 Welcome to the first presentation of CAN Conversations called contextualizing the decision-making model in contemporary art conservation. While we wait a couple of minutes, I want to say thank you for being here and also encourage others to step up with ideas and participate in this conversation. We are an inclusive bunch here at CAN and we can help you develop your ideas and expand it out to talk about other topics if you're interested in posing a conversation like this. Whether you're emerging or very experienced from an allied field, you may have a topic that interests others in our community. So please feel free to bring it forward and email Martha's singer. This presentation came out of an email exchange with Yulia and Martha. And Yulia was ready to start a new group in Europe and Martha thought, why not use CAN as a platform to open up the forum for this discussion? So Martha Singer will be the moderator and if you're just joining us, welcome to the CAN conversation. First, thank you to the American Institute for Conservation for helping to organize, post and support the contemporary art networks activities. We could not have done it without you, Ryan Winfield and we thank you. He handles all of our requests and details. So before we get started, each person will present for about 10 minutes and there will be a brief panel discussion. Afterwards, we will be taking questions from you, the community to discuss. So please enter your questions into the Q&A tab at the bottom of the screen, not the tab. And we will look over these as people are talking and pull those together for the discussion. Hi, Martha, can you just like, if you log in? Oh, sorry. All right. So there will be four speakers today, each representing a different context. And before we introduce them now, I want to first start by saying that my name's Joy Blozer and I'm speaking to you from Houston, Texas and the ancestral lands of the Aco Pisa, the Ishak, Karangawa and Sana peoples. This is also home to the indigenous tribes forcibly removed from the Eastern coast including the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Alabama, Cushada and Creek nations. Today, there are more than 70,000 indigenous peoples associated with both recognized tribes in the area and those who've had to relocate because of colonial genocide and land theft. I want to acknowledge their ancestors past, present and future. So I'll begin with introducing each of the presenters as in the order of which they'll be presenting. I guess I'll introduce myself first as Martha was going to be introducing me. My name is Joy Blozer and I represent, I'm coming from the museum context. I'm the Assistant Objects Conservator at the Manille Collection in Houston, Texas and specialize in modern and contemporary materials. I was formerly the Assistant Conservator for Public Outreach at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the David Booth Fellow in Sculpture Conservation at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I earned my MS and MA in Conservation and Art History from NYU and serve as the ECPN liaison to AIC's Contemporary Art Network. And I've been working together with Martha Singer, also on the Contemporary Art Network Board to pull together the canned conversations. Miroslav, but, Vatuak, sorry, Miroslav, I didn't practice, we'll revisit the context. I will help. Vahovjak. Thank you. Yes, okay, yes. Miroslav works as Associate Professor, has worked as Associate Professor since 2012 at the Department of Conservation and Restoration of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Nicholas Copernicus University in Torun and since 2008 as Conservator at the Center of Contemporary Art. He was originally researching Polish 19th century paintings. At the moment, his main interest is focused on modern and contemporary art and techniques as well as ethics and conservation, especially considering interaction with the artists. He is interested in artists' conceptual and performative attitudes and he's co-author of the book recently published in Poland entitled The Intervention of the Conservator into the Works of the Living Artists, Ethical and Conservation Issues. Since 2016, he is also the Deputy Dean of Fine Art at the Nicholas Copernicus University in Torun. Art is back. So, do you want to proceed or are you? I need, I'm almost there. Keep going, do one more person. Okay, so after Miroslav, Yulia will present and she's representing the context of a conservator working in private collections. She serves as Associate Director, Art Conservator for Collection Solo and Uncaus. Yulia has worked as a paintings conservator for the Spanish Royal Palace, for Hamish Duar's Fine Art Conservation London and also as a conservation manager for the Society of Jesus, among others. She teaches at Etua Art Master Program at Nebrija University in Spain. She holds an MA, DEA in Fine Art Conservation and she is an Eternal PhD candidate in Art Conservation from, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to say the name of your university, Caputense University of Madrid. Apologies. She's also a member of AIC, IIC, ICOMCC and on the board of Grupo Español IIC. During COVID-19 confinement, she created GE, IIC, Conservation Resources Commission and is the co-founder of ForTheLoveOfArt.info. She's a frequent speaker in Art Conservation forums. I'll hand it over to Martha Singer. Hi, I'm Martha Singer, everybody. Welcome, I'm so sorry I'm late. Struggling to get on. I am going to next introduce Marika Opeña who graduated from the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences in Germany in 2009 with a Diplom Thesis in Conservation Sciences which she upgraded in 2017 with a master's thesis on Ethics and Multiculturalism in Conservation of Contemporary Art. Marika now works at the Contemporary Conservation which is a private conservation studio in New York City since about 2010 and she is one of the co-finding members of AIC's Contemporary Art Network. Since 2019, she has been researching contemporary art in private practice as an external PhD candidate under the supervision of Dr. Vivienne Van Saas at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. And she is going to be representing the context of private conservation studios. I am your moderator, Martha Singer. Hello, everybody, I'm very happy to be here. Principal of Material Whisperer which is a private conservation studio in New York City area and a fellow of AIC. I also graduated from NYU and I specialize in modern and contemporary sculpture and focus on artist legacy. I am speaking from the Muncie Lenape land. I want to acknowledge the genocide and displacement of indigenous peoples during the colonial era to present, to present day. Sorry, I pay respect to the Lenape ancestors, past, present and future. And before we get going, I'm sure Joy did this but I just want to be sure that we thank the AIC for all their hard work in pulling this all together and a special thank you to Ryan for helping me through these last very painful moments but also he coordinates everything and just works really hard and takes care of all the details and he's awesome. So thank you, Ryan. So as we move forward, Joy is going to discuss the museum context. Miroslav is going to discuss the Kunsthalle context. Julia is going to discuss conservator for private collections and Marika will discuss being a conservator in private practice. And so we are going to start with Joy. Thank you. Thanks, Martha. And hello to all of you. So I've worked in these three institutions for the past five years as a graduate student, a fellow, a contractor and a full-time regular employee in all cases working on contemporary art. I'm now at the Manila collection but I've only been here about two months. So my observations on workflow and decision-making here are definitely in their infancy if they even exist yet at all. So generally I think about that when I'm approaching my work in the museum, my decisions and workflows generally follow a standard model for conservation. And Martha, were you going to introduce the different models? Sorry to go back. No. I mean, I could introduce the different models. I thought we're going to go ahead. That's all right. Okay, so we have emailed out the notion of different decision-making models and a few articles were at the bottom of the event announcement. And the first model came out of, initially out of research and Marika, you probably could explain this better but it comes out of the research of in the Netherlands, in 1999 developed decision-making model for conservation of contemporary art. And this model was revisited in 2019 by the Cologne Institute in combination with RCE to update that model. 