, fashioned out of beeswax. “Then I will work with George to return the specimens, nests and foliage to their original places and make it look like nothing ever happened to disturb the scenic beauty.”

During his epic global journeys in the 1920s and 1930s, William K. Vanderbilt II (1878-1944) collected thousands of specimens of vertebrate and invertebrate sea life for the museum he was building on Long Island. His Hall of Fishes houses what is considered the world’s most extensive privately assembled collection of marine specimens from the pre-atomic era.

The Vanderbilt marine collection comprises 13,190 historic aquatic specimens housed in the two-story Hall of Fishes; in the Habitat, a natural-history diorama hall; and in an invertebrate gallery. The collection, in addition to the fluid-preserved marine life, includes vertebrate and invertebrate specimens, dried or preserved through taxidermy.

The Hall of Fishes constituted the beginning of today’s Vanderbilt Museum complex. Constructed in 1922, it began as a one-story structure open to the public each Wednesday during the years Mr. Vanderbilt lived on the estate.

The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum is located at 180 Little Neck Road in Centerport. For more information, call 631-854-5579 or visit www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.