Amelia International Conservation Studies

No prerequisites required.

Student Learning Outcomes:

Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:

• Inquiry into artworks’ life and identity from various conservation perspectives, identifying the constituent materials and the methods of the making while taking into account the artworks’ materiality in a broader sense.

• Develop a critical attitude towards conservation as a wide-ranging and multifold discipline, made up by the requirements of the object as well as cultural, subject-dependent context.

• Critique and explain through writing various strategies and philosophical differences between different approaches to restoration. 

• Summarize and discuss pertinent issues related to the ethics of conservation and restoration.

Format:

For the most part, classes will consist of a lecture followed by a discussion. For that purpose, readings and lecture material will be handed to students in advance.

Going beyond the material aspects of restoration, these lecture/discussion classes examine the various social goals, motivations, approaches, and ethical and philosophical issues that guide the complex process of preserving cultural heritage. Various topics on preventative conservation, conservation, and restoration of traditional and contemporary materials as well as ‘new’ and technology-based media will provide an insight into the ample world of restoration.

Grading:

• Grading will be based on attendance, class participation, written assignment and class presentation, as indicated:

• Attendance and participation: 40%

• Written assignment and class presentation: 60%

Topics Discussed in Course:

What is conservation?
Why conservation is necessary in Western and Eastern cultures?

Historical and theoretical overview of restoration, conservation, and preservation approaches. When conservation is not possible…or welcomed.

The objects of conservation.
What should be conserved? How value systems and historical conditions relate to what and how is being preserved: different values involved and their historical shift (aesthetics, historic, religious, symbolic, scientific, functional).

Different approaches to restoration: parallels and divergences between conservation of paintings, sculpture, contemporary art and built heritage (authenticity, origins and use of the object, audience/viewer participation).

Recycling and collage of old material, anastylosis, restoration, conservation, additions, completions, adaptive reuse, substitutions, reconstructions.

Approaches to traditional paintings, polychrome stone and wooden sculpture.

Book conservation.

Contemporary and installation art, New-media art, time-based works, Land Art, early electronic and kinetic art, performance and dance.

Truth, objectivity and scientific conservation

Truth, objectivity and scientific conservation.

The search of truth and authenticity in classical theory of conservation: aestheticist theories and scientific conservation (meaning and principles).

From objects to subjects

The shift to subjective and intangible needs in conservation. From the experts’ zone to the trading zone: the emergence of the subject.

Clashes in meanings: inter and intra-cultural issues in conservation.
From the conservation of truth to the conservation of meanings and the value-led conservation.

From theory to practice: issues in conservation

Reversibility, minimum intervention, discernibility, sustainability as principles of conservation.

Strategies of preservation
Preservation laws, conservation guidelines and charters by national institutions and intergovernmental organizations (UNESCO in particular).

Readings:
Readings will be handed in advance. Some of them will be obligatory texts while additional readings will be provided as optional. Students may be asked to present a short oral summary of one of the essays.  

Recommended Readings:
Cesare Brandi, Theory of Restoration, Istituto centrale per il restauro, 2005 originally published: 1963

Nicholas Stanley Price, M. Kirby Talley Jr. and Alessandra Melucco Vaccaro, Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage, Getty Conservation Institute, 1996

Description of Assignments:

• Class discussion of reading material

• Term paper: 5-page paper, to be presented to the class for discussion. The written assignment consists in an essay on a chosen topic (to discuss individually with the instructor).