COLD, HEAT ENDANGERING ART IN AUSTRIAN MUSEUM

Professor Hermann Fillitz, a sprightly man of 63, walked briskly through the Kunsthistorisches Museum, one of the world’s great repositories of art, and declared, “We have got very serious problems with some of our paintings here. Luckily, they could be solved with more money.”

Fillitz, director of the museum, Austria’s national gallery, is worried that the lack of proper climate control is endangering some of the priceless paintings, particularly the Bruegels and the Durers, painted on panel.

Conservation difficulties with frail old works plague many European museums, and now those in Vienna are coming to light. Uncontrolled humidity and temperature in the Kunsthistorisches’ huge rooms have caused wood to crack and paint to fleck off.

On a recent day, when the museum was closed, Fillitz escorted visitors to the famous black-and-white scene, “Return of the Hunters,” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, to show them where the panel had been damaged and the paint was held precariously together by a rice-paper Band-Aid.

“It’s a magnificent painting, done in 1565,” Fillitz told the visitors. “We want to save it. And there’s no real reason we shouldn’t.”

The Bruegel is only one in a room full of works by the master artist of the Flemish Renaissance. Another of his works in a poor state of conservation is “The Return of the Herd.”

Other high-ceilinged rooms are filled with a profusion of works by Durer, Van Dyck, Rubens, Holbein, Cranach, Altdorfer, Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Caravaggio; here a Mantegna (“St. Sebastian”), there a Giorgione (“Three Philosophers”), as well as Raphael’s “Madonna Amid Greenery” and a remarkable series on the Spanish court by Velasquez.

Because of such treasures, the Vienna showplace is ranked in the upper tier of European museums.

Fillitz, who is also professor of art at Vienna University, accepted the position of director five years ago, realizing that he had his work cut out, given the parsimony of the Austrian federal treasury.

The museum, Fillitz explained, a massive structure built by the Hapsburg dynasty in the late 19th Century, suffered damage during World War II. Funds, he says, have never been available to restore it to proper running order.

“The windows aren’t sealed and we get snow in the winters, rain in the spring, dust in the summer,” Fillitz complained. “The roof windows too are leaky and dark. They were restored after the war and are not good quality.”

Further, according to the director, the museum had its own system of air ventilation, but postwar experts shut it down and installed a form of climate conditioning that has never worked properly.

“So it’s the environment that we can’t control now,” Fillitz said. “And it is the humidity that is damaging these great works of art.

“I’d only need what they give the Vienna Opera in one month,” he said. “We could start work tomorrow in getting this place back into shape.”

The Austrian government is liberal with funds for music, supplying the Vienna State Opera with a huge subsidy during the season.

“Music has the traditional place in Viennese culture,” Fillitz said. “There’s never enough money for museums. Austria is not like France.”

The art historian explained that many Old Masters whose works are in the museum liked to paint on wood because it gave a different tone to their colors than canvas. But the panels were more susceptible to atmospheric damage, expanding and contracting with changes of temperature and humidity.

Fillitz said that paintings on wood by Bruegel, Titian, Rembrandt and Rubens are showing signs of deterioration that could be halted.

Currently, two Durers are being repaired in the museum’s workshop, and the director took his visitors to show how the panel--on which Rubens painted a rare landscape--had separated.

What particularly frustrates Fillitz is that the damage is containable. A properly sealed building with modern air conditioning would stop the damage, he said. Those paintings already damaged could be repaired by experts.

Fillitz has been drumming up support among Austrian politicians to appropriate $25 million over the next five years to provide the proper maintenance and staffing.

The Austrian government has scheduled a meeting among senior ministers later this month, which, Fillitz hopes, will finally result in a proper allotment of funds to the poor relation among Vienna’s treasures, the art museum.