CONSERVING,DOCUMENTING, and defining the parameters of contemporary art are major issues for registrars and collection managers. It is a reality that has emerged from necessity. The issues are not new, but the volume of material that requires a nontraditional approach has increased greatly in recent years. The materials that artists choose when creating work obviously have no limits. In addition to traditional media such as wood, paint, stone, paper, and canvas, artists increasingly use ephemeral materials, detritus, and digital content to meet their creative needs. A painting or drawing may be partially defined by its two-dimensionality, but with much of contemporary art—installation art in particular—nailing down such defining parameters has become all but impossible. That is not to say that attempts to identify or give meaning to such issues were ignored or not important in the past, but rather that situations were dealt with ad hoc as they emerged. Frequently, museum professionals are forced to install, and perhaps more significantly, reinstall, contemporary work without sufficient guidelines. The key to dealing with newly created art is in its documentation.
Traditionally, the documentation of artwork has focused on materiality and issues of authenticity. Materials are undeniably important to the way we understand art. A working knowledge of, and familiarity with, various media will allow a registrar or collection manager to forecast storage needs, foster collections care, and recommend exhibition guidelines. In other words, the materials indeed may be important, but the conceptual core remains the essence of the work. The new challenge is how to effectively document a conceptual idea.
To document contemporary art, strategies that incorporate broader definitions of how to document, in addition to a new perspective on recording the per ception of the work itself, will aid in creating the object files at the core of all museum collections.
Often, the best source of information regarding how artwork is defined comes directly from the artists. It is vital for any museum that is acquiring, or thinking of acquiring, art by a living artist to devise a documentation strategy to record the artist’s intent. Not only is this an ethical mandate in relation to the museum’s mission to safeguard acquired artwork for perpetuity, but it is increasingly a response to protect the museum from potential litigious situations involving copyright and other artists’ rights. Questionnaires and interviews are a good starting point to reach this end.
The main purpose behind documenting artists’ intent via interviews and questionnaires is to record their views regarding potential changes to the parameters of subsequent installations. The interview will provide more complete results, but the questionnaire seems to be more widely used. Written questionnaires, which tend to focus mostly on factual information, such as the brand of play-back equipment (for work that incorporates video), dates of production, materials used, and so on are indeed useful to the museum. However, even art museums that advocate for the persistent use of questionnaires admit that they are not enough. Not every hypothetical situation requiring a resolution can be imagined at the time of acquisition.
Fortunately, questionnaires need not be created from scratch. Matters in Media Art, a research project focused on the care of time-based media art, has created resources and templates that anyone can freely adapt and use. The sample questions are straightforward and of vital importance, for example, “What are the essential vs. desirable exhibition conditions, including space requirements?” and “What can and cannot be changed in the display?”1 These and other questions are directed at the artist to help the museum in assessing the impact the work will have if it becomes a part of the permanent collection. A deeper investigation into artists’ thoughts regarding their work is often best elaborated via direct interviews.
As a response to museum professionals who were seeking guidance on formulating questionnaires, the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA) established an effective general resource guide for conducting artists’ interviews for the purpose of garnering insight into their oeuvre. With a view to collecting and effectively exhibiting art in keeping with the artists’ intent, the guide proposes seven approaches or methodologies to conducting artist interviews: communication via letter, questionnaire, telephone call, face-to-face conversation, brief or limited interview, extended interview, and working together with the artist.2
The most basic communication with the artist begins with a letter or e-mail, composed with explicit and concise questions in mind. The goal is not only to acquire insight but also to create a document for the object file. Unfortunately, the museum cannot always rely on receiving a timely or appropriate response to a letter or e-mail, and the same holds true for a more elaborate questionnaire. Letters and questionnaires demand a lot of the artist’s time, and motivation to complete them may not be a top priority. As with a letter, a questionnaire cannot be depended on to elicit the breadth and complexity needed to document an artwork. Certain queries are too unwieldly to answer succinctly in a written format.
To address the relationship among the various components that comprise a total work usually requires being physically in the space with the installed work. This is especially true for work that has a highly interactive quality, is composed of complicated arrangements, or employs the accumulation of many parts of seemingly random detritus. To address such issues, oral communication is usually a better alternative.
Telephone calls are often effective in clarifying precise details or in obtaining answers to specific concerns and permit a more fluid conversation which may lead to direct questions not previously anticipated. As with any type of communication, the person initiating the call will be at the mercy of artists, and certain questions may be construed as an interruption to their work or an invasion of privacy. Additionally, not everyone communicates effectively via telephone. Face-to-face conversations may be the better all-around strategy.
The best face-to-face conversations take place in the physical presence of the artwork itself. As in all cases, extensive preparation on the part of the interviewer will provide the best results. Careful consideration should be made regarding the duration of the conversation and to judiciously controlling the direction of the dialog. These interviews can be either brief undertakings or extended investigations.
Whether a face-to-face conversation or a telephone call, it is often beneficial to prepare the artist with the content of the interview ahead of time. For brief or limited interviews, documentation techniques should be determined in advance and confirmed with the artist. Audio, video, and notes are all viable recording options, but video provides more content on which to base future conclusions.
