The Pasteur Museum has established a partnership with Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne for the restoration of 14 works in its collections in the workshops of the Centre Malher in central Paris.

A collection review during the building work

As work is carried out on the historical building, the museum team is taking the opportunity to undertake an extensive review of its collections. Some works that have never been on display to the public or have simply suffered with the passage of time are now being given a new lease of life before being returned to the exhibition areas or the museum's storage facility.

The museum is developing new partnerships, driven by a firm belief that preserving the Institut Pasteur's scientific and historical heritage requires a network of experts. It is also keen to encourage future professionals in cultural restoration, and is working with Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and its students in heritage conservation and restoration.

An innovative and mutually beneficial partnership

A total of 14 works from the museum's collections, including 13 easel paintings and a watercolor, were taken to the Centre Malher, in central Paris, where the Master's in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Objects is based. In this workshop, surrounded by the lights and the characteristic smells of solvents and resins, third- and fourth-year university students specializing in paintings worked on the pieces, supervised by Aurélie Nicolaus, a restorer and coordinator of the painting specialism within the Master's course.

This collaboration between a museum and a university offering programs in art restoration represents a great opportunity for both parties.

For the museum, the partnership is a means of restoring a significant number of artworks in supervised, professional conditions, at a time when the collections cannot be exhibited to the public. It is also an opportunity to improve the scientific documentation surrounding each work – the detailed condition reports and assessments produced by the students will form a valuable archive of information about the collections for decades to come. Finally, the partnership reflects the museum's commitment to developing links with the academic community and fostering connections with expert networks in heritage conservation and restoration.

For the students, working on pieces belonging to an institutional collection is a chance to test their knowledge against the requirements of a heritage institution and develop professional links that could prove extremely useful as they start out in the conservation/restoration profession.

This partnership perfectly illustrates the potential for effective collaboration between university programs and heritage institutions: the university provides expertise, supervision and fully equipped studios, while the museum brings its collections, history and real-life heritage promotion needs.

From observation to restoration: a painstaking process

The students' work involved two main stages. First, each piece was observed closely and extensive research was performed so that the students could establish a detailed condition report and a precise assessment of the state of preservation. This stage is a crucial part of the restoration process, enabling the restorer to understand the nature of the materials, identify any damage and analyze the causes before proposing any treatment.

Following this initial phase, the students' proposals for restoring the pieces based on their initial assessment were discussed, approved and implemented under the watchful eye of Aurélie Nicolaus. Each process – cleaning, consolidating, lining, filling and inpainting – was carried out with care and reversibility, two key principles of the profession.

Videos of three restorations

To illustrate just how fascinating and complex this work is, the museum has produced videos showing three restorations in detail.

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If you are interested in the latest museum news, have any questions or are in possession of any technical or scientific objects that can provide clues to the past activities of the Institut Pasteur's laboratories, feel free to contact the museum team at musee@pasteur.fr  and follow us on social media (LinkedIn and Instagram).