MoMA conservator explains restoration of Yves Klein's Blue Monochrome

Ellen Davis, a conservator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, demonstrates the complex restoration process for Yves Klein's 1961 painting Blue Monochrome. The work features Klein's signature International Klein Blue, and over time certain areas have suffered damage to both color and texture. Despite using the same pigments and materials as the artist, achieving uniform coloration is nearly impossible. Conservators resort to a technique akin to skin grafts in surgery: they extract original material from the back of the canvas and transplant it to the front, where it is visible to viewers. The video was published by Artribune.