Art Restoration: The Culture, the Business and the Scandal

(Beck writes of the art and the politics of restoring great works of art, and of the options which should be considered before restoration is done. His opinion is that, many times, the restoration destroys the original painting, for all intents and purposes. An example he gives is what happens to the halos in paintings. We have all seen paintings with halos over certain figures. In the old original paintings, these halos are seen as airy and light, almost ray-like. When restored, Beck compares them to heavy golden plates sitting atop the heads of the figures in the painting)