Decay, Loss, and Conservation in Art History

Decay, Loss, and Conservation in Art History

For centuries, Western artworks have been cared for in the hope of preserving them for as long as possible. Even so, over their lives objects deteriorate and risk being displaced, damaged, or destroyed – whether incidentally or on purpose. This inescapable fragility of artworks raises questions for those invested in them. How do communities safeguard endangered objects? And how do art historians study images that are no longer extant, or investigate artistic traditions where no material legacy has been preserved intact? Our group addresses these questions theoretically, historically, and materially to tackle how the inherent instability of objects shapes the way we handle, think, and write about them.

The Research Group is led by Francesca Borgo and funded by the Max Planck Society’s flagship Lise Meitner Excellence Program. The group’s approach moves emphasis away from the original state of the artwork. We analyze instead how objects transform over time and the ways in which they find new form, whether as fragments, ruins, or waste. By foregrounding what has long been considered an endpoint in art historical studies, we intend to overcome some of the discipline’s biases: that the moment of creation is the moment that matters, that the original condition of the artwork is the most important one, that display rather than storage is the site of art historical significance, and that material survival alone is what shapes the historical record. We ask what it would mean to write a history of art that celebrates maintenance as much as it does innovation.

We are interested not only in historicizing these issues by asking how people in the past contended with objects’ material lives but also in reflecting on how art history as a discipline addresses today’s ethics and politics of care. Our focus is on European and colonial art histories from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, a period during which techniques and media were ranked based on their ability to last and decay was first recognized as a subject worthy of aesthetic and scientific attention. By probing a tradition that has always equated durability with value, the project promotes engagement with the vulnerability of artworks and a deeper understanding of the mechanics of decay and loss.

In recent years, conservation has emerged as one of the central issues of our time, inextricably entangled with climate change, armed conflict, the rise of new materials and technologies, and the post-colonial reckoning of museums grappling with looting and restitution debates. But conservation is also a space of profound social, racial and economic inequality, and the choices made about which stories to tell and which objects to preserve are not neutral. By bringing awareness to gaps in art historical narratives, we aim to highlight the impact of loss and erasure on the construction of the art historical canon and on other exclusionary practices of the discipline.

Working collaboratively, the project bridges art history, conservation, and museum and heritage studies to investigate how communities interact with their past – and what they choose to take from it into the future.

If your research aligns with our interests, please email Editorial-LMG@biblhertz.it. We are always happy to hear from people in the field, and we take applications on a rolling basis.

Research Focus

Annual Research Initiative
Each year, the Lise Meitner Group’s Annual Research Initiative considers the practical and theoretical repercussions that a specific form of loss poses for the discipline. It brings together scholars, conservators, curators, and artists to explore what those repercussions mean not only for objects but also for our approach to them. more
Care
The concept of care is central to art history, but it is only rarely discussed. This is a surprising disjunction: many of the objects that form the history of art have survived only because care has been invested in them.  more
Loss
Loss to the art historical record can occur in many ways: natural disaster, theft and looting, simple neglect. There is no subfield in the history of art whose topography has not been shaped by one or a combination of such events. Even though loss continues to influence the grounding conditions and enabling operations of art history, it remains distinctively undertheorized. more
Conserving Histories of Art
Each of the seminars in Conserving Histories of Art is a conversation about an object or objects: about how and why we care for them, and about the ways in which care changes the stories they tell.  more
The Paper Project
Unlike paintings, paper objects can be altered quickly and easily. Their support registers concerns over their fragility and discloses how they were cared for and maintained, touched and retouched. more
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