Présentation auteur.e.s

[[van de Vall, Renée]] [[Saaze, Vivian van de]]

Résumé

Idées principales

Lien avec la thèse

Cette publication en libre accès rassemble les dernières recherches sur la dynamique complexe de la conservation de l’art contemporain. L’ouvrage vise à relier la recherche théorique aux pratiques quotidiennes des conservateur·rices et, inversement, à permettre aux défis pratiques d’éclairer la recherche académique. Le livre se positionne comme un dialogue interdisciplinaire entre les professionnel·le·s de la conservation et les chercheur·se·s universitaires. L’identité et l’authenticité de l’œuvre d’art contemporain constituent un axe majeur de réflexion. Le livre examine les défis posés par la nature souvent éphémère, conceptuelle ou technologique de l’art contemporain, qui remet en question les notions traditionnelles de pérennité et d’authenticité. Cette problématique s’accompagne d’une redéfinition des rôles professionnels, notamment celui du conservateur·rice qui doit adapter ses compétences face à des œuvres non-traditionnelles, tout en naviguant dans un écosystème complexe impliquant artistes, commissaires d’exposition et successions d’artistes. Enfin, l’ouvrage souligne l’importance cruciale de la documentation et de la prise de décision collaborative dans ce contexte évolutif. Les stratégies d’enregistrement et de préservation doivent parfois impliquer le public dans l’interprétation des œuvres, tandis que le partage des connaissances devient essentiel. Le caractère open access du livre témoigne de cette volonté de démocratiser l’accès aux réflexions sur la conservation de l’art contemporain, reconnaissant ainsi la nécessité d’une approche collective pour assurer la pérennité de l’art du XXIe siècle.

Cet ouvrage collectif offre un cadre théorique particulièrement pertinent pour ma thèse en abordant directement les défis posés par les formes d’art éphémères et conceptuelles. L’exposition conçue comme medium artistique s’inscrit pleinement dans cette catégorie d’œuvres contemporaines qui remettent en question les paradigmes traditionnels de conservation, soulevant des interrogations fondamentales sur l’identité et l’authenticité de l’objet artistique. Aussi, l’approche interdisciplinaire prônée par l’ouvrage et sa réflexion sur l’évolution des rôles professionnels, et leurs rapports à la recherche, font écho à ma façon de concevoir mon travail. Cet ouvrage constitue une solide base pour appuyer mes arguments mais aussi les questionner.

Citations importées le 2026-01-19 7:54 pm

[!quote|#aaaaaa] Note In the Netherlands, the scandal around the restoration of Barnett Newman’s Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III and a discussion about the remaking of a Sol LeWitt Wall Drawing in the Kröller-Müller Museum served as important motivations for launching the ModernArt: Who Cares?research project (Hummelen and Sillé 1999, p. 14). As part of this project, a theoretical and a practical working group investigated ten non-traditional works of art, such as CittàIrreale by Mario Merz, Gismo by Jean Tinguely and Still Life of Watermelons by Piero Gilardi. Modern Art: Who Cares? was not the only project, nor the first one, to address the difficulties of modern and contemporary art conservation (p. 1)

[!quote|#aaaaaa] Note Tate’s conference From Marble to Chocolate (1995), the Getty ConservationInstitute’s conference Mortality Immortality (1998) and the Variable Media Initia-tive’s conference Preserving the Immaterial (2001). Based on these initiatives, an international research field emerged, driven initiallyby a small group of dedicated researchers mainly affiliated with museums, heritageinstitutions, conservation studios, institutes for professional education and conser-vation curricula of universities of applied sciences. This group consisted largely of a community of practice (Aminand Roberts 2008) of conservation professionals,while involving fairly few academic scholars. Research was case-oriented, with a focus on individual artworks posing challenges as to their long-term conservation;researchers met in projects, working groups and conferences to exchangeapproaches, insights, and results. More general research work aimed at the development of models for registration, documentation, and decision-making.Increasingly, however, more academic researchers and universities becameinvolved as well. This is reflected for instance by the growing number of PhD dissertations devoted to challenges in the conservation of contemporary art, but also by more sustained research collaborations between academic and professional institutions. This development was facilitated by the establishment of national and international research projects initiated by consortia comprising both museums and universities (Laurenson et al. 2022). This volume is a result of one such project, theMarieSkłodowska-CurieInnovative Training Network New Approachesin theConservation of Contemporary Art (NACCA). (p. 2)

