Conserving one of the oldest photographs in MoMAs collection | CONSERVATION STORIES

Tarnish is slowly engulfing one of the oldest objects in MoMA’s collection, a daguerreotype from 1842 capturing two separate images—the Arch of Septimius Severus and Capitoline Lion in the Roman Forum. Within two years of the invention of photography, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, a French aristocrat, assembled a team to travel the Mediterranean and make over a thousand images of the region’s cities, people, and ruins. These early daguerreotypes projected images directly onto silver plates, like a mi