2019 model about decision-making model for the conservation of contemporary art. So I consider my work to generally follow that standard and kind of that model. And but in thinking about working on the same object with three different museums, I know my decision-making process would be different based on these different places I've worked. And so in reflecting on my, what I wanted to speak about today, I really wanted to think about how do my decisions change when I'm in a different museum. So I really think that there are three major factors that I consider in a museum. And the first being kind of the museum's mission or as I've heard people here at the Menil Colet is kind of the spirit of the Menil. And it's the museum's approach. Is it artist first, collection first, institution first or a mix? Secondly, kind of the workflows and embedded structure within the museum, the internal structure and embedded workflows and how well the workflows are already defined and the buy-in from your museum colleagues on those workflows. The development of workflows accommodate the more transient contract and intern labor that are coming into it. So it's interesting to think of these workflows as kind of recent to the different, the development of labor in conservation labs in museums. And the final thing is kind of the wild card which is the institutional and personal relationships between stakeholders and our respective powers of authority. And I think this is probably one of the most impactful influences on my decision-making process. So I think my workflow follows a pretty standard model that you're all mostly familiar with. And the conservation point of entry kind of defines my direction. So is it a loan, an exhibition, a collection-based treatment, an artist-driven treatment, a research initiative or is it a triage or disaster response? So each of these categories in the museum has their own kind of institutional workflow that guide how I move forward. And I kind of move forward with the parameters and limitations of that object which mostly involve the timeframe of my decision-making and the logistics of that object. And finally from the goal of treatment and understanding what the goal of intervention is at that point and it's usually defined at this point, I find, albeit in very general terms. And then the regular treatment plan which you all recognize I'm sure is the rest of this kind of looping model. Most interestingly, I don't think that the notion of budget we talked about in conversation and I hope we get back to in our discussion later is quite loose here. And there's, the money comes from very, a lot of different allocations and budgets and they're spread out over a few, can be spread out and played around over a different fiscal years. The last part of the cycle repeats for an object after it enters a collection. So I really think about that the treatments are approached with this in mind that it's a looping cycle where you go into your research, thinking about limitations, your proposals, your interventions and your documentation and that kind of loops back through. So where do I see the different museum environments affecting this process? I find that workflows guide that initial direction and the museum mission influences each of those general steps. And the wild card of stakeholders and relationships and level of authority kind of determines the more softer areas of parameters and limitations and input into our field. And so the green areas where I've boxed in green are where I generally feel unhindered to proceed with a considered decision-making that generally follows what I was taught in graduate school and in following general ethics in the field. So if I were to take my model and put it onto this model that was developed in 1999, the death model in 1999 revised into this model here by the Cologne Institute in 2019, I find that it generally defines how I work through an object within this. And the only point of departure for me or the only point of discrepancy for me that I see is that I don't find the sequential order very accurate that it follows in this way. That often for me, these boxes and circles shift throughout the process and that there's a repetition of the last few steps as a work remains in the collection. We also sent out a decision-making model, a double diamond decision-making model that kind of comes out of design theory. And it's an announcement and it's online on Martha's website. And it was developed by a group of three conservators and I find that to more accurately show the cyclical nature of decision-making in the museum for me. So if I think about where these, the different museum factors affect this particular model of decision-making, I find that the development of a established documented workflows really influenced my ability to follow a considered decision-making model. So if the workflows exist, but they do not accommodate for the particulars of contemporary art, there's a tendency to enter the process in more of a triage or a reactive mode. Whereas the opportunity to fulfill all of the proper steps of conservation like thinking through everything, testing, research, et cetera, prior to making a decision are accelerated or skipped over in order to catch up with the rest of the museum's workflow to either exhibit or load the object. I think the workflows related to acquisition are particularly impactful because the more conservation involvement there is in acquisition, the more I feel like I can achieve a more considered approach and make better decisions to steward an object entering the collection. So it's interesting that the development of workflows to accommodate for conservation's involvement and acquisition I think swings me towards a more comfortable place in my role as a conservator at the museum and that I'm doing a good job as a steward at the object in the collection. And I think it's really interesting to think about the workflows that are being developed and most of them are being written by contractor, intern labor or fellows coming into the labs because they're the transient people who need to understand how the museum works and operates. And then often long-term employees in a lab keep mental workflows. And so it's interesting to think that once these become more defined that I think me maybe as more of an emerging conservator and younger in the field find greater comfort in seeing these workflows laid out and how we're supposed to be proceeding within the museum's environment. So I think the wild card of stakeholders is in their relationships and authority is probably what mostly impacts the desired state and discrepancy of the conservation process of thinking about conditions and where different museums really change how I approach what I'm doing. I think this is where we think of from Glenn Wharton's article about bespoke code of ethics and moral causes is kind of in this more gray zone. So the stakeholders within the museum are the museum's relationship with the foundations and the states, artists, assistants and trustees or loading institutions are impactful and they impact a lot of my decision making in those two red areas. The other interesting stakeholder that I think we don't speak enough about is probably internal relationships within the museum and my colleagues across the museum. If I have a large project I'm pushing for and I make a decision based on overall negotiations with that person and it might involve a lot of different types of treatment at once or with a foundation I'm interested more in asking one set of questions rather than coming back and pushing back again and again and again five times later. It's the interesting thing about internal relationships is it's managing them from kind of a macro view of how you're engaging with these stakeholders over your professional work. The whole collection or also the stakeholders the museum has itself. Let's see, another notion of the stakeholders is how the authority shifts between who is present or who's at a meeting or who's deciding and that authority can shift based on another meeting if there's a different type of power structure that happens in the next meeting that comes. So decisions change and I find that that also changes the course of my decision making throughout the process. I think overall it's a macro view of engaging with stakeholders that is never just based on the object alone. It's more based on a long-term view of relationships and of the collection overall. I think finally the museum mission or the spirit of its approach for its ethos, let's say. I think this is a great deal at how discrepancy between an artwork's current condition and its desired state, both tangible and intangible are defined. If a museum centers the artist instead of collection or the institution and its overall trajectory over an artist or any mix of that, that changes the departure