Hi Britney

What you are looking for is Damar Varnish.  Damar is a crystalized resin
that is disolved into turpentine, usually gum turps not odorless thinner.
It is used as an isolating layer and protective coat for oil paintings.
It's use allows you to remove the varnish when it gets old and dirty without
removig the painting.  If you paint over damar, which you can do, you can
remove your overpainting when you remove the varnish.  It is hard to say why
they recommended this without seeing the paintings, but a protective coat of
somesort is probably a good idea.  There are wax varnishes on the market
that are beautifully flat repel dust.  I am not certain, and maybe someone
here can enlighten me, but I believe most paintings in art museums have some
sort of wax on them.  As far as coating them with odorless, I'll bet they
are recommending this as a way to clean the paintings.  I would consult with
a reputable painting restorer before you do anything.  One can only make
assumptions about how the paintings were made in the first place.  If the
artist used a medium in the paint that is soluable in thinner, you'ld have a
real mess on yoiur hands.  Good Luck!
Frank  <www.frankgregory.com>


At 12:17 PM 02/12/2001 -0500, Britney wrote:
>I have a question.  I'm not much of an art person so any info will be
>helpful. We are in the middle of a diorama renovation.  We had a company
>come out, view the dioramas and give us recommendations on new exhibit
>designs.  One of their recommendations was to use "De Mar Varnish (matte)
>to coat our oil painting murals so that we can make touch ups on it without
>damaging the original mural.  Another suggestion they had was to use an
>odorless paint thinner over the murals.  Has anyone used these materials or
>know anything about this product specifically.
>
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