Riikka: I work as a head conservator in the Valamo Art Conservation Institute in Finland. We conserve paintings on wood and on canvas and are specialized on icon conservation. Our specialization is unique in Finland and in Scandinavia. We take commissions not only from the Orthodox church, but also other churches in Finland, from museums, insurance companies and works from private sources form perhaps half of our work load. Besides practical conservation, we do condition reporting to exhibitions and different art collections, give advice of preventing conservation and handling of art, and naturally give lectures about art conservation.

We are a small institute, but play a significant role in different European projects, from which the latest is a project called Icon Network. Within this project we set up an exhibition with theme “icons and war”, published a book supporting the theme and currently work partly with web pages to help people who are interested about icons.

Riikka: Each icon is unique, and there is no straightforward way to restore an icon. Firstly, when talking about icon, we usually think about painting on flat wooden support. But there are icons painted on canvas, as well as on metal, I have even seen one painted on dried fish skull!

Normally our work starts with documentation. We have full-time research photographer working for us, so he photographs the icon, and if necessary, he can take ultraviolet and infrared photos, even x-rays. Then follows written documentation, which we carry on through whole process, writing down every step we do. So called “normal” process includes cleaning, stabilization of paint layer and restoration (painting) only if necessary. Each case has to be considered separately. For example, if an icon is from the museum, we hardly do any restoration at all. But if an icon goes to a church, or at private home, we usually do restoration. It would be rather difficult to concentrate on praying in front of this icon if half of the face was missing!

Riikka: It was terribly interesting, loaded with huge amount of information in short time, and it gave me a push to find out more about certain matters in illicit trade of art, and of icons. It assured me that the more we know about this dark side of art world and the more we educate ourselves, the more we can do to prevent these things happening. Finland is such a small country, but by no means a safe bird nest. The program gave me several ideas what to do next, and very importantly several good connections to turn to if I need advice.

Riikka: Full speed rollercoaster! I took over the head conservators role after returning to work immediately after the course, and have been settling into that. Besides managing the institute, marketing, finding new projects, traveling around Finland from church to church, giving lectures etc etc, I do practical conservation as much as I can, since that is the part I enjoy tremendously. In June 2010 an icon was stolen from a cathedral in Helsinki, and one icon was damaged badly. I did conservation on this particular icon, and started discussions about the need to secure churches. This continues and hopefully with good results. We set up an exhibition in our monastery and did the security plan for it (using ArtGuard) and now I am planning next exhibitions. The plan is to have an exhibition with fakes and forgeries, co-operating with some museums and police. The process has been started already, and it looks splendid.

Riikka: Worldwide, there are so many challenges and demands to protect cultural heritage…

If I think only about my area of conservation, I almost see red when I meet today’s artists and see their work. I give many lectures trying to make artists understand the importance of good technique; it’s the matter of quality, not quantity. Just take a painting (or even icon) 100 years old, and it still looks more or less top quality. Whereas we are getting more and more badly prepared canvases or panels only 10-20 years old and already damaged. Education, education, that is the word!

Riikka: I am not very familiar with this case, but general rule I try to follow as much as I can is "less is more”, as I guess every conservator thinks. Making sure that piece of art will be there for next generations is the most important, not restoring it so that it looks like new. And this doesn’t mean treating the object only; it includes taking care of the surroundings as well. Cleaning is always a bit risky, especially when using detergents or solvents or new methods that haven’t been in use for long.