points for conservation, the discrepancy and the conservation consideration. I think a lot about artist interviews if it's, if the institution decides an artist interview is a requirement or an added factor or something that would be nice sometime but likely not to happen and how that changes your considerations based on the museum's ethos and approach to that. And each of the museum I've been and the mission greatly impacts the process in a soft way where you're given verbal guides on how to generally think or approach something but it's not written in the workflows. It creates a kind of gray area of shifting values and maybe more that notion of bespoke code of ethics that's specific to different institutions or different museums. And I think the gray area is where decision-making gets abbreviated, skipped or accelerated. So really just thinking about that my given conditions in the museum environment is that I work with generally the same type of people. There's a continuity of my stakeholders. So I have to consider my long-term approach to those relationships. There's a continuity of care where I'm working on the same collection of objects. There's loans coming in and out but generally we get to revisit artworks and there's a long-term approach to the collection. And then finally there's the notion of considering the collection-based decisions. So thinking about if we're gonna pull out one artwork, why not look at all the works in our collection by that artist to make sure that we're maintaining a collective history and aesthetic across the collection. And thinking about values of hours spent on one object versus other parts of the collection. Is it a good use of our time for the collection overall? And also thinking about like, is it the right battle to engage our stakeholders with on this particular object versus kind of the overall notion of a collection? So I'll leave it at that and let the next person kind of think about their changes still outside of that. Oh, Mike, I know you're on mute. I have a dog, so I apologize. Thank you very much. That was amazing. And now Miroswaf is going to talk about his work at the Kunsthaal in Torunni. Hello, everybody. It's a pleasure to be with you together. When I would relate to this universal model we start with, I would say that it's so universal that it fits maybe even each time. So maybe I wanted to follow exactly this model, but I will try to name some pressures or another more detailed factors I feel are influencing our decisions a little bit more than in the case of traditional art once we deal with the contemporary work of art. But of course, the contemporary work of art is revealing some things which maybe are a little bit more secret about traditional art conservation but still there are there. So I will try to show different pressures, different factors and maybe different paths that can be taken depending on what will be the answer on this little answers I would like to present during this before and during the preservation. So of course, once the work comes and my background is that there'll be like two kinds of works meaning that one of them can come for the permanent collection. So they are bought by the institutions, the other are coming just for the display and probably the attitude is slightly different in both cases, but not stopping on this. The first thing is to find out the state of the work which is called in this more universal model point of departure and maybe in the same time a little bit this next step, the data generation and the registration. And I feel there are at least three very important aspects that had to be taken into consideration. I called them physical curatorial and legal. What do I mean by physical condition of the work? Of course, this material aspect of the work is always our concern, but I think in the case of the contemporary work of art it is much more important to know whether the work is like in a pristine condition, not conserved before like coming exactly from the artist's studio not touched, not aged or whether it is showing significant science of aging or whether it was already touched. The other aspect of this introductionary recognition was this curatorial state of the art of the work. And by this I mean also concerning the display history. So it is also important to know whether the work was already exhibited whether it was printed in some catalog whether it is already the case that it is a recognizable work that influence another artist then I think we will be much more reluctant to put any change to the work. We will try to keep this condition and this image state which is already recognized and known to publicity to curators, to historians of arts. Maybe there is a little bit more freedom when we take somehow anonymous work which is taken just from the studio that was not exhibited before and is known just to the artist. If there is something to be done because it's not the case that if we take something from the artist's studio it does not mean preservation at all. For example, in the case of great Metzger exhibition there were works that were taken from the artist but were kept in his shred for 50 years. So of course the condition of his work was not good and pristine at all but we felt we had much more freedom in presenting these works if they were not cataloged if they were not exhibited anymore. So for example, we could decide it. There is a shortage of time and that Metzger has this philosophy of showing the process of decay. So maybe we can also present his works with the science of this decay and slowly during that exhibition I've conserved them and changed and to show the process. I think we wouldn't allow ourselves to deal with wax if it would be anonymous one. So if we mean our legal status I think there are like two sides of it of this recognition of legal condition of the work. It is first the local legal restrictions concerning the intellectual property and the intellectual property of the artist or the owner is the very important issue which is generating our other decisions. And going from the right to the left I think we go from more standardized and more strict rules like in the public institutions like museums, once we borrow some work from the institution from the museum we had to follow all the conservation standards. Of course we always try to follow that. But anyway, this gray area that Joy already mentioned I think is becoming bigger and bigger once we turn to the left through our turn mostly about the financial things. So he's portraying works to sell them later and have some financial benefits. So for him maybe it's not so important to follow all the rules, for example, to be quick and never to show that the conservation was ever taken. Another situation when we take the works from private collector I think it's a little bit more freedom when they are taken from the public institution. And for example, he can let us to do the conservation but still left some signs in the work that it was touched by conservation. And once we come to the artist the situation can be very complicated and we have really broad range of ways we can go maybe we'll go come up further in our discussion but this ownership will dictate us also attitude toward conservationist errors or some other owners. It will probably influencing very much our decisions. So it can be avoiding any change at all and keep the work in a state as it is. And probably it will be very often in the case of institutions. But if we think about artists I would feel that there is much more openness to an intervention. And then we can think what kind of intervention can it be, material, especially with mechanical works. It is, I think now universal agreement. Change some mechanical things if they are not influencing visuality. But I think artists can be open and we had such case and once he's alive I think this is crucial because this led us to make further decisions. And especially the case of installations it can be even change of the meaning of some conception of the work once it is exhibited once more. But if this are depending mostly on the openness especially I think when the artist is alive. And some basic questions arises who conduct the treatments? If the treatment is to be done and who finally decides who is going to conduct the treatment? Because if we are in the institution it has to be us to conduct the treatment. The truth is that it can be the artist himself who wants to make the process. And it can be conservator but it can be another conservator who is a dream conservator by the artist because he's his friend or he knows his object better than we do. And then there is a question who is to choose who is to do it? And I think in this moment we goes once again back to the ownership if it's institution maybe against a