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

Shifting Collections Stewardship Roles
Acknowledging the malleability of the field, Herman Aben (1995)
states, “There seems to be a lack of awareness of professional ethics being
a never-ending process” (p.108). At the time of he made this statement,
thirteen years ago, it was the first time an international group of
professionals had come together to discuss the inherent challenges of
ephemeral media in modern and contemporary art, and so it marks a time
of change in thought and practice. This change in conservation ethics
directly affects the thought and practice of collections managers.
At the “Shifting Practice, Shifting Roles? Artists’ Installations and
the Museum” conference at the Tate Modern Museum in March, 2007, Jill
Sterrett gave a presentation entitled, The museum’s response to
installation art in terms of shifting practices within conservation and the
challenges of custodianship. She spoke of a museum putting up a
temporary installation and then deciding to keep the work for the
permanent collections. (Sterrett, 2007) This notion of keeping art
originally meant to be temporary is interesting because it is precisely how
much of this type of artwork ends up being accessioned to a museum’s
permanent collections. Often a museum commissions an artist to install a
work temporarily and then decides to acquire this piece. However, the
artist may not have created the work with any intentions for permanency.
35