TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund
The TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund was established in 2012 in order to support and promote the professional restoration and related scholarly research of significant museum artworks. Championing art in all its forms, applications for its grants are open to museums from all over the world and artworks from any age.
Each year, a maximum of €50.000 will be allocated to projects. The Committee of independent experts usually selects two winners to receive each € 25,000 to support their restoration project.
THE COMMITTEE
HOW TO APPLY
As soon as the 2023 application opens later this year, relevant information will be published on this page and shared via TEFAF’s Museum mailing.
To apply, it is required to visit one of the TEFAF Fairs in 2022. Registering your attendance takes place by scanning a QR-code at the TMRF presentation at the fairs. As soon as the 2023 application opens, you will receive the application form by e-mail.
Please find the Guidelines and Terms & Conditions for 2022 here.
*In exceptional circumstances, a fair visit can be waived as a mandatory obligation.
10-year Anniversary and 2022 recipient
The TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund was founded to mark the 25th TEFAF Maastricht anniversary in 2012. Since then, over 20 museum projects have been supported already, this gives us a good reason to celebrate 10 years of museum support in 2022.
This year, TEFAF is pleased to announce that The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) is the first recipient of the TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund for 2022.
The MFAH is the largest cultural institution in the southwest region of the United States with an encyclopedic collection of nearly 70,000 objects dating from antiquity to the present. With TEFAF’s funding, the MFAH will conserve, using culturally appropriate methods, the Montefiore Mainz Mahzor (circa 1310–20), a festival prayer book and one of the rare Hebrew “illuminated manuscripts”—hand-written books with painted decorations—still in existence.
To celebrate the 10-year TMRF Anniversary, the book will be on view at TEFAF New York from May 6 through 10, 2022. MFAH conservation efforts will begin later this year.
Hidde van Seggelen, Chairman of TEFAF commented, “Supporting the wider art community is, and always has been, an integral part of TEFAF’s mission. The TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund is one way that the foundation demonstrates its ongoing dedication to cultural heritage. We are delighted and honored to be working with the MFAH on such a wonderful project this year. We are immensely proud to present this particular work—the unique European cross-cultural exchange an object like this affords in modern times is extraordinary.”
Montefiore Mainz Mahzor manuscript
2021 recipient: The British Museum and the restoration of ancient Artefact damaged in 2020 Beirut port explosion
The British Museum and TEFAF announced an important collaboration to restore eight ancient glass vessels which were severely damaged in the Beirut port explosion in Lebanon on 4 August 2020.
The vessels, from the Roman and early Islamic periods, were on display in the Archaeological Museum at the American University of Beirut (AUB) when the explosion took place. The case they were in blew over from the force of the blast, shattering the glass objects. This new collaboration will see hundreds of the glass fragments painstakingly pieced back together and restored at the conservation laboratories at the British Museum in London.
The AUB Archaeological Museum lay 3.2 km from the port explosion, and sustained heavy damage to its windows and doors. The case the vessels were displayed in contained 72 Roman, Byzantine and Islamic period glass vessels. Of these, only eight are safe to travel to the British Museum, which has the facilities and expertise to restore and conserve these items. The eight vessels arrived at the British Museum in February, 2022.
The British Museum has successfully organized the next steps on the Beirut Glass Project since the support from The European Art Foundation (TEFAF) was announced.
The team at the Archaeological Museum at the American University in Beirut (AUB) carefully packed the eight glass vessels in preparation for their journey to London. The vessels arrived safely at the British Museum in December 2021, marking a key moment in the project.
The Museum has appointed Claire Cuyaubère as the Project Conservator in December 2021. Claire was part of the team assessing the damage to the glass vessels following the Beirut explosion and subsequently carried out puzzle-work on the vessels at the AUB in preparation for conservation. Conservation of the vessels will be carried out over the coming months, and is anticipated to be complete by summer 2022.
The Beirut Glass Project
2021 recipient: Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales to Restore Priceless Manet
TEFAF is pleased to announce Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, is to receive €20,000, as the second recipient of this year’s TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund, an annual grant created in support of the international art community’s vital work to preserve artistic and cultural heritage.
With TEFAF’s funding, National Museum Wales will restore Édouard Manet’s (1832-1883) Portrait de Monsieur Jules Dejouy, 1879, a piece the museum attained in 2019 after more than ninety years in the same private family collection. Jules Dejouy (1815-1894) was not only Manet’s older 2 cousin, but also an important figure in the artists life.
Conservation will start late March 2022 and will take about three months. National Museum of Wales hopes to present the conserved Manet portrait in the summer of 2022.