Mural Expert Scott Haskins on Ortega Park Art Conservation

In order to preserve the murals in Ortega Park, it may be necessary to remove and store them during the upcoming construction. On Tuesday, July 6, Scott Haskins, of Fine Art Conservation Laboratories in Santa Barbara, met with Mark Alvarado, a former city employee and the community organizer behind One Community Bridge Project, the group responsible for the movement to preserve the 18 historic murals on and around the buildings in Ortega Park. This meeting, which came about in part as a result of several months’ worth of exchanges between Haskins and Justin Van Mullem, associate planner with the city’s Parks and Recreation Project Management team, represents the introduction of a new level of expertise in the conservation, transport, and storage of fine art murals into the at times heated public discussions over the fate of the public art in Ortega Park.

On Tuesday, just prior to his meeting with Alvarado, Haskins offered the following observations about the situation and what he and his company could potentially bring to the project. Haskins, as many followers of the Santa Barbara art scene will recall, was the lead conservator of the project that transported “A Portrait of Mexico Today” from the Bloomingdale estate in Pacific Palisades to the front steps of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, where it has been on permanent round-the-clock display to the public since 2002.

At this stage, Haskins said that he and Alvarado would only be talking about the three large works on the exterior walls of the park’s public restrooms. The artist, Manuel Unzueta, has resisted the idea of recreating his murals somewhere else. Once the disposition of those murals has been determined, it’s possible that the other 15 works may be included in the potential restoration project.