living artist with this decision to do it. But once the artist is alive and he's owning the work I think the situation is like least predictable what can happen and when were often it can happen that the conservator is shifting towards the artistic field and not only to the preservation field. These basic questions maybe we don't state them so often is in the outer of the world look the treatment even if he's not the owner. And so what about some statesmen if the artist for example is not alive or is not present or he doesn't know about the exhibition? For example, as it was with Jean-Kin Glee works which were to be totally damaged but now we can see them at MoMA against the artist world. So who is right? The artist and if it's his final right to decide the issues concerning the treatment or do not judge who shows work which was conserved and he was so dissatisfied that he said take it out from the display. The question how much of the freedom of influence on concerning whether something is still authentic or not, whether something kept integrity original integrity or not, who is to tell this? Artist, curator, conservator, I think important questions which deals with our model of decision-making. Of course we deal with a lot of ethical dilemma and what can be helpful coming to this gray area when we may be very often feel uncomfortable with what is happening, with what actions are we pressed to be taken? Because if I can speak about my situation at the Kunsthalle, the center of contemporary art in Turin there are a lot of different interests. There is an artist who wants to present his work his way. There is a curator who has some vision of the exhibition and for the reason of the vision of exhibition has it can happen that he's sometimes against the artist. There is a director for example who is also putting a pressure especially when there is a famous artist like there was a case of David Lynch. Yeah follow any wish he has whether this is the work from some other institution he's not possessing this anymore and he wants to touch it or he wants you to touch it and it's not a preservation anymore it's maybe even some kind of artistic or at least visual intervention to the work do it. So we have some different pressures but in this case it was also that the artist wanted to make a conservation and what was helping me with the clearing the terminology was to understand that it's an artist repair and not the conservation treatment and once we knew it we could go a little bit far away from maybe from the conservation standards because it was not conservation anymore and to make the subtle distinctions between what we are really doing and I think very often it will be not pure preservation it will be very important for us also to maybe deal with our ethical dilemmas and to feel much more comfortable from our spray zone. So of course consideration of the case studies which were already undertaken by other people on similar works or on the same artist and once again I come back to these terms that Joy already mentioned. So this bespoke conservation and it's more of the history. So like fitting what we are doing to our situations asking as much questions as possible to see what answer are coming out to do this in a group. I think this is really important that it's always a team decision making and in these different paths one time the conservator voice will be more important in the other case the artist voice and sometimes it will be just a director of my institution or the institution which is borrowing the works. So it depends. But what is extremely important and maybe it was not so visible in the model I think what changes everything in a conserving contemporary art is the presence of the artists. And it was also these terms I think which are important which were put also to the paper which is just going to be released in the next issue of the journal American Institute for Conservation is artist active presence which can influence the process not only at the beginning but even during making the conservation and in different stages of conservation. So also the dynamic side of the procedure is really important that can change during the process and artists and conservator cooperation and this dynamic attitude towards it and what is connected with this continues not just one time when acquisition of the work of starting conservation but continuous communication with the artists which in my experience is beneficial for both sides. This is what will be extremely important when doing any step of the beginning, middle or the end of the model of our decision. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mariswa. We are going to move on to Julia who is going to present the context of being a conservator in the context of special collections. So it's all yours. Hello everybody. Can you hear me now? Yes, that's a typical sentence. Hello everyone. So I'm really, really happy to be with you today and to show you how the decision model guidance helped me to follow a path. Even sometimes I would love to do, I would love to art change stakeholders who are around us. Maybe it can be more open to our practice and a fixed checklist. So we got an expression in Spanish, we say everything holds up on a paper and completely different thing is to put into a practice. I am Julia Betancor and I have been working in a private practice at conservation for a long period. But since late 2018, I am so honored to be part of this wide-ranging creative environment who is Solo Collection Solo. Collection Solo is an international art project based in Madrid, which aims to foster support and serve the artwork today. Solo Space Museum and Art Support Programmit which began in 2014 have now more than 800 art pieces and the collections spotlights the wealth of connections that exceeds through time and across different creativeness, cultural and aesthetic trends. Well, it's a private collection and it is totally from only two owners and this is something that is really particular and because of that, I'm going to talk about this position. Oops, our Open Museum, sorry, our Open Museum is in constant change. It's a workplace, a getaway, an environment where people can come together and where the conversations can start anytime. It's an space where... Sorry, yes, sorry, it's an space. The Solo have like a patronage or mentoring project with numerous initiatives to support arts and culture and that includes commission networks, international awards, annual grants, publications and tailored artists' programs support. Solo backs new media creation through an initiative called ONCAUSE offering practical hands-on assistance to new media artists. As part of its mission to foster the contemporary art, Solo also runs two artists' residence, one in Madrid, one is based in Madrid and the other one is in the town of Somo at the northern coast of Spain. For ranging, we are ready to open a huge space nearby the Royal Palace in Madrid and I can tell you that every week arrives two new artworks to our collection. So that is only to situate where is my place, where I'm working in and as you may know, well, artist voice for that is something good to say that because artist voice is vital for us and it's an important tool for conservation indeed. And even in the left picture, you can see me in the 1905, when I was in an internship in the Reina Sofia Museum with two people that I really love it. I was with Canada. Now with more people, I can talk with the artists living now and who are participating in our programs because from 2035 artists that we have in the collection, there are only two who pass away already. I mean, it's only Nanjun Peik. We have a little painting from him and Barhola and a Spanish artist. So we are looking forward to continues with these programs because this is not usually in private collections, but I don't know why. I think maybe because I try to convince the owners and because the owner study fine arts and he did conservation as well. He's quite sensitive in this case. And so we have the help and the support from them. And because I'm really, really, really in the same path as Miroslav, but in the private sector, I want to show you how it's like kind of visual stakeholders were bringing in my work. As always, who has the main voice about contemporary art, conservation in a private art collection? So here you can see my personal visual map about the main stakeholders. You can see red points and I can tell you the red color circles. You can read the name of the most relevant stakeholders voice in my local conservation ward in a day-a-day. In my experience as a private collection conservator, most of the times I am immersed in a long art chain business model. And I have to deal with sometimes with really stars international galleries or