Karen Louvar poses with her favorite artwork in the Art Museum's storage: Aline Feldman's "Nightfall," 1996 (white-line woodcut diptych), a gift from Gloria Plevin. Above it is Jane Hammond's "Domestic Pleasures," 1999 (acrylic and gouache with mixed media), a gift from Frank E. Babb.
As the registrar for the Art Museum of WVU for the last eight years, Karen Louvar manages many of the behind-the-scenes tasks that keep the museum running smoothly.
She knows where every artwork and artifact is stored, what’s out on loan and to where, and which visiting pieces on are display. She knows each work’s artist and medium, as well as its exact dimensions and number of parts. She knows the value of every painting and sculpture and has a plan in place to deal with anything from a water leak to a pest problem to a theft.
Maybe she doesn’t know all of this right off the top of her head, but Louvar has gathered all this information and maintains the meticulous systems that keep it organized and accessible.
“I like art, but I never felt like I could call myself an artist. This is my way to support the arts and be involved in a museum,” Louvar said.
“Having the responsibility of recording the arts’ history is neat. I like that my job isn’t the same thing every day,” she added. “I have a never-ending list of projects because there’s always more research. There’s always storage to organize or rehousing to do or new art coming in.”
Recorded for the ‘good of eternity’
The Art Museum of WVU owns just under 6,000 objects including items on display in the galleries, as part of traveling exhibitions and those in storage, and it receives approximately 200 more every year.
“I am the person who records all the information behind the objects in the collection for basically the good of eternity,” said Louvar. “When you think about it, the art on the wall has to be identified in some manner, and I am recording all that data.”
Many of the artworks at the Art Museum of WVU are by less-known artists or don’t have identifiable signatures. It’s Louvar’s job to track down that key information, including the artist’s name, date of birth and death (if applicable) and any other biographical information, in addition to the object’s dimensions, medium, number of parts and its title, if it has one.
Louvar also documents where the object came from, the donor’s name if the item was gifted and its provenance, or where the item has been before, if known. She takes note of any special history regarding an object—like it belonged to a donor’s ancestor and hung in their family home for generations, for example—and assigns the object a unique numeric code. Finally, she takes photographs to add to the file and adds a generic description.
“A painting might have an animal that kind of looks like a cow, but it could also be a horse. I don't want to say, ‘this painting has a brown horse’ when somebody else is like, ‘Oh no, that's not a horse.’ So I have to keep the official description generic: there's an animal in a pasture with trees,” Louvar said.
Another part of the registrar’s job is to check on each object’s condition to note any wear and tear and make suggestions about which objects need repairs. If anything goes out for conservation, Louvar makes sure those records go into the history of the object for future reference.
“This way, somebody can look back and say, ‘This was treated in this lower right corner,’ and we can see that repair.Sometimes, due to the environment, there'll be a new issue. It's good to have a record to compare against to know if that issue existed previously or if it’s a new thing,” Louvar said.
Arguably, the most important part of Louvar’s job is as behind-the-scenes as it gets: storage.
Some of the ceramics and sculptures currently in storage at the Art Museum of WVU.
Each item is assigned a permanent location—where it lives in the museum’s storage—plus any subsequent locations based on whether it’s on display within the museum or traveling on exhibition. Since the museum updates its galleries every semester, it’s essential to know where every item belongs.
Between donations, purchases, changing displays and visiting artwork, Louvar is always worrying over and reorganizing the museum’s storag
“Every museum runs out of storage. We're adding 200 objects every year and they have to go somewhere. I’m always looking at storage and moving things so they fit better and rehousing objects. Like, if they come in acidic boxes, you have to put it in museum friendly acid free boxes. Anything to prolong the life of the object,” Louvar said.
“It always feels good knowing you did your little part to keep this object safe and happy for ever and ever. Because essentially, as a museum, you've decided to care for it, and that's your responsibility. So, I'm the person who has to make sure that happens,” she added.
This was always the goal
Louvar said it was always her goal to work in an art museum.
She has always loved art, and, growing up between Huntington and Charleston, West Virginia, the Huntington Museum of Art was an easy drive. She even interned there in high school.
As a child, she was surrounded by the antiques her mother and grandmother collected, so she was raised with an appreciation for the care that goes into preserving them.
Louvar pursued a bachelor’s degree in arts administration at the University of Kentucky where she took an art history class and fell in love with it. She then went on to earn a master’s degree from the University of Louisville in Critical and Curatorial Studies, which integrates critical theory, contemporary art history, exhibition history and practical exhibition experience.
“I was trying to feel out where I really belonged,” she said. “I did multiple internships in the education field and with curators. I learned that I didn’t necessarily want to be presenting to a crowd of students. I really liked record keeping, and I discovered where I belong is behind the scenes
After college, Louvar worked as an intern at Harper’s Ferry for a year before being hired by the National Park Service as a Museum Technician for the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt & Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Sites in New York.
“It was an excellent place to learn,” she said. “We were using archival materials and packing objects and doing a lot of preservation.”
A lot of preservation, Louvar said, is dusting and vacuuming. But she also learned good practices for when something is past the point of preservation and needs to be replaced.
“It might be a historic carpet that was too faded, and they wanted to reproduce it. After doing research on colors and who could replicate it, we’d order a replacement. And to remove the old carpet, we’d want to use the least aggressive methods, like using distilled water instead of chemicals,” she said.
After her term at the FDR house ended, Louvar wanted to move closer to family again. She was hired as the Director of Riverview at Hobson Grove, a Victorian-era house museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where she was the only full-time staff member.
From there, she went to Virginia, where she spent six years as the Collections Manager of Stratford Hall, the boyhood home of two Declaration of Independence signers. Every so often, the museum would undergo a renovation where both the collections and layout would change to reflect a new theme.
“We would redo each room one by one, because they would even move walls and change all the furnishings. A lot of research went into deciding if a piece was period correct to go into a specific room,” Louvar said.
Louvar liked her work at Stratford Hall, but when the registrar’s position at the Art Museum of WVU opened, she was happy to come back to West Virginia.
“I think we do great things here. I wish more people knew about us. I think having grown up in the Huntington vicinity, I feel like more people are aware of the Huntington Museum of Art and the Clay Center. Art Museum of WVU is a new museum comparatively, so I think we'll get there eventually,” Louvar said.
“Plus, we can always use more volunteers here if anybody ever wants to help in storage,” she added, only mostly kidding.