CHICAGO — When the flood came, it came hard on a sizzling July day in 1986 on the construction site at what was then called the Chicago Historical Society. A water main cracked and it took more than three hours to stop the flow.
But by then the water damage was done: more than 400 bound volumes of newspapers, some from the 1870s; 13,000 architectural drawings and hundreds of paintings — in total, more than 100,000 items — had been harmed by water, mud and sand. The task of saving what could be saved was immense.
Barry Bauman was called in to work on 174 of the society’s oldest and most valuable paintings. “It was an intimidating, awesome responsibility,” he said then. “I felt as if I was holding Chicago’s very history in my hands.”
The restoration took three years, and Bauman’s work would later be compellingly captured in a documentary on Chicago PBS. Bauman, a passionate art conservationist, died on Feb. 5 of heart failure at his home in suburban Riverside. He was 73 years old and had spent most of his life bringing new life to a vast array of art and objects, his work featured in stories in the Tribune and many other publications. He was renowned in the art world.
With him when he died was his wife, the visual artist Mary Bourke, with whom he had two now-adult twin sons, Ian, a casting director who lives in Brooklyn, and Jeffrey, who works in the retail industry in Chicago. “We all loved him dearly,” said Bourke. “We met in 1983 when he was hired to repair some of my paintings that had been damaged during an exhibition. He told me then that he never dates clients but … He really loved what he did. He told me many times, ‘If I were to die tomorrow, I would die a happy man.’”
Bauman was born in 1948 in Syracuse, New York, and grew up in a house with “zero art,” so he never imagined an interest until enrolling in art history at Beloit College in Wisconsin because a political science class was filled. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Beloit in 1969 and a master’s from the University of Chicago in 1971, Bauman joined the conservation department at the Art Institute of Chicago and spent years there as associate conservator of paintings.
“But after 11 years in any position, one might look for new challenges,” he told me. “Many people, private collectors who I had met through my work at the Art Institute were coming to me for conservation work. It got to the point at which I had enough of these clients I thought I might use this base as a springboard into a private enterprise.”
But he needed a loan to open his own operation, first called the Chicago Conservation Center, and that money came from Marshall Field V, then the Art Institute’s president. Setting up shop by himself in what was then the less-than-trendy River North area, he was able to pay Field back in 18 months. “I was glad to help Barry, and I thought a place like the Conservation Center would be good for the city,” Field told me. “I think it has been. And I think he’s succeeded beyond anyone’s hopes. I’m happy for him. He’s a good fellow.”
The Chicago Conservation Center has since relocated to 400 N. Wolcott Ave. and is now known as the Conservation Center. It remains the largest private art conservation center in the city and one of the largest in the world.
When I first visited the place in 1993, I found myself amid more than 250 paintings, textiles and sculptures in need of aid. Most of the works suffered such relatively prosaic ailments as discolored varnish; smoke or soot, the result of fires; bulges and ripples in the canvas, the result of warped framing; small tears; flecked paint; and other signs of aging.
“But we’ve had paintings damaged by gunshots, by floods,” Bauman said. “We have had a few paintings that were so badly damaged that there was nothing we could do. We are not magicians.”
Paintings came into the center so covered in grime that it was virtually impossible to tell what was once underneath. But in time, canvases came alive in blazing colors. In the center’s 6,000-square-foot space, Bauman and his staff repaired, retouched, cleaned and otherwise ministered to artworks that belong to museums, corporations and private collectors. They worked on worthless but dear family heirlooms and museum paintings worth millions. “People realize that when they send a painting or work of art here, it’s not like getting your car repainted for $29.95,” Bauman said.
I asked him if he and his staff were nervous working on expensive works. He said, “Would you ask a doctor if he was nervous about doing an operation? We are professionals.”
Bauman would sell the CCC to his employee Heather Becker, who I first met when she worked with Bauman on what was called the Mural Preservation Project. She recently wrote a loving tribute to Bauman, saying in part, “His charisma and engagement were fascinating to witness, and his loyalty to train and nurture others was ever-present, along with his endless drive that overflowed onto others daily.”
Bauman would go on the start the country’s first conservation laboratory dedicated to offering complimentary services to museums and nonprofit organizations. In 2019, he started Conservation Ventures, a company that focused on presentations and helping museums apply for grants. He also gave lectures at museums and universities, in the hope that he might inspire art and art history students to consider conservation as a future career.
He and I last talked in the summer of 2021, when he told me, with typical enthusiasm, that he was working on a national conservation grant for the Edgewater Historical Society.
I was planning to write about this but then Bauman died.
Services have been held and in the wake of his death, I recalled something he told me long ago: “Certainly the responsibilities of working on a $3 million Renoir are different than working on a portrait of someone’s Uncle Billy. But that vanishes when I sit down to work. The work varies not at all.”
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