start our market, living artists as well. And that is an issue because well, it's not only because I am non-native English, but sometimes they are not easy to connect with. And as you see in the announcement from this conversation, the decision-making model don't run as well as all of us desire. And I'm pretty sure you have read the Glenn Wharton article mentioned at here. And it is fundamental to understand how the field needs different framework to be combined locally. And what I should do in a private collection is to recreate a pristine art conservation guarantee for the owner in order to don't lose the inherent artwork value and authenticity, meaning core for the owners. Because compared with the 80s, this is important for the collector now buying the latest artwork for a living artist could have a high value resale potential. And I would love to see in this visual map. It's not similar as Miroslav, but there is something that I have had in the left corner with labs, network conservators and labs. And for me, I can't tell you that it's the most important thing. I mean, when I am connected with my colleagues from some of them are now connecting here today, that is the most, it's like the stone who helps me to continue with this protocol, to continue with the making decision model as a path to follow. That's because I have to deal with art insurance, some artists and the art gallery as I have mentioned it. Obviously, in my case, my private collector, the value, the art value is not only money. And that is something that I'm really, really lucky about legal needs in my country. In my situation, I cannot talk quite a lot, but I have to tell you that we are working with NFT and various art and blockchain. And I would love to convince them. And I'm telling you in here, if somebody has an idea to add conservator in the blockchain or in the trustability of the art proceed sale, it will be very, very nice because that is going to help us quite a lot. In the artist as well, this is the, you can see the three people who can be working with the artists. Nowadays, with the living artists, you have the assistants who can do the work who normally can do the art conservator. The producers who are here to stay and they are the people who sometimes the artist want to do or re-create or repair, artists repair how, as many of us loved to say before, do the treatment or, obviously, a specific training conservator can do the job. So for me, because I'm quite visual, I'm going to show you two cases. This is Sumikato, a Japanese artist. And this art piece is really special for me because that was the reason why I'm working in this place. But unfortunately, this sculpture used to spend more time lying over the floor than stand up itself. And at the first time, there was no upper end reason. The artist Sumikato and his work on Title I is a mixed media sculpture painted soft vinyl, metal, and good. William, can I interrupt you really quickly? Yes, of course. The time is, we're running short on time. So show the two case studies, but just the basics would be good. Lovely. I will do it. So this is the thing. At the end of the day, we'd say to proceed and rescue this art piece. And as you can see, even we have been trying to talk with the main stakeholders, the art gallery and artists we couldn't until we couldn't know. I couldn't because I was an art conservator. So what my CEO does is talking with the gallery and the gallery contacted the artist. And the artist said, please, can you fix the arm just adding some gorilla or any adhesive like that? And maybe you can pursue. I mean, you can fix it. And but it's not possible for me because I have to talk with him because you can lose the rotary movement from the arm. So we have decided to do it with like adhesive. We can have proper adhesive in our land. And we decide to hang on the art piece with two fish cords to the attaching to the eye. How do you say that? Well, to the ceiling. Because otherwise this art piece could be a stand up. And let's go in to see the second case who is cause. And I'm happy because here in the conversation there is a person who was helping with this art piece. So everybody knows cause. This is an art piece who changed his price in just a few years. And now it's one of the most top 10 artists in the world. So we got this art piece at the collection. And I don't know why this art piece has like a, how do you say, only men? Like, oh, I forgot to, when everybody want to attach it. It's totally irresistible for the people. So everybody touches and leaves over the surface these fatty fingers, food prints. And we can remove it. So we have to do a claim. And this was a nightmare because I have to talk with the only person that I know. And it's a colleague from me. And he is allowed to work with his job, his artworks. So we talked with the art insurance to try to fix it with this laboratory in New York. But the insurance, the art insurance done allowed us. And at the end, they proposed his own art conservator. So the stakeholders in here was the art insurance because they don't want to pay the proper conservation treatment. And the person who really can touch this artwork because they know how this artist works. So the art piece is still waiting for a moment, the better moment when the art insurance say, yes, you can go ahead. A good example of the decision-making model for me was two years ago. I have to be sincere in here. And I didn't know this model since I have been in the American Institute of Conservation meeting like three years ago. So we have been working with four colleagues. And we can do it. And maybe you enjoy it because we have done the preservation of the algorithm in this Mario King-Lehman Artificial Intelligence artwork, Memories of Passerby One. And this was a really, really successful case study. And I'm really happy to have this scale from the decision-making model. And just to ending, I'm sorry that I have to read because as you realize when I don't read, I lose the control. I want to leave you with this positive sentence. This is another piece from the collection. The name is appropriate response by Mario King-Lehman and it says, as well, an organ art. So it's like our guru artwork. So when we need to talk with somebody, we rest over this reconatur. And we talk with the artificial intelligence. And the artwork begins to run. And this is a sentence that the algorithm told me when I was alone with the art piece. So it is good for all of us. And for me, the artificial intelligence say that intervention with limited resources can save disaster consequences. So that is all. OK, Marika, you are on. She is representing private conservation and the stakeholders and decision-making models. In that way, I don't hear you. You need to unmute. I practice this and it's still hard. And her full screen, here you go. Hi. So this is my turn now. As Martha said, I work at Contemporary Conservation in New York City. Our clients are predominantly galleries, private collectors, insurances, and artists. And I also recently began researching what private practice conservation for contemporary art actually means. I'm doing this research as an external PhD candidate at Maastricht University with Vivian van Saas as my first supervisor. And therefore, today I will share my perspective of conservation for the contemporary art market where I've worked for the past 11 years. And I will also share a little bit of the process that I'm going through currently in my research, which is developing the lens of a researcher observing my own field and my own daily practice. It is important to highlight that Contemporary Conservation is a large studio. Christian Scheidemann, of course, is the owner and founder. And then there's the team, which are seven conservators with different specializations and backgrounds. And obviously, or naturally, there are very different observations about how conservation in the market works, what it functions as. And I just want to make clear, I'm speaking from my perspective, which may not necessarily be comparable with anybody else's. I'm emphasizing this because the perception seems to vary quite a bit from person to person in studio to studio. I have yet to research which factors influence how conservators perceive their own role and practice in this field. But what I do see that seems somewhat common is how contextual conservation is, how each work comes with a story. And each story influences the decision-making surrounding a conservation treatment far beyond the material issues at hand. In preparation of this panel, we were all urged to visualize our decision-making. And believe me, I tried really hard to come up with a model, but it always felt either two-dimensional or linear or flat. And so instead, I chose to use the classic image of an