Unconventional art restoration

Graffiti is not the sort of thing you would think about preserving. But what if that graffiti was from a historical moment in time that many current college students were not alive to see?

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and Rice University’s Baker Institute has been home to a section of the Berlin Wall since 2000. Over the years the original graffiti on Rice’s Berlin Wall monument has faded. Art conservators are periodically hired to restore the original messages from the peaceful reunification of Germany.

Standing 14 feet high and weighing over two tons, the steel-reinforced concrete slab was donated to Rice by Browning-Ferris Industries of Houston. The monument was removed from the section that separated West Berlin’s Frohnau District from the East German district of Oranienburg.