Living Matter: Challenging Institutions

The most difficult moment in the life of an artwork is sometimes when it enters an institution. Challenging establishment authority, many avant-garde and Fluxus works were created to act out. They warp, wrinkle, and ooze as they age, occasionally deteriorate, or even completely disappear. Such works are documents as much as art, made to be experienced and handled rather than entombed as untouchable treasures. This paper discusses a Surrealist acrylic book casing adorned with butterflies and seahorses; stabilization of Benjamin Patterson’s tackle box Hooked (1980) following a sardine can explosion; and ongoing monitoring of Dieter Roth’s editions.

Conservation staff members working with contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario have recently developed a simple and straightforward decision-making framework in response to the unique challenges presented by artworks that contain biological materials or living matter. In the spirit of interdisciplinary approaches toward innovative ways of working, the authors invoke the role of a dramaturge in the performing arts to refine and articulate the decision-making framework of contemporary art preservation and the evolving role of the conservator.

Cooper Hewitt’s 2019 Design Triennial, Nature, celebrated designers working at the cutting edge of synthetic biology, biomedical research, data visualization, urban agriculture, renewable energy, and additive manufacturing, among other design fields. The exhibition highlighted sixty-two projects, including live bacterial cultures, light-emitting textiles, and live plants growing in engineered microclimates. Cross-departmental and inter-institutional collaborations proved integral to the success of the exhibition, and in-depth discussions with the designers themselves minimized ongoing areas of concern. Still, the complex nature of many installations challenged the museum’s conservators and pushed against entrenched paradigms, forcing the adoption of novel approaches to staging and maintaining the pieces.

The installation Lo que mata es la humedad (It’s the Humidity That Kills, 2017) by the Uruguayan artist Federico Arnaud in the collection of the Juan Manuel Blanes Museum in Montevideo, Uruguay, includes elements of living matter. A collaborative effort was formed with the Department of Biosciences at the Universidad de la República, also in Montevideo, to identify microorganisms in the work and in the surrounding environment. Preliminary results indicated the presence of fungi of the genus Penicillium and signs of Alternaria. Taking into account the artist’s intention and the microbiological findings, an interdisciplinary team prepared protocols for preserving the components containing living matter while in storage as well as during exhibition.

This paper investigates the genesis of Aqui Estão (Here They Are, 1999), a site-specific installation by Anna Maria Maiolino in the Museu do Açude, Rio de Janeiro, an institution in the middle of one of the largest urban forests in Latin America. It discusses Maiolino’s artistic intentions; the issues arising from the lack of any documentation about the outdoor site-specific installation since its construction; the decisions and actions made in order to conserve it; and the installation’s specific needs for preservation, which take into account its living surroundings. The use of a risk management tool intended to minimize discrepancies and misunderstandings created by the near-complete lack of documentation is proposed, and parameters to guide the installation’s preservation and establish priorities are discussed.

This paper describes work carried out by Mexico’s professional community in the field of contemporary art conservation, and especially the ongoing collaboration between the Restoration Laboratory of the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) and the Seminario Taller de Restauración de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo (Workshop-Seminar on Restoration of Modern and Contemporary Art) of the Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía (ENCRyM), both in Mexico City. It describes two case studies in the preservation of art in which organic and biological materials were used by artists Marta Palau Bosch (b. 1934) and Teresa Margolles (b. 1963). These works belong to the MUAC collection.