The invention of scientific conservation: expert cultures of conservation after the Second World War

Uittreksel

"The book addresses the question of how experts from a variety of educational backgrounds and with different professional identities created scientific conservation. How did they make science the type of knowledge carrying most authority in questions of conservation? From the ruins of the Second World War, international organisations (e.g. IIC), journals (e.g. Studies in Conservation), and institutes (e.g. the KIK-IRPA in Brussels) emerged. This book discusses these developments until the 1970s, when conservators confronted with the processual and intangible aspects of contemporary art started to question the principles of scientific conservation and again began to value other forms of knowledge."-- Provided by publisher.

Inhoud

The foundation of IIC and the fight for scientific conservation / Hero Lotti -- Science, art history, and the education of the professional restorer / Geert Vanpaemel -- Cleaning paintings and politics: the German start in the post-war conservation world / Michael von der Goltz -- The Smithsonian Institution and the rise of the American conservation laboratory after the Second World War / Leib Celnik -- The laboratory of the Louvre Museum after the Second World War: the movement towards professionalisation, 1946-1955 / Camille Bourdiel -- A Scandanavian awakening: the emergence of science in conservation at the National Gallery in Oslo, 1956-1974 / Thierry Ford -- The founding of the Capodimonte Museum in 1957 and the creation of its conservation laboratory: scientific conservation/restoration in Naples in the context of post-war Italy / Angela Cerasuolo -- Science and conservation at the National Gallery, London: the 1950s to the 1970s / Jo Kirby -- "The ideal of the ideal environment": the influence of climate control on the emergence of preventive conservation theories / Andrea Luciani -- X-Ray imaging techniques and the quest for reliable insight into paintings / Marco Cardinali -- J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer and the development of infrared reflectography, 1960-1980 / Ron Spronk -- When art shifts, conservation expands / Aga Wielocha -- Situated conservation: pragmatism, politics, and aesthetics of care / Noémie Étienne and Maeva Pimo -- Epilogue: a vindication of the conservator's knowledge / Salvador Muñoz-Viñas.