[!quote|#aaaaaa] Note van Saaze 2013) (p. 2)

[!quote|#aaaaaa] Note Schatzki(2001 (p. 2)

It investigates whether and how theoretical findings and insights can be translated into the daily work practices of conservators in the field, and, vice versa, whether and how the problems and dilemmas encountered in conservation practicefind their way into broader research questions and projects. The volume is structuredaround five topics: (1) Theorizing conservation as a reflective practice; (2) The identity of the art object; (3) Professional roles and identities: Conservators, curatorsand artists; (4) Documentation and decision-making in theory and practice; and(5) The role of research in the art museum (p. 3)

As explained above, it is vital to examine actual conservation practices as a strategic research site for the identification of problems, strategies and solutions incontemporary art conservation. It is productive to conceive of conservation professionals as “experienced pioneers”(Mesman 2008), active in a scarcely mappedfield requiring new kinds of decisions and interventions. (p. 3)

In the past twenty years, important contributions have been made to the development of conservation theory and ethics, including the formulation of practical protocols for modern and contemporary works of art. Many of these contributionsemphasize the open, contextual and evolving nature of contemporary artworks and the situated character of conservation-ethical deliberation and decision-making,suggesting that it is in and through reflection on the day-to-day routines, thedifficulties and dilemmas encountered on the work floor and the new directionstried out to solve problems, that adequate and shared approaches will eventually emerge. This raises the need for a deeper understanding of how to theorize practicesand in particular of how to account for the interdependency of conservation’s materiality and its reflexivity. (p. 3)

In a critical discussion with contributions inspired by Actor-Network Theory(Yaneva 2003; van Saaze 2013), Theodor Schatzki provides both a precise definitionof what practices are and a fine-grained and differentiated account of the variousways material entities play a role in practices and contribute to social change. Here,Schatzki defines practices as activities “organised by rules, pools of understanding, and teleoaffective structures”, thereby taking material entities (unlike ANT) not aspart of practices but as intimately connected to them (p. 3)

account as “components of material arrangements, constituting settingsin which practices proceed.” Schatzki distinguishes five types of relation betweenpractices and material arrangements: causality, prefiguration, constitution, anchor-ing/institution and intelligibility (p. 4)

conservation of contemporary artworks may be fruitfully understood in terms of posthumanist care ethics. (p. 4)

[!quote|#aaaaaa] Note ones. Agamechanger in the discussion about what made contemporary art different was PipLaurenson’s (2006) paper “Authenticity, Change and Lossin the Conservation of Time-Based Media Installations.” Using Nelson Goodman’s distinctions betweenautographic and allographic arts and between one-stage and two-stage arts,Laurenson proposed to think differently about the ontology of time-based media installations and installations in general: not primarily as a kind of object, like a sculpture, but more like a performed event, such as a theatre play or music. Rather than being tied to an authentic material entity which should be preserved in itsoriginal state, she defined installations by instructions stipulating their (p. 4)

[!quote|#aaaaaa] Note “work-defining properties”, and they can therefore be re-executed time and again, inthe same way as theatre plays and symphonies are being re-performed according to their scripts or scores, without losing their identity. Laurenson’s proposal has been widely used, amended and criticized (e.g., Fiske 2009; Caianiello 2013; Phillips2015; van de Vall 2015, 2022; Hölling 2017), and it alsostrongly resonates in thecontributions to this part. (p. 5)

She uses TristanGarcia’s “flat ontology” as a frame to rethink these notions, which are constitutive for traditional museum collection and conservation practices, in terms of intensitiesof presence. In those terms, the present is a maximum of possible presence, the past is relatively present and the future is the maximum of absence. Rather than considering a presently disintegrated work of art (her example is Two Cones by Naum Gabo) as a total loss for an imagined but actually absent future (compared with itsinitial yet past state), the museum should accept its current presence together with itspast yet still relatively present initial state and in combination with all other objects—replicas, re-interpretations—as a complex artwork family (p. 5)

