Decision-Making Model for Contemporary Art Conservation and Presentation – revisited! (2019)

Posted on Thursday, June 13, 2019 - 10:32
The revised Decision-Making Model for the Conservation of Contemporary Art, 2019
Working group meeting, CICS, June 2018. Photo: Aga Wielocha
Working group meeting, CICS, June 2018. Photo: Aga Wielocha

Developing strategies for contemporary art conservation and presentation is at the core of current conservation and conservation science. To help manage, structure and navigate their corresponding decision-making processes, the SBMK’s Decision-Making Model (1999) was revised in conjunction with an international, multidisciplinary working group.

The revised model includes:

  • the acknowledgement of the complex trajectory and evolving character of many contemporary works of art
  • the recognition of presentation decisions that may have a strong impact on the conservation of artworks
  • the need to widen its scope to include those intangible yet significant properties of an artwork
  • an understanding of the dynamics and subjectiveness in decision-making, and
  • the need for continuous development of the terminology of contemporary art conservation.

This research initiative was organized by the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences (CICS), the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE), and Maastricht University, and has been generously funded by the Wüstenrot Stiftung.

In further research the new model will be applied to different case studies in order to test and verify its applicability.