From Denmark to Utah: Transporting Century-old Art

DESERET NEWS
By Emmilie Buchanan-Whitlock

Panels are removed from an altar painting at Vor Frue Kirke in Aalborg, Denmark.

UTAH---How do you transport a painting more than a century old from a castle in Denmark? The answer, said Dawn Pheysey, Brigham Young University Museum of Art's head curator, is very, very carefully. The paintings in the BYU Museum of Art's upcoming free exhibit, "Sacred Gifts: The Religious Art of Carl Bloch, Heinrich Hofmann and Frans Schwartz," which opens Nov. 15, are being transported from nine different locations in Germany, Sweden, Denmark and New York City.Altar paintings are taken from the altar in their respective churches and placed facedown on a clean, white archival material on the floor. All paintings must be transported in the upright position. Some, because of their size, require their own plane to make the trip to Utah.[link]