Tiara Woods and Paul Tracy are cleaning lions this week — namely the fearsome-looking stone creatures that guard the bottom of the stairs leading from Morrie Moss Lane up to the west side of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.
The lions have been on duty in this location since at least the early 1980s, when they were moved here from a grand mansion that once stood on Union Avenue. Paul and Tiara have been on duty in this location for seven days, as of last Friday.
Though the lions were unable to protect their former home from the predations of a fast-food franchise developer, they’ve held up nicely here in this shady nook in Overton Park — except for some lichens, moss, soot, forest detritus, and occasional bird poop. They still look fierce, but they’ve never been cleaned and could use a proper spruce-up. Which is where Tiara and Paul come in.
Paul Tracy has been a preparator at the Brooks since 1982, when he was hired fresh out of nearby Southwestern College (now Rhodes). You might say he knows the neighborhood, having grown up in Crosstown and gone to Catholic High School, a couple blocks away.
Tiara graduated from Overton High School and attends the University of Tulsa. She is working at the Brooks this summer through an internship sponsored by Studio Institute, which endeavors to get young people connected to the visual arts and art careers. She wants to be an art conservator.
For the past week or so, Paul and Tiara have been working side by side. Paul has the lion on the right side of the steps; Tiara, the one on the left. They are using a combination of brushes, headstone-cleaning solution, water, and bamboo skewers. It is tedious, serious detail work. The stone is porous, pocked with nooks and crannies, tiny fossils, and complex carving details.
“You have to wet down an area, then spray it with cleaner and let it sit for a bit.” says Paul. “Then you scrub with brushes and pick at the small crevices and pock-marks with the skewers. Your fingers get kinda numb, so after a couple of hours, you have to stop.”
It’s the kind of work that might test the dedication of some young people, but for Tiara, it’s all part of the learning curve. “I like finding out how all these roles come together,” she says, “how people wear different hats.”
“It’s true,” says Paul. “It’s always something different. One day I’m matting a Rembrandt print, the next day I’m moving a heavy crate to a gallery to unpack.”
The museum began the cleaning of its outside artwork during the pandemic. “A lot of employees could work from home,” says Paul. “But the preparators, not so much, because we work on the objects, the art itself, and we couldn’t work in the museum. So it was decided that we would work on the art objects that were outside. It kept us on the payroll, which was nice, and it’s really spruced things up around here. Before this, we cleaned the seasons statues and they look wonderful — and they were a lot easier than these lions.”
After Paul and Tiara are finished cleaning the kings of Morrie Moss Lane, Tiara will move on to spend some time working on pre-Columbian objects with conservators.
“She wants to be a real conservator,” says Paul, laughing. “I just play one on TV.”
Tiara smiles. “I’m just really interested in art conservation,” she says. “And interested in working in a museum setting — so this is a great opportunity for me to get experience in an actual museum.”
And outside of one.