The Invention of Scientific Conservation

Expert Cultures of Conservation After the Second World War
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-73729-7
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 15, 440 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: Nuncius Series

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.

Contributors are: Camille Bourdiel, Marco Cardinali, Leib Celnik, Angela Cerasuolo, Esther van Duijn, Sven Dupré, Noémie Etienne, Thierry Ford, Michael von der Goltz, Jo Kirby, Hero Lotti, Salvador Muñoz-Viñas, Maeva Pimo, Ron Spronk, Geert Vanpaemel, and Aga Wielocha.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Dupré, Sven

Duijn, Esther van

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Restaurierung, Konservierung

Über Autor(innen)

Sven Dupré is Professor of History of Art, Science and Technology at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam. His research lies at the intersection of art history and the history of science and technology, recently focusing on conservation and its history.

Esther van Duijn, Ph.D., is paintings conservator and researcher, specialised in the history of paintings conservation. She is currently working at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, as part of the Operation Night Watch team.