Five years and $6m later, restoration at New York's Nevelson Chapel is nearing completion

"There was a separate HVAC system for the Nevelson Chapel, but it was tied to the larger building's HVAC, so when one was shut off, the other shut off too. This led to the chapel's relative humidity rising to levels of close to 90%. "It caused some of the paint to peel in this extreme way," Singer tells The Art Newspaper."

"Works of art, even those seen as divinely inspired, sometimes suffer embarrassing indignities. They can be broken and punctured, their colours can fade. They can suffer water damage-like the Rothko Chapel in Houston, battered last year by Hurricane Beryl, which damaged the building's roof and the paintings inside. Add to this list paint peeling off a series of sculptures in New York by the late artist Louise Nevelson (1899-1988)."

Works of art can suffer physical and environmental damage including breakage, puncturing, fading colours, and water damage. In 2020, paint peeled off a series of sculptures by Louise Nevelson in the Nevelson Chapel after the chapel's HVAC, tied to the Citigroup Center system, was shut down during the Covid-19 lockdown. Absence of building occupants led Citigroup to shut its HVAC, causing chapel relative humidity to approach 90 percent and producing extreme paint loss that resembled chemical stripping. The damage persisted for at least a week or two before discovery. Restoration required five years and millions of dollars and is now largely complete.

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