The care for and management of contemporary art as future European cultural heritage are in need of a fundamental rethinking of traditional professional expertiseand roles. The traditional distinction between the professional roles of conservators,responsible for the material integrity and condition of artworks, and curators, responsible for the intellectual care for artworks, tends to become less relevant:conservators have to engage with art-historical and art-theoretical questions andcurators with the future condition of the work. Both types of professionals need to be able to connect different kinds of scientific and technical expertise and relateconservation issues to the broader fields of art management, care and cultural policy.Moreover, there is an increasing awareness that museums need to adapt their infrastructures and go outside their institutions to collaborate withstakeholders— such as artists and their estates; technicians, programmers, and the public; andexternal experts—to care for works of art (Laurenson and Van Saaze 2014; van deLeemput and van Lente 2022; Goldie-Scot 2023). The challenge for conservators thus shifts from caring for the material artwork to maintaining the ecologies that support the perpetuation of the artwork. The contributions in this section investigate the challenges and opportunities of shifting boundaries between conservators, cura-tors, artists and the broader “network of care” (Dekker 2018 (p. 6)

about works of art as archives, an archive being “not only a physical repository of documents, files and leftovers, but also an intangible, non-physical realm of tacit knowledge and memory in an ever-enduring state of organization and expansion,” a dynamic entity from which artworks are actualized and to which they contribute(Hölling 2017, p. 260).If Hölling’s proposal may be radical, the recognition that documentation constitutes the core of the identity of works of contemporary art is widespread (p. 8)

What isemphasized in theory, however, is not always easy to implement in practice, due to a lack of institutional resources, appropriate infrastructures, adequate procedures andworking routines. The contributions of this section all scrutinize recent practices developed by museums and other institutions that have experimented with the organization of their collections and archives, with the engagement of networks of collaborators and audiences, and with sharing experience and knowledge within and across institutions. The final chapter demonstrates how the changed understandingof the identity of the work has not only led to a changed understanding of the role of documentation, but also of conservation decision-making, necessitating a revision of the well-known SBMK Decision-Making Model Contemporary Art.3 (p. 8)

Dušan Barok addresses the changing conditions for sharing knowledge and documentation across institutions. By investigating why the contributions to theonce widely used INCCA database for conservation documentation decreased dramatically after 2011, he is able to sort out some of the main factors responsible for both its success and its decline. Part of the explanation lies in the tabular structure of the database and the availability of metadata only where information needs to remain confidential. There were also external developments, however, that made an interinstitutional, over-all reference catalogue less relevant, such as diversification of thefield into specializations, changing EU funding policies, and a shift in orientation of dissemination formats, from distributing data among practitioner-researchers towards more narrative-based scholarly research published in academic journals. (p. 8)

Wielocha rephrases Hölling’s con-cept of the artwork as an archive by referring to the artwork as an“anarchive”,adding the freedom to adjust its organization according to the needs of a particular artwork (p. 9)

2019 revision of the SBMK Decision-Making Model Con-temporary Art (1999) (p. 9)

Methodologically, this research in, of and with museumsranges from interviews to auto-ethnography, embedded research, participant obser-vation and “immersed participation”, to use a term of Puig de la Bellacasa (2017). Besides an interest in conducting and reflecting on research in the museum, thecontributors to this section share an understanding of research as a potential avenue for revisiting existing care practices and forging institutional change. In the first contributionto this section, Louise Lawson, Duncan Harvey, Ana Ribeiro and Hélia Marçal trace the research process and development of Tate’s Strategy for the Documentation and Conservationof Performance Art. After discussing the history of how since 2005 performance art has entered museum collections, they discuss the collaborative work processes in Tate’s Conservation Department and analyse the documentation and conservation of performance-basedart as knowledge-making activities. The aim of the chapter istwofold: first it explores the intertwinement of theory and practice in the development of theStrategy, and, second, it demonstrates how the acquisition and display of performance-based art in the museum also prompts revision of conservation pro-cesses and procedures. (p. 10)

