TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund
The TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund (TMRF) 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.
How to apply for 2023
To be eligible to apply for the TMRF, TEFAF asks museums to personally visit at least one of the fairs in Maastricht or New York.
Museum professionals who attended one of the 2022 fairs have been invited by e-mail before October 1st to apply for 2023. Register below to stay informed about upcoming TEFAF fairs.
Please find the TMRF Terms, Conditions & Guidelines for 2023 here.
Should you have any questions please reach out to Coco Bannenberg via [email protected] or +31 20 303 64 02.
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The committee
The applications are reviewed and selected by an independent panel of experts - since 2021 the panel includes:
Rachel Kaminsky | Private art dealer from New York and former Head of Old Master Paintings at Christie’s. |
Dr. Kenson Kwok | Founder and former Director of the Asian Civilisations Museum and the Peranakan Museum in Singapore. |
Carol Pottasc | Senior restorer/conservator from the Mauritshuis, The Hague. |
Dr. Ashok Roy | Museum scientist and leading international expert on the materials and techniques of European Old Master Paintings. |
Sir Nicholas Penny | Art historian, author, former curator and former Director of the National Gallery, London. |
PREVIOUS RECIPIENTS (2012-2020)
2022 recipient: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH)
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 was 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 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT (AUB)
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.
EIGHT ANCIENT GLASS VESSELS
2021 RECIPIENT: AMGUEDDFA CYMRU - NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WALES
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.
MANET'S 'PORTRAIT DE MONSIEUR JULES DEJOUY', 1879