An extended interview allows one not only to probe more deeply into particular works, techniques, or intents, but also permits far-reaching exploration of larger themes and connections in the artist’s oeuvre. The questions for an extended interview are usually more open-ended and can provide deeper layers of content. The extended interview shows a commitment on the part of artists to documenting effectively as much about their thoughts and expectations as possible, providing a useful level of information.
Finally, observing artists’ working sessions, or better yet, an installation of their work in which they are participating, may provide information that goes far beyond responses to questions. A certain level of trust and comfort must exist for an artist to agree to such a session. The interviewer must be able to read the situation well and know how far to take the conversation. As with all interviews, the key is in the preparation.
It is recommended that notes and annotations of the interviews always be presented to the artist for approval afterward. The end result of the interviews and questionnaires is a record that provides that museum with vital information to turn to in the future.
The timing of these interviews and of the documentation in general is important. The more time that has passed from the creation of the work to the documentation of it, the more removed the artist will be from it. Additionally, after the works are created, they take their place in art history while the artists continue to develop and advance their personal progression. Delayed documentation of a work may leave an artist too far removed from what was important and influential at the time of creation.
INCCA encourages multiple interview sessions and multiple voices in conducting the interview (curator, conservator, technician, art historian, art handler, registrar, etc.). Of course, there will be limits on the extent of these interviews depending on budget, time, and available personnel, all factors that have in the past been used as arguments or justification for not conducting interviews in the first place. It is worth emphasizing that the artist’s opinion is only one to be taken into consideration. The museum has a voice, and a strong one, in making decisions as to the future of its collections. Conservators have another voice, sometimes in concert with the artist, sometimes with the museum. In the end, a collaborative agreement among all parties is the ultimate goal.
In recent years, more installation art has found its place among the permanent collections of art museums. The complex environments of installation art have proven to be popular with artists who seek to branch out into a fourth dimension (interactivity) with their artistic creations. However, the inherently complex nature of installation art, in particular those works that comprise elements of new or time-based media, require a new approach to museum procedures, especially the need to draw on a wide body of experts from both within and outside the museum community. Conservators, curators, registrars, collection managers, technicians, artists’ assistants, architects, and the artists themselves may be called on to help create a precisely documented account of the installation for the museum’s object file. Once again budget, time, and personnel will have an impact on the extent of the documentation, but almost any institution can undertake video documentation of the installation.
The benefits of video documentation of installation art include capturing the “overall impression, visual aspects of components, relation of components, relation to space/architecture, sound, movement, choreography, time-specific aspects, interactivity and presence (and experience) of the audience.”3 All of these aspects would be extremely unruly, or even impossible, to document in written form. Just as proponents of artist questionnaires conceded the benefit of video recording, the same is seen in reverse. Video does not render written documentation obsolete, but rather augments it in ways that make a more nearly complete package. Video documentation fills in the gaps of information essential to understanding what cannot be written down.
The key to video documentation for the purpose of facilitating the reinstallation of the work is exactitude. Describing the relationship and position of individual components to each other and to the complete installation is the core of why video documentation should be used. For this information to be useful for reinstallation, this visual record must be paired with an explanation from the artist as to the importance of these relationships and the extent of their variability. Without this key idea, reinstallations could exaggerate details and relationships that are not as tightly defined in the mind of the artist.
In addition to documenting relationships, it is essential to record processes. One video documentation strategy that can capture the installation process is the use of static surveillance cameras. Long-exposure recordings, not helpful in their original form, are viewed in a sped-up or fast-forward manner to provide a record of the specific installation process that will benefit those undertaking the same in the future. However, this type of documentation lacks an essential level of detail and should only be used in a general way to steer future installations.
A complete video documentation package for the purpose of guiding reinstallation (as opposed to a publicity video, etc.) should include a general installation (static) overview, zoom views of details, recordings of sounds, and voice-overs indicating elements that may not be clear from a merely visual standpoint.4
Even though video documentation is the best way to guarantee a successful and accurate iteration of future installations, the issues of cost and time loom above every project. The budget will dictate to what degree video documentation takes place, and the cost to do so should be included in pre-acquisition considerations by museum acquisition committees. Videos can be prepared by staff members, contracted out to semi professionals, or, in the best-of-all-worlds, completed by video specialists. The latter will be able to provide the best postproduction options.
Augmented with research, the results of artist questionnaires, and other written documentation, the complexities of documenting installation art are more effectively tackled by using video for registration purposes.
One of the key concepts to adopt in documenting new art is the need to approach it in ways that embrace what is at the core of the work independently from how we document the media. Minimal, conceptual, and much of new media art are often not reliant on any physical object. Still, the work must be documented in a way that renders such complex realities in a usable format. Preserving the Immaterial, a conference at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in March 2001, addressed these issues head on. One of the results was the creation of The Variable Media Approach,5 a strategy that remains relevant for capturing essential and core concepts in our documentation of art. At the center of this approach is a way of identifying the essence of the conceptual basis of the work.
