Back Seat Dodge ’38

Steven Colton, conservator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), realized that he had a major infestation problem one day early in 1993 when he found six webbing clothes moths during a routine inspection of one of the museum's most popular exhibits, Edward Kienholz's Back Seat Dodge '38. Five juve- nile insects were inside the car, eating floor carpeting, and a sixth moth flew out of the trunk when it was opened. The contemporary sculpture was controversial when it was acquired in 1966 because one door was open, revealing a sculptural portrayal of a drunken, life-size couple making love in the rear of the car. Los Angeles County supervisors denounced the work as revolting and blasphemous, and pressed the museum to remove it. The trustees unanimously rejected their appeal as an infringement on the museum's obligation to present works that represent an honest statement by a serious artist. The sculpture remained, although for a while, the car door was closed and a museum guard was posted

to prevent viewers from peeking inside. Twenty-seven years after the uproar that rocked the art community, Back Seat Dodge '38 suffered another attack.

But, as described by the Los Angeles Times, "this time, the assailants weren't two footed politicians, they were winged moths and when they got a load of the

Dodge, the wayward insects didn't see obscenity, they saw home and dinner" (Muchnic 1993).

The options for dealing with the problem at the time were limited. The sculpture was a complex piece containing a wide range of materials: leather, paper, cloth,

metals, synthetic resins, glass bottles, flocking material, and a variety of adhe- sives. The museum was loath to send it off-site for pesticide treatment because

transportation would risk damage to the fragile, deliberately dilapidated art- work, and conventional fumigation chemicals might harm the materials. The car was too large to fit into a pouch, and there were no big bubbles or chambers

available similar to ones that others have found suitable for the anoxic treatment of large objects. LACMA turned to the Getty Conservation Institute for help. The museum's timing was good: GCI personnel Shin Maekawa and Vinod Daniel,

working with Gordon Hanlon of the J. Paul Getty Museum, had just gone through the process of learning how to use barrier film to build containments about large, awkwardly sized objects for dynamic anoxia treatment. At the same time, a GCI-sponsored program at the University of California, Riverside, under the guidance of Michael Rust, was collecting the data needed to deal with web-

bing clothes moths. The studies by Rust and Kennedy found that holding this species of moth for 96 hours at 25 °C in nitrogen containing 1000 ppm or less oxygen was sufficient to create confidence that all life stages were exterminated. These data defined the conditions for the successful anoxia treatment of the Back Seat Dodge '38 carried out by the LACMA and Getty teams.

The gallery of the Anderson Building, where the sculpture had been on display, was closed for ten days while the container was built and the treatment carried out. The car, on casters, was rolled onto a sheet of plywood placed over a larger sheet of transparent laminate film based on Aclar as the oxygen barrier (Fig. 6.4). Additional sections of this film were cut, assembled, and heat-sealed to the bottom film layer, creating a tight-fitting container completely enclosing the sculpture. At its maximum dimension, the container measured 6.1 × 3.7 ×

1.7 m. It had a surface area of 23 m 2 , and construction required 44 linear meters of heat-sealing. The estimated volume of the bag was 5.5 m 3 . However, void

spaces such as the interior of the car and trunk, the area under the hood, and other spaces were filled with nitrogen-charged balloons to reduce the chamber

volume to 4.7 m 3 . This is now considered unnecessary. The oxygen leak rate through the bag was 167 ppm per day during the initial purge. Two industrial- grade nitrogen streams, each flowing at 5400 l h -1 , were passed first through separate split-stream bubblers, then into the bag, and out an exit duct. As the

Anoxia Treatment in a Dynamic M ode

Figure 6.4

Kienholz's Back Seat Dodge '38 under treatment. (Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.)

oxygen level dropped, the industrial grade was replaced with prepurified nitrogen. Continued rapid purging with nitrogen containing 5 ppm oxygen at 45%

RH quickly brought the oxygen level in the bag to below 1000 ppm, where it was maintained for 8 days under a continuous gas flow at 30 l h -1 . Temperature,

RH, and oxygen concentration were monitored continually. After treatment, dead larvae and adult insects were found in the car. When the project was com- pleted, the equipment was dismantled, and the car was rolled out of the bag and put back on display.

Back Seat Dodge ’38