Kamehameha Statues - Conservation History

Conservation History

Throughout its history, maintenance of the sculpture has proven to be challenging to carry out due to jurisdictional confusion—though the statue is located on county land, it is unclear if it belongs to the state or not, and therefore deciding who should be responsible for caring for it can be difficult to determine. Older residents of the island claim that during the plantation era, the sugar company bosses maintained the sculpture. Sometime after World War II, the County Department of Public Works in Hilo, Hawaii assumed responsibility for the statue’s care; after government reorganization in 1973, the crew tasked with cleaning and repainting the sculpture was transferred to state control. Having little to no experience caring for public works of art, the crews often utilized materials and techniques that would be considered aggressive and potentially damaging by modern art conservators, including wire brushes, power washers, and house paint. When funds for this maintenance dried up in 1992, state crews stopped repainting the sculpture. Though the Art in Public Places Division of the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts maintains most Hawaiian public art, including Kamehameha the Great (second cast), it does not allocate funds to care for the North Kohala cast. Local residents suspect this may be due to the agency’s disapproval of painting the sculpture. Between 1992 and 2001, any repainting and general maintenance the statue received was from local volunteers working with common household materials.

In early 2001, Honolulu-contracted and the California-based conservator Glenn Wharton, who led an effort to conserve the statue. After helping to regild Kamehameha the Great (second cast) in 1994, Wharton visited the North Kohala statue in the spring of 1996 with the initial intent of determining and then restoring the statue to its original nineteenth century appearance. Upon visiting the sculpture for the first time, Wharton discovered that the statue’s current coat of paint had faded due to ultraviolet (UV) light from the Sun, was lifting in many areas, and in some places had flaked away completely to reveal underlying corrosion. Wharton later identified this as bronze disease, a detrimental form of corrosion that can occur on copper, brass, and bronze surfaces when exposed to chloride salts, water, and oxygen, and, when left untreated, can eat away into the surface of the metal. In addition, Wharton noted signs of corrosion of the interior iron armature (See armature (sculpture)), and stress cracks in the metal base, all issues which would need to be dealt with in the final treatment plan.

One of the most challenging aspects of the conservation of Kamehameha the Great (original cast) was determining the original appearance of the statue. Since conservators traditionally strive to uphold the artist’s intent when caring for an artwork, figuring out this piece of information was of critical importance. While the Honolulu cast sported a patinated surface with gilt (See gilding) garments, the North Kohala cast had been painted in lifelike colors for as long as any local residents of the island could remember, and it wasn’t clear whether the statue had been originally gilt or painted. Historical accounts provided little assistance to the investigation, as articles written on the sculpture at the time of its unveiling in the 1880s offered conflicting and often contradictory descriptions of the artwork. However, by analyzing paint chip samples taken from the statue’s surface using X-ray fluorescence and X-ray diffraction, Wharton was eventually able to gather evidence of 24kt gold leaf residue beneath the layers of paint, effectively concluding that the statue had, like its Honolulu counterpart, an original patinated and gilded surface. Wharton theorized that because of damage caused by the shipwreck, the sculpture’s surface had corroded badly before its eventual transport to Hawaiʻi in 1883, and due to lack of materials and technical expertise to regild and patinate the surface, the statue was instead cleaned and then painted entirely brown in order to prepare it in time for Kalākaua’s coronation ceremony. At some point between 1883 and 1912, the tradition of painting the sculpture in multiple colors began.

Because of the complexity of the decision as well as the deep cultural connection many local residents felt to the statue, Wharton devised a novel scheme to allow the Hawaiian people to decide if the statue should remain painted with lifelike colors or be restored to its original gilded appearance. An effort was made to interest young children and local students in the sculpture, in order to get adults talking about the Kamehameha the Great as a conservation object. Teachers coordinated art projects centering on the sculpture, and local community groups also got involved, making crafts and conducting research projects to increase awareness of the sculpture and the efforts to restore it. Journalists reported on the ongoing projects in the local newspapers, sometimes offering their own opinions on whether the statue should be painted or gilt. Debate centered on whether it was best to restore the statue’s gilded surface, which would uphold the artist’s original intent and, some argued, make the statue more aesthetically appealing, or to repaint, which would honor a local tradition and increase the statue’s lifelike appearance. Eventually, after listening to the input of the kūpana (community elders), who spoke out in favor of painting the sculpture, a local ballot was held in late 2000. The results were 71% in favor of repainting.

Hands-on work began on the sculpture in February 2001. After documenting the statue’s initial condition, the paint was stripped away using a combination of pressure washers, propane torching, and solvent application. Once the brass surface had been cleaned, Wharton assessed the various stress cracks and gouges in the metal and determined that the damage was all relatively old, probably dating back to the shipwreck and its recovery from the sea. (Ref: Wharton 148-152.) In addition, much of the bronze disease once visible on the surface of the sculpture had been blasted away during the paint stripping process. After it was determined that the statue was in stable condition, any holes or gaps in the metal were filled in using a pH-neutral epoxy putty, and the brass surface was misted with a benzoltriazole solution in order to prevent future corrosion. To repaint the sculpture, Wharton selected a hearty paint system that could withstand the harsh Hawaiian sun and rain, which consisted of an automotive epoxy primer (See primer (paint)), a polyurethane paint, and a polyurethane clear top coat. Special care was taken to choose the proper colors for Kamehameha’s skin tone and red and yellow feathered garments. Once the treatment was complete, Wharton helped train a group of local volunteers to carry out annual maintenance on the sculpture, and to watch for and record any condition changes or damage.