atom with its electrons swiveling around its nucleus core, full of energy, and hard to picture. Instead of a model, I will share a story that is currently developing a contemporary conservation to show what factors influence as navigating a situation and therein our decision-making. The story I picked is, of course, anonymized for confidentiality reasons. It is at times simplified and at other times adjusted to get the relevant points across. There's nothing unusual about this story. It is a typical story of an artwork not for sale. Or let's say, if conservation goes well, it won't be for sale in the future. Or the owner wants to keep the artwork in her collection. And of course, I'm going to start with a bit of the relevant information of the artwork for you to give us, to have an imagination of it. It's a work by British Nigerian artist, Chris Ophilly, who painted it in the early years of the 2000s. It is a predominantly dark blue painting on canvas with this classic layering of oil paints, polyester pours, glitters, and the painted dots creating a deep and complex appearance as well. Some know him for the elephant-dung balls that are attached to the surfaces, but this one doesn't have one. The work was purchased by its current owner almost immediately after it was completed and it has hung in her apartment in Lower Manhattan ever since. Late last year, the owner reached out to us because the Christmas tree had fallen into the painting and has left a long scratch right through the center. Deeply upset by the incident, she wanted us to treat the painting on site as soon as possible. As a long-term client of ours, we know her artworks tend to show damages related to her deliberate fusion of everyday life and her passionate art collecting. We also know she can be a demanding client hard to satisfy in any service she inquires and with a tendency of micromanagement. In fact, in 2008, we treated this very painting for a small scratch at her residency when suddenly she blamed my colleague for a different scratch elsewhere on the painting. Trapped in this uncomfortable situation, my colleague felt obligated to extend the treatment beyond the initial proposal at no additional compensation. Now, 13 years later, we went on site again to assess the damage of the fallen tree and to following the wish of the client to ideally treat the painting right there. Since 2008, of course, the painting's surface has aged further and now shows a more prominent green iridescent surface over the otherwise dark blue hues of the work. We all know that treating iridescent surfaces is extremely difficult and my colleague determined despite knowing that this would be upsetting to the owner, treatment on site was impossible and the work would have to come to the studio instead. The problem for our client is that the painting is rather large and can only leave the current location via crane through the window. Money is not an issue for the owner when it comes to renting a crane, paying the fees for temporary street closure to the city's department of traffic or even extensive conservation expenses since she also has sufficient insurance. However, she places high ideological value on her art collection while also being keenly aware of every work's financial assets. This means she has high expectations in the conservation outcome and it is now on us to make the right choices in our approach of this rather risky situation because we don't know yet what the results can be of conservation. When a conservation outcome is unknown as it is here, ideally the treatment proposal becomes exploratory. This means only material research and potential testing is outlined based on the conservator's assessment, a careful outlook is given and the uncertainty is emphasized along with highlighting that the results may prove insufficient to justify intervention. Communicating and navigating these expectations to clients is a sensitive matter, especially when the artworks represent high monetary values. It helps when the client is familiar with our work and vice versa when we understand their interest. Such exploratory projects are usually only possible when moral pressure and or financial fluidity are particularly high, but this also increases the performance pressure for the conservator. So what I have hoped to highlight here are the aspects of risk management that are a part of our daily practice. We are constantly reading the situation to assess not only the material issues of the artwork, but just as much the interest of the client and their in the future of the artwork. We need to satisfy their expectations, which in turn highly depends on how we communicate our expectations in our conservation abilities, which in turn depends on our experience, our manual skills, our team discussions, our ethical principles, and our financial calculation. The clients rely on our expertise often not only on the physical intervention, but also on re-establishing trust in their artwork after an accidental damage or aging reaction was treated by us. It seems to happen quite easily, that if this trust between owner and artwork is not re-established after conservation, they decide to release the artwork from their collection, which means it goes out for sale or is declared a total loss. This means the artwork vanishes into the nirvana of insurance storage houses and God knows when it comes back to life. In every conservation project, you can find these stories unfolding as the artwork comes and goes through our studio. Each time the conservators have to feel out the situation surrounding the artwork as if just like the Adam, the core cannot exist without its outer shells and orbitals. And with that, I would like to close with a note on the decision-making model because as Maratha and Joy have already mentioned, it was recently revised in the year's long effort at Cologne Institute for Conservation Sciences and one significant adjustment to the 1999 model that makes it much more useful for me personally is the registration of what they call the point of departure at the beginning of every conservation project, which is basically what I just did here in telling my story. And in private practice, the story shapes everything. Thank you. Thank you all very, very much. Do any of you want to comment on some of the comments of our other panelists before we open up to a Q&A? One of the things I personally responded to when Joy was speaking was the concept of time that I'm always aware of as a private conservator that doesn't exist for us the same way it exists in museums and though we don't call time a stakeholder in some way it is, there are conservators that have 40 year relationships with artworks and museums. And you do get that when you're working for private collectors over time and you've built up a relationship with them in private practice, but it's just not the same as a way to return, you know, sometimes artwork after 20 years, there's a new technique or new material that now makes a treatment possible that wasn't possible before. And so I just wanted to bring in the concept of time more prominently into the discussion. It's interesting to have a discussion with my colleague here about time yesterday in the museum and the different arrangement of time here that the time poster is often for preparing an object for exhibition or loan. And you can make a decision based on getting it up on the wall, but we have continued access to it. So you can, you know, do a little bit more work in the gallery after or you can do a little bit more work after it comes down that the time is there's kind of a seems like there's a peak at which you have to hit but you can keep going further once you kind of satisfy the other museum departments in a way it's a different concept of time that we have an extended timeline. Yeah, Marika, you wanted to say something. Yeah, I just wanted to say that like conservation in an institution, the way I imagine it because I don't have much experience there except for an internship of six months. I imagine, you know, you finish the conservation and then it stays in your collection, right? And then you can observe what has happened like what will happen to it in the future how it responds to display or storage or use. And we often don't even know what the future of this artwork will be. Like if the work is for sale, we don't know will it go to Miami or to somewhere on Long Island or these are different climates. Is it only a summer residence, only a winter residence? So we need to, A, we cannot observe our own conservation treatments long-term and B, we need to prepare the artwork for all kinds of scenarios that we don't know what they will be. I also, the other thought I had when Miroslav was speaking is the, I think this comes up more in private possibly than