As proposed by almost everyone involved in any aspect of documenting contemporary art, the approach to variable media is based on formulating a questionnaire and dialog with the artist to serve as a springboard for identifying non-media-specific concepts. The Variable Media Questionnaire is broken down into seven subtopics, each addressing a particular behavior. These ideal states are:
Identifying work in terms of behaviors references it in its ideal state. However, any changes or alterations over time, whether happening naturally or as a result of conservation interventions, produce a shift away from this ideal. The documentation of the artist’s philosophy over these questions will aid the museum in making decisions about dealing with these eventual changes.
Proper documentation does, indeed, take many hours of staff time to produce correctly. Museum environments are undeniably hectic and there is always high demand on making the best use of limited staff. However, when it comes to documenting much of contemporary art, making the effort will save both time and money for the museum in the long term. Reinstallations have the potential to create an overwhelming array of problems. If registrars and collection managers can anticipate, even to a slight extent, future installation requirements, they will alleviate the burden of tedious and time-consuming tasks required to answer questions of appropriate, ethical, and realistic reinstallations. This positive outcome will become widespread only when museum administrators make proper documentation a routine undertaking.
As you search for concrete examples and further guidance on what has been successfully undertaken by others in the realm of documenting contemporary art, an additional recommended resource is the nonprofit organization Voices in Contemporary Art (VoCA). On their website7 you can find their active blog, links to various resources, past issues of their journal, and information about upcoming workshops and talks. It is reassuring to connect with others who are dedicated to advancing the work challenges of the contemporary registrar.
In conclusion, the multivalent and complicated challenge of properly documenting the conceptual and technical variance for the reinstallation of contemporary art can be summed up by five key ideas:
Every new work of art is its own unique world; thus, it may be impossible to approach any kind of preferred practice for its documentation. Nevertheless, guidelines and suggestions from those who have studied and researched new media, conceptual, minimal, and installation art can provide insights and encouragement to aid in formulating effective strategies to assess the documentary requirements for each individual work (TABLE 3E.1). In the end, not only will the museum professionals charged with the stewardship of collections be permitted to address the specific requirements of contemporary art ethically and responsibly, they will also be providing their future colleagues with the tools they will need, and will appreciate, when called on to oversee subsequent installations. •
Table 3E.1 Documentation Tools, Guides, and Resources
| “Matters in Media Art,” trie consortium of The New Art Trust, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), and trie Tate, which focuses on trie stewardship of time-based works of art, has developed a range of documentation tools applicable to new media installation art. Free downloadable templates for condition reports, installation documentation guides, and other useful reference documents and practical tools are all available on their website. Available at: http://mattersinmediaart.org/ |
| “Electronic Arts Intermix” has an excellent resource guide providing information on the exhibition, collection, and preservation of new media art. In addition, to help with dealing with installation art, the guide is also a source for single-channel video and computer-based arts. Available at: http://resourceguide.eai.org/ |
| “Inside Installations” is an exceptional resource created as a result of a three-year study of installation art in the European Union. Though the entire project provides myriad guidelines, resources and practical tools, of particular interest is this online tutorial that teaches the museum professional the skills necessary to video document installation art. Available at: https://www.incca.org/articles/inside-installations-online-course-video-documentation-installations-2007 |
| “The Variable Media Network,” a preservation strategy developed by the Guggenheim and the Daniel Langlois Foundation, looks at ephemeral art in terms of “medium-dependent behaviors.” This concept is explicitly detailed online and in the free downloadable guide, “Permanence Through Change: The Variable Media Approach.” Available at: http://variablemedia.net/ |
| The “International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA)” has a detailed “Guide to Good Practice: Artists’ Interviews” available on their website (articles>incca guide to good practices artists interviews). Phone interviews, letters, questionnaires, and face-to-face interview techniques are explained. Available at: http://www.incca.org/ |
| “Voices in Contemporary Art (VoCA)” is a network of artists, conservators, curators, collectors, educators, and students who recognize the need for public forums on new forms of collaboration and documentation. Through workshops, talks, and a journal, VoCA stimulates critical discussion on the roles and working practices of all professionals involved in the production, presentation, and preservation of contemporary art. Available at: http://www.voca.network/ |
1. Matters in Media Art. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/majorprojects/mediamatters/ (accessed March 25, 2019).
2. International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art, “Guide to Good Practice: Artists’ Interviews, Updated Version January 2016.” Available at: http://www.incca.org (accessed March 25, 2019).
3. Gaby Wijers, “Video Documentation of Installations,” Inside Installations. Available at: http://insideinstallations.org (accessed March 10, 2008).
4. Wijers, “Video Documentation of Installations.”
5. The Variable Media Approach. Available at: http://www.variablemedia.net/pdf/Permanence.pdf.
6. A. Depocas, J. Ippolito, and C. Jones, eds., The Variable Media Approach (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2003), 46.
7. Voices in Contemporary Art. Available at: www.voca.network.