WITH THEIR WHITE LAB COATS and all sorts of scientific tools at the ready, conservators strive to preserve works of art for future generations. When it comes to contemporary art, there can be all sorts of strange and unusual challenges. When the Museum of Modern Art in New York was asked by a collector for advice on how best to reattach the peeling label of an Andy Warhol soup can, the chief conservator called the soup company to ask what type of adhesive had been used to fix the label to the can when it was first produced. This may seem pedantic, but it was the key to restoring the can to its original state.
Often conservators border on forensic detectives, chasing leads, unravelling clues and drawing on all kinds of ingenuity. Principally, they look to safeguard the artwork. The key questions are: how can we, and how should we, show this particular work in ten or one hundred years’ time? To establish this, they seek to understand the physical mechanisms of change, working to ensure carefully controlled conditions in museum environments and taking measures to repair and protect artworks as necessary. One of the greatest challenges for contemporary art conservators has been the proliferation of synthetic materials since World War II, for which there is only limited knowledge of how they might alter with age. Film, video and computer artworks pose different challenges as technologies become obsolete. Conservation work can therefore vary drastically, calling for a whole variety of highly skilled specialists, from the computer technicians who back up digital art on servers to structural engineers who keep gigantic public sculptures standing or professional paint sprayers whose job it is to re-coat the pristine surfaces of Minimalist sculptures.
All sorts of inventive solutions can be concocted. Kader Attia’s Untitled (Ghardaïa) (2009), for example, is a multi-part installation that includes a model of the ancient Algerian city of Ghardaïa constructed from cooked couscous. Since the couscous is to be replaced every time it is exhibited, conservators at the Guggenheim, where one edition of Untitled (Ghardaïa) is held, worked with the artist to figure out precise cooking instructions when the piece entered the collection. It was equally important to procure detailed elevation drawings of the building blocks and draw up a set of instructions relating to issues such as pest control and mould while the installation is on show.
Indeed, not all art is intended to survive. The drive to preserve is often at odds with the wishes of artists, who actually want their work to deteriorate. Alternatively, for other works, the slightest degree of wear can disconnect them from the artist’s original conception. But then perhaps interventions to keep a work as good as new damage the integrity of the original object. This can lead to a series of tricky, yet important, questions, such as: should the concept take precedence over the authentic object? What does it mean for art if replicas become more commonplace for displaying works that are too fragile to exhibit or have long since deteriorated into states totally unrecognizable from their originals?
Often conservators border on forensic detectives, chasing leads, unravelling clues and drawing on all kinds of ingenuity.
When faced with these dilemmas, being able to decipher the artist’s intent is paramount. Luckily, most contemporary artists are living(!), and museum conservators can actively seek their advice through interviews and lengthy questionnaires as soon as a new piece enters their collection. Conservators often work collaboratively across institutions to share information on materials and artists’ intentions. In the end, each work is its own special case and deserves some tender loving care, even if that means some conservators have to spend three months of their lives fretting over little bugs in the streets of a couscous town.
LIKE YOUR CAR PHONE, mini-disc player, MySpace account and iPhone 5, most technology eventually conks out and is replaced with something new. Over the past fifty years, conservators have been struggling to keep up with technological developments, as the rapid obsolescence of playback technology has put all art made on outmoded platforms at risk.
Think about it. The analogue television monitor was replaced by the digital LCD flat screen; the Super 8 camera gave way to 16mm to Betacam and then to VHS; VHS video tapes became laserdiscs, DVDs then Blu-rays and more recently pure data on USB sticks or in the ‘Cloud’; cassette tapes became CDs, and so forth…Much of the time, the solution has been to ‘migrate’ video art from one platform to the next, always keeping back-up copies or ‘preservation masters’, just in case. These days, collectors and conservators make sure to obtain the actual data and original source codes with any new acquisition.
But what to do with works that incorporate now outdated technologies as an integral part of their existence? In the case of Nam June Paik’s sculptural works using analogue television monitors, conservators at major institutions worldwide have stockpiled as many of those that remain in existence as they possibly can, so that faulty ones can be replaced. But this can only be a short-term tactic and the conservators of the future will have to come up with alternatives. In other instances, artists have stipulated that when the technology becomes obsolete the work will also cease to exist, such as Cory Arcangel whose early work was made with hacked Nintendo consoles. As with other areas of conservation, the golden rule is to work closely with the artist to establish which part of the art is the art.
Suffice to say that new technologies bring with them a host of new challenges → see G. But a growing breed of conservators dedicated to video, film, audio, software and online technologies are now working together to advance the field and build new strategies. As artists adopt new technologies, it is a matter of urgency that skills of preservation keep pace to ensure the afterlife of our cultural heritage.