Charles Henkel

Charles Henkel was the Metropolitan Museum of Art's helper and watchman who testified in the 1883 libel trial about the re-restoration of its Cypriot statues. According to The Art Amateur's report, he worked at the museum's Fourteenth Street premises from spring to autumn 1873, helping to unpack the first instalment of the Luigi Palma di Cesnola collection, and was discharged for want of the English needed to explain the collection to visitors. He returned in spring 1874 as helper, watchman and attendant and stayed until February 1882¹.

In his account, the pieces had arrived boxed together and unmarked. A Mr. North first glued and plastered them, and Theodore Gehlen took charge under Cesnola, with Henkel as helper. At the Central Park building Henkel had charge of unpacking. He said that statues broken in transit were soaked in a tank on Cesnola's order, and that Cesnola's newly employed restorers, Charles Balliard and Vallosio, then re-restored them with hammer, chisel, wire brush and wash. Balliard, he said, made a new leg for a Hercules and put the hand and patera on a priest. Henkel named five members of the board of directors, Prime, Hoe, Bryant, Johnstone and Dodge, as having witnessed similar work¹.

He described his own part as trying, with Dickson B. Alley and Lennon, to match a sphinx's head that did not fit, and, on a Sunday after the controversy began, helping Balliard break plaster noses and ears off statues on exhibition. He also identified a photograph of the repairing room showing himself, Balliard and Vallosio¹. The magazine's editorial supplement says that the missing leaf of a photograph album was found, according to Henkel, in Cesnola's waste-basket. In Alley's cross-examination, Henkel came down with the waste basket, found the torn photographs, told Alley, and was told to keep them^1,2.

The magazine reported that Alley and Henkel were discharged for telling Alexander D. Savage of the restorations. None of Henkel, Alley or Lennon was called before the museum's investigating committee³.