Specialist in Conservation and Restoration Services in Singapore

Singapore, being the Art hub for South East Asia, needs qualified conservators to preserve its valuable art collections for future generations. Keeping this in mind, Benaka is set up in Singapore to provide professional conservation and restoration services.

Benaka Art Conservation  was incorporated in January, 2006 to provide the best service in the field of art conservation for the entire South East Asian region. The company has the potential to work not only with individuals, but also with governmental and institutional entities, to achieve results of the highest quality in a timely manner. Our past professional conservation experiences include many major projects that document a long line of successful and important undertakings for various agencies and institutions. We also have a very good relationship with other highly qualified professionals from different parts of the world with whom we may collaborate on complicated and special projects.

We provide the highest quality and professional conservation & restoration services for works of art on paper and oil paintings on canvas. Our services are extended to museums, universities, churches, temples and ancestral homes, private and state agencies, auction houses, and individuals with valued collections of art.

Definition for Conservation and Restoration

What is Conservation ?

The concept of conservation is to preserve and increase the life expectancy of an actively deteriorating artwork or a collection of artworks. It deals with deteriorating artworks to improve their conditions and maintaining their stability for a prolonged period. It has two main subdivisions.
They are;

1.Preventive Conservation
2.Curative conservation

As the name itself says, preventive conservation is to preserve the artwork from future risks whereas curative conservation is to treat the deteriorating artwork to improve its
strength and enhance the life expectancy.

What is Restoration ?

Restoration of a damaged artwork is concerned with enhancing its message or beauty. A conservator can do both conservation and restoration but a restore can do only restoration. A Conservator has limitations while doing restoration and bound by ethics of conservation.

Ethics of conservation
A conservator must adopt techniques and materials which are reversible and of conservation standard. Cleaning is the only technique which is irreversible. Conservator should not be over enthusiastic while doing restoration. At Benaka, we will follow the conservation ethics. Firstly, reversibility: our treatment methods are reversible and safe on art works, however cleaning is irreversible. We minimise intervention while treating an artwork. Our aim is to increase the life expectancy of an art work rather than beautification.  We use good quality conservation materials and the techniques adopted will be tested and in practice.

Conservation framing
We also provide professional conservation framing services, using acid free materials. If you already have a frame that you intend to continue using after the artwork has been treated, we will replace the acidic materials
with acid free conservation materials.


The need of conservation

Every art work has its own life span, once it loses its strength, it becomes very fragile. Paper and canvas, being very sensitive materials, require care and attention.

The words Conservation and Restoration are often used as synonyms, but in fact they are two different words with different meanings. The concept of conservation is to increase the life expectancy of any actively deteriorated art objects and the concept of restoration is to enhance the beauty of the art objects. Conservation has two important sub-divisions, they are, preventive conservation and curative conservation.

“Prevention is better than cure” is a famous quotation. Although it was meant for humans, it can be adopted for art works on paper and canvas as well. The reason is they are very much like us! They are extremely sensitive to environmental conditions such as high humidity, fluctuating temperature. They are susceptible to moisture, biological/micro biological attacks. They need our care, attention for their prolonged life.

We appreciate works of art and historic artifacts for their aesthetic appeal because they provoke our thinking or stir our imagination. Whether we go to a museum to look at old master paintings, or come across with a brilliant contemporary art work or perhaps a delicate manuscript dating back to centuries, we are content by looking at these objects.

However, in conservation and restoration the materials and techniques used for executing these artworks and how these materials contribute to the appearance of these objects and influence their permanence is crucially important. Conservation and restoration is primarily concerned with the study of those materials used in the production of art objects and with the analysis of their deterioration. Secondly, the very challenging aspect of treating the artworks to bring them back to their original state and preserve them for the posterity. Depending on the materials, the condition, and the state of preservation, we develop and implement methods of conservation and restoration for these artworks.