An assignment for a contemporary art history class put me inside the new Dalí museum last year. I was there to critique the museum’s new digs, but I directed my focus on something else. As I kept getting too close to “The Hallucinogenic Toreador,” the security guard came over and asked me to step away. He told me I was going to trigger the alarm system. He didn’t know that it wasn’t the famous painting’s double imagery capturing my attention, but the edge where the canvas meets the frame.
My dad did that.
Glenn Stevenson never studied for an MFA in art restoration. In high school he cut mats by hand for photography students. When he was 20, my parents got pregnant with me and he needed a job. He applied at the frame shop closest to my parents’ house and became one of the most sought-after framers in the area over the next 20 years. When I’d come with him to work in the summer, his days were packed with consultations with local artists.
A unique opportunity arose around 10 years ago, when he was a custom framer at Florida Frames. The Dalí Museum was looking to reframe Dalí’s masterworks. My dad’s boss asked if he was interested in helping.
“I told him hell yeah,” he said. “I know there is no other objects of more value in the county, or even the state, than these paintings.” The museum’s assistant curator Dirk Armstrong and Dad worked late into the night. They took apart the old frames and applied new ones. Dad was shocked by the craftsmanship of the original strainer frames. “To build a perfect square is nearly impossible,” he said. “It’s hard to do with a small frame but these were huge and braced perfectly.”
Floater frames were used, which are essentially two separate frames that support the artwork without making direct contact with the painting.
“When Dirk and I did it, it wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “There were only a few people standing around as we worked.”
This week, the Dalí museum is publicly restoring four of those eight pieces (read more information about the Dalí Stripped Bare public restoration in Megan Voeller’s story). The frames Dad put on are being taken off to allow for cleaning. Eight conservators will clean each canvas. And once again, Dad is taking part in the process as an art handler alongside Dirk Armstrong. But this time, the restoration is open to the public and a short documentary is being made.
“The most compelling thing about artwork is the story,” he said. “Now the museum sees that this is a really good story.”
For Dad, Dalí wasn’t just a frame job. Late at night, after he’d framed other people’s artwork, he’d paint his own canvases on the back porch. Dalí was one of his favorite artists. The first place he drove after getting his license was to the Dalí museum in St. Petersburg.
“I bought a sticker that was a relief of his mustache and put it on the back of my Buick Skylark,” he said. “I felt like the coolest dude in the world because I knew who Dalí was.”
I can relate. Sometimes I feel like the coolest chick in the world because I know the man who framed Dalí.
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2012.