Noah: Our program is unique, the first in the world to offer courses of study in the unusual topic of art crime and cultural heritage protection. It has received quite a bit of attention, even though it was only founded in 2009. That same year a New York Times feature article introduced the program to the world, and we’ve grown and solidified since then. What I love about our program is that it embraces the inherent interdisciplinary nature of the study of art crime, which involves art history, archaeology, law, criminology, police and security studies, even conservation. We bring in world-renowned professors in an unusual format—each comes for two weeks over the summer to teach an intensive, 25 hour course in their area of expertise. As a result you get 10 amazing professors, plus numerous guided field trips and guest speakers, plus our international Conference on the Study of Art Crime at the heart of the program. Our unusual format, fitting over 250 lecture hours (the equivalent in hours to a year-long European Masters Program) into the three summer months allows adult professionals to take the program, or students during the summer between full-time programs. As a result we’ve had post-graduate students and professionals, ages 22 to 65, ranging from students to conservators to curators to investigators to lawyers and so on—a diverse and international group. The program does a great job of offering both academic/historical courses, like mine, with practical professional courses, like the course on “Art Policing and Investigation.”

My course is a complete history of art crime, and an introduction to the field of study. It really paves the way for the rest of the program, and provides an anecdotal history—we examine around 60 case studies carefully chosen because they each illustrate a point or phenomenon related to art crime. The stories are great, too, vivid and fun, which makes the lessons easier to remember. My goal is for my students to remember the dynamic stories that I teach, and thereby remember the lessons vicariously—if I’m doing my job well, students should not have to study, but be sufficiently drawn in during class to absorb all of the lessons without feeling like they’re having to “work.”

Noah: I feel like I’m an actor performing a play that I’m really passionate about once a year—I think I always get better at teaching the material, and it comes more easily. A key for me is never reading a lesson from notes. I think that’s about the most boring thing a professor can do. I much prefer teaching with just the barest outlines, which gives classes a sense of energy and freshness. I’ve taught this course at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and I’ve honed my selection of case studies to 60 cases that really tell the entire history, and future, of art crime. I’m working on an academic book covering the subject, as we speak.

One thing I’m pleased with is that since ARCA was founded, students and journalists have been largely educated about art crime in a way that was not the case beforehand. That is not to say that this is ARCA’s doing, but we’ve helped bring issues and facts to the fore, so that journalists and students are versed in the correct facts and phenomena about art crime from the start. This is really a great improvement and shows that hard work and education outreach has paid off.

Noah: The two-week “executive training” version of the course has largely the same presentation of case studies, but with a bit more story-telling and a bit less collective group discussion, simply for time constraints (a semester-long course is normally 40 hours, and a postgraduate level course in our program is 25). We also have less reading during the course. I’m a big fan of relatively little homework, provided my students are focused and participate in class. But we assign some books to be read in advance of the program, so that all of our students arrive with shared material which can be used as a point of departure. We assign ARCA’s first book, Art & Crime (Praeger 2009), The Medici Conspiracy by Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini (PublicAffairs 2004), a choice between The Lost Masters by Pittaway and Harclerode or The Rape of Europa by Nicholas, and my new book, Stealing the Mystic Lamb (PublicAffairs 2010). That may sound like a lot, but we have almost no assigned reading during the summer, so students can concentrate on enjoying and learning from the great lecturers we bring to them—and can relax with some wine and prosciutto as they spend their summer in Umbria.

Noah: Well, I’m always shy about assigning my own books to students, but all teachers do it—and it helps to have this central point from which to depart. Since this book will be assigned to students ahead of time, we’ll discuss it and use it as the spine, or through-line of the course. Pretty much anything bad that can happen to a work of art has happened to The Ghent Altarpiece, as my book explores, so it’s an ideal lens through which to study the history of art crime, collecting, and the power of art that reaches far beyond the art world and into international politics, war, and faith.

Photo by Liisa van Vliet of Noah Charney recently speaking at The Courtauld Institute in London.

Measuring 14.5 by 11 feet and weighing in at close to two tons, Jan van Eyck’s “Ghent Altarpiece” is not the likeliest candidate for the most stolen artwork of all time.

And yet this monumental 1432 Flemish panel painting is exactly that. Art historian Noah Charney, who taught a course called “Art Crime” last semester, addressed a nearly full auditorium of professors, students and locals Thursday at the Yale University Art Gallery in a talk titled “Stealing the Mystic Lamb: A true history of the world’s most frequently stolen masterpiece.”