Colloque : Conservation and the Making of Art History (online, 8-9 Apr 21)

Conservation and the Making of Art History (online, 8-9 Apr 21)

Online (Clark Art Institute), Apr 8–09, 2021

The conservation, preservation, and restoration of material culture has historically been closely joined to artistic practice and the study of the history of art. Over the last century, art conservation, art making, and the discipline of art history have become increasingly specialized and separated from one another—until recently. Developments in all three areas encourage a reconsideration of the innumerable threads that connect them to each other and to larger questions of cultural and environmental theory, anthropology, and philosophy. In this conference we will consider many past and present processes of maintaining, handling, reframing, and repurposing works of the past. Our aim is to put those methods into dialogue with wider frames of practice and thinking. The contributors to this conference consider how conservation involves forms of artistic making, frames philosophical examinations of time, shapes inquiry into human and non-human agency, focuses ethical debates about memory and identity, and models forms of inhabitation and cohabitation.

PROGRAMME

THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2021

10:00 AM WELCOME
Caroline Fowler, Starr Director, Research and Academic Program, The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

10:10 AM INTRODUCTION: CONSERVATION AS PERFORMANCE
Alexander Nagel, New York University, New York

10:40 AM REPAINTED MADONNAS IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY SIENA AS ARTWORKS AND ART HISTORY
Annika Svendsen Finne, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, New York

11:00 AM ART HISTORY AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SKILL
Sven Dupré, Utrecht University and University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

11:30 AM CONVERSATION

12:00 PM BREAK

12:45 PM ON MIMEOGRAPHIC LABOR AND THE ARTS OF CREATING THE SAME
Fernando Domínguez Rubio, University of California, San Diego

1:05 PM CHOREOGRAPHIES OF TECHNICAL ART HISTORY: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH
Erma Hermens, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

1:25 PM ‘STRUNG INTO WRITING, ENCHAINED INTO PAINTING’: CONSERVATION IN THE PERSIANATE ALBUM
Murad Khan Mumtaz, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts

1:50 PM CONVERSATION

2:20 PM BREAK

2:50 PM ON DEATH AND ENTANGLEMENT: SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT LIFE, LOVE, AND THE AIMS OF ART CONSERVATION
Alva Noë, University of California, Berkeley

3:10 PM CONCLUDING CONVERSATION

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FRIDAY, APRIL 9, 2021

9:30 AM WELCOME

9:35 AM CONSERVATION IN CONVERSATION: ART HISTORY AND CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE MAKING
Noémie Étienne, University of Bern, Switzerland

9:55 AM MINIMUM WORLDS: MATERIAL POETICS BETWEEN TIME, DETAILS, AND FRAGMENTS
Gabriela Siracusano, CONICET and Centro MATERIA-UNTREF, Argentina

10:15 AM BUT WHO DECIDED? EPISTEMES AND POLITICS OF DECAY
Jennifer Bajorek, Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts

10:35 AM BREAK

11:00 AM THE BETTMANN MORGUE: COLD STORAGE, DIGITIZATION, AND ARCHIVES OF RACIAL VIOLENCE
Brian Michael Murphy, Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont

11:20 AM DOES IT MATTER? CONSERVATION AND INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE
Caroline Fowler, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

11:40 AM CONCLUDING CONVERSATION

12:30 PM BREAK

1:30 PM ARTIST TALK: LOVES LABOR (EVENTUALLY) LOST
Ina Archer, National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC

2:00 PM RESPONSE AND CONVERSATION with Jacqueline Stewart, University of Chicago, Illinois

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Click here to register for the live virtual conference and for more information:
https://www.clarkart.edu/Research-Academic/RAP-Events/Clark-Conference?bblinkid=248163487&bbemailid=28246069&bbejrid=1848058613

For any questions, please contact RAP@clarkart.edu