We’re proud to share that South Florida Art Conservation was recently featured in Florida Weekly, in a piece by journalist Roger Williams titled “Saving Great Art”. The article takes readers behind the scenes of a field most people never think about until something goes wrong — and our own conservators, Jeronimo Perez Roca and Amparo Escolano Mena, were front and center in the story.
What the Article Covers
The piece opens with a dramatic reminder of why conservation matters: the 1972 attack on Michelangelo’s Pietà, when a visitor took a hammer to the sculpture inside St. Peter’s Basilica. The eight-month restoration that followed — using marble sourced the same way Michelangelo had centuries earlier — is a striking illustration of just how far specialists will go to preserve a single work of art.
From there, the article shifts to the quieter, everyday version of that same commitment: the ongoing work of conservators at museums and private collections across South Florida. It’s a reminder that most conservation work isn’t reactive — it’s preventive, patient, and largely invisible to the public until it’s explained.
South Florida Art Conservation Team’s Role
Jeronimo Perez Roca, our Senior Conservator of Paintings and Objects, spoke at length with Florida Weekly about his path into the field. Raised in Spain by an architect father who painted as a hobby, Jeronimo didn’t discover conservation as a profession until his teens. His career eventually took him through Spanish institutions responsible for the Crown Heritage collection, more than a decade teaching conservation at a university in Granada, and finally to South Florida more than two decades ago.
His wife, Amparo Escolano Mena, our Senior Conservator of Papers and Paintings, works alongside him — though she chose to let Jeronimo speak with the reporter directly for this piece.
One of the more memorable projects Jeronimo discussed was the couple’s recent work with the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach and the Leiden Collection, which brought more than 75 works of 17th-century Dutch art — including a dozen Rembrandts and the only privately held Vermeer in the world — to South Florida for a five-month exhibition. Their role involved inspecting, handling, and in one case conserving part of a frame for one of the paintings in that collection.
Conservation vs. Restoration — and Why It Matters
A recurring theme in the article is the distinction between restoration (making a piece look the way it originally did) and conservation (a broader, ongoing effort to preserve a work for future generations, using techniques that are fully reversible). Jeronimo describes his own approach simply: a conservator’s job isn’t to express anything of their own — it’s to maintain the artist’s original intent with as little interference as possible.
That philosophy shows up in the practical breakdown of the work, which the article separates into three parts:
- Preventive conservation — addressing framing, glazing, lighting, and environmental conditions before damage occurs.
- Structural conservation — repairing cracking, flaking, or tears in a canvas before the damage worsens.
- Cosmetic conservation — the most visible step, but the last priority: making a piece look the way it originally did.
As Baker Museum director Courtney McNeil put it in the article, decisions in this field rarely follow a single formula. Every object, medium, and history is different — which is part of why conservation is as much a discipline of judgment as it is of science.
Featured Projects Across South Florida
Beyond our own team’s work, the article highlights several other conservation efforts around the region worth noting:
- The Baker Museum’s exhibit “There and Here,” which required more than a year of planning and conservation work — including cleaning, varnish removal, and stabilization — led by conservator Viviana Dominguez.
- The restoration of “Rachel at the Well,” the century-old statue in Fort Myers’ Edison Park neighborhood, damaged by Hurricane Ian and later restored through community-led effort.
- The Norton Museum’s Leiden Collection exhibition, discussed above, which brought rare Dutch masterworks to public view for the first time in a private collection setting.
Together, these examples underscore a point the article makes clearly: conservation isn’t just about protecting valuable objects — it’s about preserving the shared cultural history a community builds its identity around.
Why This Feature Matters to Us
Being included in this story is a meaningful recognition of the work our conservators do every day, often without public attention. Conservation is detailed, patient work — the kind that rarely makes headlines unless something goes wrong. We’re grateful to Roger Williams and Florida Weekly for taking the time to explain it well, and for giving our team the chance to share their story.
Read the full article here: Saving Great Art – Florida Weekly