museum, but that whole idea he has of, you know, if people haven't seen the artwork before and is new to the public, the, that discrepancy that shows up in the kind of traditional decision-making model isn't there because there is no discrepancy if there is no memory of the artwork from before. Miroslav, do you wanna kind of speak on that a little bit? I think you point out it well, but maybe this is the point that there is no discrepancy then so much. But there was, there is always some discrepancy if we know that it aged. So of course, for conservator, there is. And I think when I mentioned Metzger, there were works which had like half centimeter thick accumulation of dust. So then anybody could see of course that it's not a pristine condition. And we decided that one work was presented like this, just to show when we started and a little bit to start the procedure. Yeah, but I would say this is different situation which gives us a little bit more freedom because we don't have so much pristine image to compare. So we don't have this ideal goal to catch. So we feel much more free to also exhibit natural way of aging. And now we also touch the other, I think issue that we are much more tolerant to see aged artwork which is old and traditional and very often very reluctant to see the new work which is damaged. And we really have normally much stronger feeling that something is not okay. But in the case of the work which was never seen which was taken from the studio, I think, yeah, there is a little bit like more freedom because of this not having possibility to compare to the idealistic state of the work. But I would also maybe add that to what Maraika said that also in our center of contemporary art in the Kunsthalle we also often are in the situation if we are preparing the objects for the exhibition and then the exhibition goes somewhere else or just objects comes back to the stores of the institutions we are borrowing from them. We also don't see the result of the preservation and still sometimes we have to really deal with the pressure of time and make some decisions, some compromises together with curator and to tell him whether I'm really going to prepare this work correctly for the exhibition, I don't have enough time. So sometimes, and once again, I come back to the Metzger exhibition, there was possibility to display the works like half conserved but it was also because of the artist himself who was putting this idea of decay inside of his art. So we were like feeling that we are allowed to display his works like this. But this tension between what we are able to do and what is possible to do in a short term. I saw also a question already from our participants and there was a question about how much time do I have in the center of contemporary art to recognize the work and it depends, sometimes it's just weeks. So just when the work comes to the institution and I think if it comes from the private collector, especially when we don't have so much information which is normally really hard to get them from the collector. He doesn't have good resolution photos. It's not so easy to come to him to really see the objects. And very often he sees an exhibition as an opportunity for us to show his works, but on the other hand to make a conservation of these works without additional expenses. So sometimes they put the slightly damaged work consciously to have it better after the exhibition. Thank you so very much. Yeah, very interesting. I'm gonna switch gears now and just propose one of the questions which was the first question which has anybody taught the decision making model to conservation students or taught it to people outside? I'm asking this because one of the questions in the chat has to do with working at a gallery and auction house. I've actually proposed teaching the decision making model to a group of people I'm working with where there's an arts committee and people are not conservators and don't quite understand our decision making. And I thought it might be a good first step actually as we start to go through it as a way so that they know what process they're gonna go through with us as we do a very complicated treatment. But I was wondering if other people have taught it or have suggestions about how to teach it. So I would have another question to whom we are going to teach because I think it is different attitude once we teach our students in conservation. And then my answer would be that the best way as usual is to propose theory together with the cases because as Julia mentioned, very often the reality is more or less far away from the written advisors. So what I do also with my students is to show the theory and to show the cases and to show that sometimes they don't stick together perfectly. And the other thing, especially important for our community is also to show our unsuccessful attempts and to share them. I think there is a great, great pressure that conservation is always perfect. The truth is not always perfect, but as the ethical demands which has to be really high are so high, it is sometimes hard to admit that we've made a compromise. But I think this gray zone that Joy was mentioning, we have to accept it that there is a gray zone and the more we discuss it and the more even mistakes we've made, we share, I think the more we help the community to not make the same mistakes in the future. Yeah, so honesty, case studies and honesty, yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna read you Glenn Wharton's comments. I don't know if people have gotten to read them. He's struck by how our field has shifted in recent years to recognize how different constellations of people in different environments and at different times will inevitably make different conservation decisions. To what extent should conservators enter their justifications and personal opinions? How should that be integrated into their documentation? I am thinking about Seneca, I don't know how to pronounce her last name, suggestion of auto ethnography. Well, can I say something to that? Yeah, absolutely. It's a sticker and the article is very good. It's in the IIC 2016 thing, the publication. And I have to say that our condition reports or treatment reports are for the clients and they are most often not art professionals in that sense that they would understand or even want to hear technical information or reasoning, they just want to see what is done, see that it was reversible or minimal intervention or at least there are a lot of symbolic words to use. But what we do is take notes that are attached to the project in our database. So if there are risky situations, we try to make notes of that and keep track of that. Because in that example that I was talking about, the 2008 case, it was really good to have the traces of what happened in 2008 to then go back to the same painting 13 years later. We have to be careful here, right? So I think I'm not sure if that answers Glenn's question I think in general, self-reflection and self-awareness and then as Nero Swar just said of honesty are just really important. I do not think that they're always necessary to communicate to clients in full scope, right? Like I think the clients, I'm not saying you should like them, absolutely not but I think you need to be very careful in what and how you communicate with it because even if there's something that I'm not concerned about whatsoever, a client who's hyper concerned would not be able to handle this information. You know, it's interesting because one of the things about the double diamond decision-making process and design is that there is so much ethnography in that. There's so much, there's a lot of questions people ask and you kind of document your process and you're supposed to be open and brainstorming and thinking outside the box. And there's a lot of information that's produced that's interesting to hold on to as the kind of creative problem solving that you don't necessarily share in the end, even in the design process with the client when you pitch the final thing but it's interesting to have on file. Yeah, did anybody else want to comment on kind of the... I think it's interesting to think about that in different museums, I mean, there's just different documentation methods for how we think about it or who was it. But I think about Marika, maybe if I treat an artwork that is from a private collector, it's coming in for a loan and you ask them if there's any documentation they go, oh, I didn't get any. You know, and it's interesting to think about that change in workflow between private conservation and what we're doing here where we have just brains of documentation, you know, that you're keeping everything that we don't get it then from the private conservator. So like it seems to be that the