If Caitlin Spangler-Bickell also discusses the relations between conservation anddisplay practices, her investigations focus on the importance of the exhibition period for collection care. Because conservators need to turn their skills and energy to preparations for the next exhibition soon after completing work on an installation,Spangler-Bickell puts forward that the exhibition period is an underrepresentedbiographical phase in conservation—an especially urgent deficiency for works that are fully “activated” only when on display. She therefore argues for expanding the collections care remit to integrate the “front-of-house” with behind-the-scenes conservation practice by making use of “ethnography for conservation” duringtheexhibition life phase. A participant observation study in the gallery space of the interactive exhibition Take Me (I’m Yours) at Pirelli Hangar Bicocca illustrates howthis methodology may improve practices of collection care (p. 10)

[!quote|#aaaaaa] Note ReferencesAdam B (1998) Timescapes of modernity: The environment and invisible hazards. Routledge,London Adam B (2008) Of timescapes, futurescapes, and timeprints. Paper presented at LüneburgUniversity, 17June 2008. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=57c02886201ab5de160be7461638b9c39cb66781. Accessed 29 Jan 2023 Amin A, Roberts J (2008) Knowing in action: beyond communities of practice. Res Policy 37(2): 353–369Caianiello T (2013) Materializing the Ephemeral. The preservation and presentation of media art installations. In: Buschmann R, Caianiello T (eds) Medienkunst Installationen Erhaltung undPräsentation/Media art installations preservation and presentation. Dieter Reimer Verlag, Berlin& Stiftung imai, Düsseldorf, pp 207–229Dekker A(2018) Collecting and conserving net art. Moving beyond conventional methods.Routledge, London and New York (p. 11)

[!quote|#aaaaaa] Note Fiske T (2009) White walls: installations, absence, iteration and difference. In: Richmond A, Bracker A (eds) Conservation: principles, dilemmas and uncomfortable truths. ButterworthHeinemann, Amsterdam, pp 229–240Goldie-Scot I (forthcoming 2023) An experimental acquisition: Ralph Lemon’s Scaffold Room(2014) at the Walker. In Hölling HB, Pelta Feldman J, Magnin E (eds) Performance: the ethicsand the politics of conservation and care. Vol. 1. RoutledgeHölling HB (2017) Paik’s virtual archive. Time, change, and materiality in media art. University of California Press, OaklandHummelen Y, Sillé D (eds) (1999) Modern art: who cares? The foundation for the conservation of modern art and The Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, Amsterdam Laurenson P (2006) Authenticity, Change and Loss in the Conservation of Time-Based Media Installations, Tate Papers, 6 (Autumn 2006). https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/06/ authenticity-change-and-loss-conservation-of-time-based-media-installations Laurenson P (2016) Practice as research: Unfolding the objects of contemporary art conservation. Inaugural lecture delivered at Maastricht University, 18 March 2016. Available via YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEZzsg3OzJgLaurenson P, van Saaze V (2014) Collecting performance-based art: new challenges and shifting perspectives. In: Remes O, MacCulloch L, Leino M (eds) Performativity in the gallery: staginginteractive encounters. Peter Lang, Oxford, pp 27–41Laurenson P, van Saaze V, van de Vall R (2022) Bridging the gaps between theory and practice through cross-institutional collaboration in the conservation of contemporary art. In:Swinnen A, Kluveld A, van de Vall R (eds) Engaged humanities: rethinking art, culture, andpublic life. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, pp 271–304Mesman J (2008) Uncertainty in medical innovation. Experienced pioneers in neonatal care.Palgrave MacmillanPhillips J (2015) Reporting iterations: a documentation model for time-based media art. Revista de História da Arte 04:168–179Pringle E (2019) Rethinking research in the art museum. Routledge, London etcPuig de la Bellacasa M (2017) Matters of care: speculative ethics in more than human worlds.University of Minnesota PressSchatzki TR (2001) Practice theory. In: Schatzki TR, Knorr Cetina K, von Savigny E (eds) The practice turn in contemporary theory. Routledge, London etc, pp 1–14 Sillé D (1999) Introduction to the project. In: Hummelen IJ, Sillé D (eds) Modern art: who cares? The Foundation for the Conservation of Modern Art and the Netherlands Institute for CulturalHeritage, Amsterdam, pp 14–19van de Leemput D, van Lente H (2022) Caring for decline: the case of 16mm film artworks of Tacita Dean. In: Koretsky Z, Stegmaier P, Turnheim B, van Lente H (eds) Technologies in decline.Socio-technical approaches to discontinuation and destabilisation. Routledge, London etc, pp 185–199van de Vall R (2015) The devil and the details: the ontology of contemporary art in conservation theory and practice. Br J Aesthet 55(3):1–18 van de Vall R (2022) Theories of time-based media conservation: from ontologies to ecologies. In: Engel D, Phillips J (eds) Conservation of time-based media art. Routledge, London etc, pp13–27van Saaze V (2013)Installation art and the museum. Presentation and conservation of changingartworks. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam Yaneva A (2003) Chalk steps on the museum floor. The “Pulses” of objects in an art installation. JMater Cult 8(2):169–188 (p. 12)

