From Sharks to Sugar: Addressing Conservation Issues of ... - incca

Examples of this type of art range from Joseph Beuys’ Eurasia
Siberian Symphony 1963 made in 1966 with mixed media listed as a panel
with chalk drawing, felt, fat, hare, and painted poles, to Janine Antoni’s
Gnaw 1992 installation piece made of chocolate, lard, and lipstick, both in
the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Some
art employs the use of one unusual material in mass repetition, such as in
Tom Friedman’s untitled four-foot-high sculpture of stacked sugar cubes
in the form of the artist’s body.
Art conservators commonly treat artwork made by artists who are
deceased. In that situation, conservators must become detectives. Based on
research, conservators gather as much data as possible to guess at what the
artist would have intended. This project focuses on methods of
preventative conservation, specifically on collections managers capturing
information from artists while they are alive.
This topic is important to the museum field because this kind of
artwork is being exhibited and collected by major museums that have a
stake in preserving it. I initially believed that a system of standard
procedures would be helpful to museum staff when dealing with this type
of art. But in doing this research I learned that an important step is to
create an effective communication system between the artists who create
the pieces and the museums that acquire them. Artists and other museum
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