http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications/newsletters/13_2/feature1.html
-Constantine, Mildred, ‘Preserving the legacy of 20th-Century art,’ The Getty
This site deals with the changing nature of the art of the twentieth and twenty-first century. The material is presented as an essay with the occasional picture in the middle of the page. This site summarises the conference entitled "Mortality Immortality? The Legacy of 20th-Century Art," which was organized by the Getty Conservation Institute, which occurred during March in 1998. The conference merged a diversity of disciplines and opinions to create a dynamic picture of the preservation challenge of so much of contemporary art. The information deals with not only the artist’s viewpoint, but also that of the curator, the conserver, the buyer, the dealer, the museum, the law, and ethical and moral concerns. This site looks at the question:
“Will this art survive? Can the intentions of the artists that created this work be preserved over time? Once art leaves the hands of its creator, it enters the art community. It is exhibited, bought, and collected, and it becomes the responsibility of those persons and institutions in whose care it has been placed. What are the possibilities, limits, and importance of preserving art composed of ephemeral materials? Is contemporary art only for the present? If not, who has the responsibility for its future?”
The site speaks of art that is no “longer a single object but is complex, multiple, divisible, and separable.” Jean-Yves Mock, the retired curator of the Georges Pompidou Art and Cultural Center in Paris, expresses his view that we should accept the aging of materials and approach conservation problems from a practical standpoint. He also stressed that the burden of responsibility for the preservation of contemporary works of art lies more with living artists than with the institutions that house their work.
Christa Thurman, curator and conservator of the department of textiles at the Art Institute of Chicago, speaks of the curator's need to know every single substance used in the composition of each work in order for it to be accepted into the collection. She was inhibited from making acquisitions if substances could not be identified, or if the identified substances did not, after investigation, yield sufficient information for the curator/conservator to be able to confirm its properties. Despite this however, there are works in the Institute's collection that do not have this information.
Miguel Angel Corzo said during the conference, "how will our time be remembered? What evidence will be left of the 20th century's creative spirit for future generations to ponder? These issues are as important to conservation as more traditional areas of inquiry." However, some artists clearly intend that some of their art vanish and then be reconstructed. An example of Félix González-Torres’s artwork is used, which consists of pile of candy, in the collection of MOMA, which is very close to my case study of chocolate. Robert Storr, a curator in the painting and sculpture department at MOMA explained that Félix González-Torres’s work is,
“Of a semi-disposable nature inasmuch as the audience is encouraged to take the pieces of candy that compose this floor sculpture. As a result, during the course of the exhibition, the piece disappears in stages and then entirely and eventually must be reconstituted with new candies."
The conference acknowledged that some artists actually intend for their work to be temporary and non-repeatable. An example used, is Andy Goldsworthy’s 1997 commissioned artwork, by the Getty Research Institute. However, Thomas Dreier said, "the law fails where the nature of a given work is its change, and/or where the artist objects to the work being preserved in its original form."
The conference also looked at whether contemporary art was only for contemporary times. Most agreed with Roy Perry, head of conservation at the Tate Gallery in London when he said, "if we do not preserve the art of today for tomorrow's audience, their knowledge and experience of our culture will be, sadly, impoverished." However, this clearly runs against the artist’s intentions if they are to allow the work to perish.
Artist Judy Chicago declared that values are passed on through "value-laden icons" and that these things need to be preserved. She said that,
"If we are really going to have a diverse society, a global society, our museums have an obligation to begin to both acquire and preserve a diverse view of the human experience through those objects."
However, there was the general recognition that not everything could be preserved. The question of how then can we determine what is most important to leave to the future was also looked at. It was decided that it is best to preserve what is meaningful to us now. "That makes conservation a highly political matter—political in the sense that people who are advocates for preserving this have to encounter people who are advocates for preserving that, and it has to be negotiated."
The last session of the conference focused on the issue of responsibility. Who, in the end, will decide what will be preserved and how? This proved to be an unanswerable question.
These are some key quotes from the conference regarding the preservation of ephemeral artworks:
• "Nothing is sacred, little is safe, and the best way to preserve valuable objects is to bury them underground, the way the pharaohs did, never to see the light again."
-Helen Escobedo, Artist
• "It is . . . never the material alone that we want to preserve, but the intrinsic, symbolic quality of the work of art more or less engrained or bestowed on the material."
-Jurgen Harten, Director, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
• "Works of art, like human beings, are fated to live dangerously to fulfill themselves. . . . In the end, there is no alternative to our acceptance of mortality—for individuals, generations, and the objects that represent them."
-Thomas M. Messer, Director Emeritus, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
• "Not all contemporary art will survive, nor is intended to."
-Debra Hess Norris, Director, University of Delaware/Winterthur Art Conservation Program
• "Permanence/impermanence . . . nothing could better describe the paradox of a human being, the nature of our institutions—social, political, and religious—and crystallize the very essence of the human condition."
-Bill Viola, Artist
• "The law fails where the nature of a given work is its change, and/or where the artist objects to the work being preserved in its original form."
-Thomas Dreier, Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Patent, Copyright, and Competition Law, Munich
• "I think it's okay to make … use some nontraditional material, but I think that if there is a bond between artist, collector, museum, and that whole succession of work, then the artist has to do everything possible to arm the next recipient of the work with the ability to maintain the work."
-Cliff Einstein, Collector
• "[French philosopher and historian] Etienne Gilson summed it up quite well when he wrote, 'There are two ways for a painting to perish. One is for it to be restored; the other is for it not to be restored.' "
-James Coddington, Chief Conservator, Museum of Modern Art, New York