Vaquero, a brightly coloured, 16ft-tall sculpture of a cowboy on a bucking horse that has stood outside the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, for 25 years, is undergoing conservation at the McKay Lodge Fine Art Conservation Laboratory in Ohio. The piece was modelled in 1980 and cast in 1990 by the US sculptor Luis Jiménez, who used materials appropriated from the car industry, including resin-coated fibreglass and pigmented gel coatings. Moisture has corroded the internal steel armature and caused the gel coats to fail, resulting in rust stains, cracks and other damage. The piece is expected to go back on display in spring 2016.
