Antique Restoration Shop on Biscayne: Art Conservators Lab

The conservator who cleaned a Frank Stella painted on raw canvas and stabilized WPA murals for Key West City Hall takes private clients by appointment in Edgewater. Art Conservators Lab, at 2001 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, FL 33137, is an antique restoration shop for paintings, works on paper, antique frames and sculpture.

Viviana Dominguez is the senior and chief conservator, and a Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation. Her bio counts more than 38 years in fine art and historic preservation, covering easel paintings, sculpture, murals and architectural decoration. She won a 2014 Los Angeles Conservancy award for conserving murals at Bob Hope Veterans Hall and a 2017 Florida Trust for Historic Preservation award for saving the plaster walls of the George Adderley House.

She is also a member of the National Heritage Responders, the AIC team that helps cultural institutions after disasters, and her bio cites preventive conservation workshops commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution after hurricanes Irma and Maria. The team page introduces Cristina Solari, who holds a diploma in paintings conservation from Palazzo Spinelli in Florence. The company describes itself as bringing conservators together with architects and engineers, which is why it takes on buildings as well as canvases.

For a private owner, the painting services are the main draw. The lab treats oil, acrylic and tempera on canvas, panel and even glass, and lists chemical analysis of paint components for harder cases. A typical request is a family portrait whose varnish has turned yellow-brown, which the conservator tests and reduces solvent by solvent, then fills losses and inpaints so the repair stays distinguishable under ultraviolet light.

Works on paper get their own category: etchings, watercolors, drawings and Chinese scrolls. The fine art projects page shows the cleaning, mending and flattening of posters by the Austrian designer Julius Klinger for an exhibition at the Wolfsonian–FIU in Miami Beach, which ran from October 2017 to April 2018. Antique frames are on the list as well, and one project restored a late 1800s barn painting together with its 24k gold frame for the Cumberland Island National Seashore collection.

The lab also writes the paperwork that collectors and insurers ask for. Condition surveys and reports, conservation treatment proposals, art installation and ongoing maintenance of collections are all listed services. If you inherited a group of paintings, a condition survey before you sell, insure or ship them is a cheaper first step than a full treatment, and it tells you which pieces are worth spending on.

The project list shows the range. After the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the lab worked on the Smithsonian Institution Haiti Cultural Recovery Project, an eighteen-month effort that pulled thousands of paintings from collapsed museums and galleries in Port-au-Prince. At the Lyndon B. Johnson Texas White House, it conserved the termite-damaged wallpapers that Lady Bird Johnson chose, a job finished in 2013, including tracing the original design in the Carnation Room.

Closer to home, the lab moved the William Hoffman WPA murals from the old Key West High School building, conserved them and saw them installed at Key West International Airport. It stabilized terracotta and faded glazing on the 1926–27 Sarasota County Courthouse, polished an outdoor Ernest Trova sculpture in a three-day job with two conservators, and removed mold from stone sculpture by Boaz Vaadia. A 16th-century Flemish silk and wool tapestry also appears on the antiquities page.

Start with the Request a Quote form on the homepage, which takes your name, email, phone, an uploaded image and a message. Photograph the front in daylight, the back of the canvas and any label or stamp on the stretcher, and say whether the piece has been restored before. The studio then books an appointment; there are no published walk-in hours, so do not show up on Biscayne Boulevard with a painting under your arm.

One honest note: this is a conservation lab trained on museum standards, so it is not the place for a quick reframe or a five-minute touch-up of a decorative print. Use it for a painting with real artistic, family or market value, a frame with original gilding, or works damaged by flooding, which the Collections Recovery page addresses. For broken porcelain figurines, Doctor Arts near Bird Road is the better fit.

The studio sits on Biscayne Boulevard in Edgewater, the residential strip of towers between downtown and the Design District, close to the NE 20th Street intersection. Metrobus routes on Biscayne stop nearby, and the Brightline and Metromover stations downtown are a short ride south. Drivers should plan for metered street parking or a nearby garage, and keep a flat painting upright and padded in the back seat.

After the appointment, walk east to Margaret Pace Park, the bayfront green with views across Biscayne Bay toward Miami Beach and the Venetian Causeway. Heading south along the boulevard brings you to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, whose Knight Concert Hall and Ziff Ballet Opera House face each other across Biscayne Boulevard. A loop from the studio to the park and the Arsht Center makes an easy hour on foot.

Address: Art Conservators Lab, at 2001 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, FL 33137, Edgewater. Email: art.conservation.services@gmail.com. Quotes: online form with an image upload. The company also runs a second studio in Naples on the Gulf Coast. Services: paintings, works on paper, antique frames, sculpture, murals, historic interiors, condition reports and disaster recovery of collections.

Best for: oil portraits with yellowed varnish, torn canvases, foxed watercolors and Chinese scrolls, original gilded frames and outdoor sculpture that needs maintenance. Bring photographs of the front and back, any provenance or earlier restoration notes, and the insured value if a report is needed. Ask the Karpo APP for a bayfront lunch in Edgewater or the fastest route to the Arsht Center after your visit.