[!quote|#2ea8e5] Interesting References Vivian van Saaze (p. 18)

[!quote|#2ea8e5] Interesting References Bruno Latour (p. 18)

[!quote|#5fb236] Very Important or Critical Elsewhere I have (e.g., 2002) discussed problems with blanket attributions of agency to nonhumans and noted the absence of any notion of practices in ANT. The closest actor-network theory comes to conceptualizing practices is in highlighting thedoings of humans and nonhumans; an ANT practice approach to art and art museumsinvolves following human and nonhuman actors and their doings. This is, however, a rather thin notion of practices. A charitable interpretation is that ANT simply leaves practices unconceptualized. A less charitable reading is that it treats “practices” as just another word for actions or doings, thus with no distinct meaning. (p. 18)

%%Latour ant%%

[!quote|#2ea8e5] Interesting References Gherardi (p. 18)

[!quote|#2ea8e5] Interesting References Bourdieu (p. 18)

[!quote|#2ea8e5] Interesting References Shove et al. (p. 18)

[!quote|#2ea8e5] Interesting References Reckwitz (p. 18)

I hasten to add that thefact that artworks are material entities does not entail that that is all they are (p. 19)

An arrangement of entities is simply a set of interrelatedmaterial entities as interrelated. Works of art, as material entities, are inevitablycomponents of arrangements. In a museum, for instance, any artwork is part of an arrangement embracing walls, floors, benches, mountings, bases, air, AC and heating systems, people, clothing, grime on shoes, circulating dust and the like. (p. 19)

[!quote|#5fb236] Very Important or Critical This way of looking at the identity of artworks is temporal and causal in character.It ties the identity of an artwork to either the persistence of or the causal derivation of copies, versions, and descendants from an original product. (p. 25)

[!quote|#2ea8e5] Interesting References Schatzki (p. 26)

[!quote|#2ea8e5] Interesting References Domínguez Rubio (p. 28)

unruly objects.” He opposesunruly objects to docile ones: objects, including artworks, that because they can be handled in standard ways do not lead to changed practices and changed institutional or organizational forms. (p. 28)

Collaborations between museumscould take a step further and think in terms beyond acquisition or display. Different museums, under shared ethics, could potentially promote different ways of collecting, managing collections, and learning from objects they host instead of declaring them inaccessible (p. 142)

[!quote|#5fb236] Very Important or Critical This perspective prompts new discussions aroundownership and understands artworks beyond their materiality—to collect somethingdoes not necessarily mean to materially own it. (p. 142)

[!quote|#5fb236] Very Important or Critical reformulate the existing protocols of exhibition against theconstraints of fixed time-space, that prevent artworks and exhibitions to expand beyond temporal boundaries” (p. 142)

[!quote|#5fb236] Very Important or Critical Museums should safeguard not only objects but also change, instead of safeguarding objects from change. (p. 142)

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