AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

Conservation theory has embraced sociological approaches to understand the complex care of modern and contemporary art. In these contributions (and in case-study based conservation literature) decision-making processes essentially assume museum-like conditions. Often implicitly, the artwork is naturally seen as a permanent part of a collection with indisputable cultural value and symbolic meaning. The predominant task for conservation practice is to preserve contemporary artworks for posterity, and to enable its exhibition for visitors willing to ‘experience’ art as a means of their personal, cultural enrichment.

Contemporary art for sale, however, is often viewed by a very different public: while galleries or auction houses are open to visitors, it is those individuals who seek to own art that matter most to dealers. Within the hierarchically structured art market, it seems the standing of such trade-partners (buyers and sellers) can be just as relevant during a transaction as the artwork itself. An artwork is not only considered for its cultural or symbolic meaning, but for its ideological value (to underscore a collector’s prestige or a dealer’s success), and its financial investment-potential.

Both sides of the trade scrutinize the work to reduce the uncertainty of such hard-to-define values. During this moment of ownership-transition, an artwork appears precariously vulnerable. This is where conservators' expertise is usually called upon to evaluate a more tangible (though no less fragile) aspect, the artwork’s physical condition. They may suggest and execute treatment; their written (condition or treatment) report becomes crucial for the sale.

The art market relies on the beneficial effects of conservation. Yet conservation activity is hardly made explicit as traces of conservation appear to signal instability and an increased investment risk. This can have detrimental effects on the potential sale and even on the conservator’s reputation.

Private practice conservators work in a field full of tensions: balancing their ethical standards with market expectations; providing a discrete service while fostering their reputation of expertise; treating often unusual materials under tight deadlines; preparing the artwork for an unknown trajectory of belonging. They are business managers, too.

After more than a decade of working in New York City’s art market environment, I aim to investigate how conservation in private practice is done and what its role is in the context of the art trade. This topic has become my PhD research at Maastricht University (NL), and it will highlight three central issues: stakeholder networks, authority negotiation, and knowledge organization.

As more and more contemporary art never enters a museum collection, its care falls on conservators in private practice. I am focusing my research on their daily professional challenges to expand the theoretical contexts of conservation. To do this, I am taking a critical sociological perspective using qualitative methods combined with literature reviews of conservation, sociology of art, and economic sociology.

This presentation will start with an introduction of the research scope and will focus on common stakeholders in the art market environment, their (various) ideologies, and on observations on how conservators navigate this hierarchically structured network.

Beginning in 2008, American museums collaborated to preserve traditional Chinese painting conservation. Despite being a tradition over a thousand years old from China, it has only been a vital part of conservation in the U.S. for 35 years. The field was founded in U.S. museums by four apprentice trained conservators from China, but lacked a sustainable program in the U.S. to train the next generation. Supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) developed a program with objectives to strengthen the global network of Chinese painting conservators, addressing the need for conservators and establish a permanent structure to support a pipeline for training and care of collections.

This talk will give an overview of this program, focusing on the hands-on workshops and production of a documentary. These educational projects illustrate how our initial plans faced unexpected challenges, and our responses helped advance the field.

The workshops were initially designed to empower the next generation of conservators, with their diversity of training from China, Taiwan, Europe, and the U.S., to build relationships. However, it became clear the workshops would be enriched by senior conservators teaching the methods that the next generation was sharing but had not fully mastered. One year later, the workshop included six senior and eight younger conservators. This was the first time all senior conservators in the U.S. gathered to demonstrate and discuss their treatment practices. Both generations tested adhesives and colorants and practiced techniques, such as lining and dying silk fabric. We discovered the senior conservators were integrating non-traditional and traditional methods, such as using methyl cellulose and flour paste. The workshop also included discussions on treatment options for Chinese paintings. The constructive exchanges and inconclusive test results revealed the need for more dialogue, and the value of inviting the broader community of conservation advocates to help advance the field.

Another unanticipated change was transitioning the final educational symposium for fall 2020 to the production of a documentary. The pandemic made an in-person symposium impossible, so grant funds were repurposed to create an evergreen resource to document and raise public awareness. In 2021, the NMAA produced the film with director Eros Zhao and contributions from key institutions. This bilingual documentary honors the voices of trailblazing senior Chinese conservators, highlights the next generation carrying these traditions forward, and preserves the tangible and intangible heritage of Chinese culture. Through the barriers of developing and filming a documentary during the pandemic, we interviewed the conservators and created a living document that captures a moment of change between two generations as the field transitions into the future.

The NMAA Mellon Program anticipated a pipeline from one generation to the next, but no one anticipated that both generations would be empowered to shape the global network. Despite a tradition that is centuries old, Chinese painting conservation is a field that is evolving rapidly. After a decade, the Mellon program enabled Chinese painting conservators to lead this progress in the face of conservation’s changing landscape.

Construction is currently underway on a new building for the Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM), which has been closed to the public since 2020 and is anticipated to reopen in 2025. This new building, located in the heart of Princeton’s historic campus, will feature reimagined gallery spaces for PUAM’s encyclopedic collections, updated classrooms for object-based teaching, designated areas for visible storage, and a brand new two-story conservation studio.

Prior to the demolition of the old building in 2021, thousands of objects needed to be removed from the galleries and the Museum’s surroundings. Among these were over a hundred large-scale and embedded works, including archaeological mosaics, architectural stone, and contemporary outdoor sculpture. Since many objects had been on long-term, continuous view since the 1960s, the Museum’s closure provided PUAM with a unique opportunity to address as many conservation needs as possible during the brief window before reinstallation.

PUAM’s small conservation team has been collaborating across Museum and University departments and with a wide network of skilled external conservators and specialists to safely remove these objects, complete multiple large-scale and complex treatments, and plan for their upcoming reinstall in the new building.

This presentation will discuss instances when projects did not go as planned, and how PUAM’s team worked together to resolve these issues. Topics will include unanticipated object discoveries that instigated major changes to display, unforeseen challenges stemming from missing or long-lost documentation, surprise construction variables that required complete reworking of install planning, and reflections on decision-making, teamworking, and project management.