change in workflow and I wonder, Yulia, if you keep your reflections on your treatments or you've got a file, you know, or something like that but it's interesting to think about how does documentation, how can it actually follow an artwork if it's not in a collection or if it's not in a public collection, I don't know. Yeah, thank you, Joy. Yes, in fact, in our private collection, I'm the only one who do condition reports about everything that I can. The problem is because nobody cares at my institutions, but I always think in the people who is coming back before, I mean, when I die, somebody's going to be in my position, I hope so. So I'm always having the future, the future conservators in my mind. That is something that I have learned when I was in the Renaissance of the Museum with my colleagues. And I think it's important, I have done a terrible conservation treatment because I don't know. I remember when I used to work with AC33 Primal but I don't really, really put my attention in the condition report. That I think is something important, not only because I am working in a private collection. I think it's important because sometimes and somehow my collector loans, I mean, they loan the artworks for exhibitions. And if you wanna play in the first league as a private collection collector, you have to, I mean, have a conservator near by you. And then this is something that is not normal, at least in my environment because my case is like unique in Spain. And it's not because it's a huge, in my case it's not because it's a huge collection but I think it's something that I wanna share with everybody because I think this is important for all the collectors around the world. And I think we need to talk with them. Somehow we are always talking between each other but they don't know where we're talking right now. Registers, auction houses, galleries, they don't know even sometimes the people who are working in there, they don't know the material. So sometimes when the description from the art gallery comes to the studio, to the museum, to the space, it's not true. And it's like, come on, don't copy what the gallery writes because it's not, I'm sorry, it's not nothing against the galleries, but it's not true. I mean, and this is something that we have as well to take care about it because in the future, this is going to be everywhere. We are globally communication. So I'm sure somebody's going to read my condition reports and they will love that everybody understand them. That's the reason why I do it in English, that's the case. Thank you. I'm going to ask a final question because we're hitting the end. And it's one more question, but I wanted to ask it, it's from Brian Castriotta and it kind of hits on, I think Julia a little bit about why we, it kind of is a full circle, which is why I liked the question. He wanted people to speak about conflict resolution, kind of what strategies or methods do we follow when there's a disagreement or lack of consensus between stakeholders? And I think that's why we actually had this conversation in the very beginning with you is because you're needing to educate. And so it's not one thing, but can you talk a little bit about if you've changed anything or your process to kind of work with the stakeholders at the collection and anybody else on the panel as well in terms of conflict resolution in making decisions? I don't know, maybe I can come back once again to the David Lynch case, it was already presented but I think it's a quite good one. So at the beginning, the artist wanted to make a repair by himself and using very simple, totally not reversible materials changing the visuality of the work. And I was like trying to convince him not to do it, but what he wanted was that he's to do this by himself and I am to deliver the materials he needed. But just by assisting him because of pressure of the opening of the exhibition, the pressure of director who of course wanted the star to be taking care as much as possible. It gives the opportunity after communication to treat the other works different. So it was not idealistic situation. So a few works were done according to the artist world which was against the conservation standards. But once again, we come back to this communication area which is I think more and more important and we have to stress more and more that some social skills maybe were much more important in this case and getting the trust of the artist to treat the other paintings in a better way than was my conservation knowledge. So always, and I think when we have different stakeholders we have to agree that there will be no situation that everybody is happy, but I think this is okay. But I would say that we come back to, if I would come back to my model I would come back to the ownership. At the very last, the owner has the, I think Dijk is right to take the final decision. So he's to cut the conflict. And I think it is really important to underline that once again if we compare traditional conservation and contemporary conservation, we are not so important anymore somehow. If we do the work of, from the past and there is no outdoor to say, I am opposite to it. Well, we are like the most important, the best person to take decisions. It is not anymore like this. Once we enter this strange adventurous world of contemporary art. So I think we have to agree that there will be a conflict and some unsatisfied sides and that we are dealing with compromises which are not always the nicest thing. What I wanna say is because we have this technological collection. We work with new media artists. That is something new stakeholders to have in your back because normally these new artists are coming from another backgrounds and it's quite difficult for, at least for me to convince not only the owner, but the artist. Just let them know that please, if you wanna this, I don't know, 4K video, 3D, whatever for the future, we need to work with you. And it is something that we maybe need to adapt as well in another extra making decision model because this is something apart. I mean, the people who is coming from another niche and it's important to achieve our goals as well as facilitators, let's say, instead of conservators. That is something that I think, because Ryan is in this video. So I think it's important to put in the table. I don't know what you think about this. Well, I was gonna ask the question. Could your collector who's got residencies and artists actually making the art, could it be part of the contract with the lawyer to incorporate artist interview and talking to them about having kind of putting your concerns into before they even get there so that it's understood when they're there that it will be part of the conversation. So it's presented to them coming in, it's not added on after. Yes, sorry, yes, that is part of my job actually because they don't know nothing about conservation. So that is something that I'm showing to them how is the good news, why is it good to have a conservator nearby you because maybe I don't know nothing but I listen to Brian or Glenn or everybody who's in there and it's like, oh my goodness, did you listen to this? You need to do that. So now the conservation aspects are before the pre-adquisition and even, yeah. So we try to be before that decision. So we try to work with the artists if the negotiation can be done. Yeah, that is part of the deal. Something else. Does any, do either one of you, Joy or Marika wanna comment? Well, Joy posted it in her chat. So I'm gonna just, you know, to add to this, like what Julia and Muroswa have said already, I think we sometimes, you know, when there's a client who asks for certain treatments or has expectations that are impossible in the conservation outcome, then we have the right to say, we don't do it, right? And this is a freedom that I'm glad at times we can take. I mean, like, you know, there was an artwork that came to us three times in a row because every time the owner had brought it back onto his yard and the third time we said, we don't do it and you learn from your mistakes, right? Ideally, so. Thank you all so much. This has been an amazing first panel. You guys have set the bar so high. I would like to encourage everybody out there if they would like to be part of a panel or set up a conversation or moderate a panel or have an idea of other people they would like to speak to, please get back to us. Julia and Muroswa and Marika and Joy, thank you all so very much for being here today. And I just want to say thank you all for just doing an amazing job. So thank you on a Friday. Thank you, Marisa, for being pushy about it. Thank you, Marisa. Thank you. Happy spring, everybody. And also this will be posted on our YouTube channel and we'll put the link out for people so that they can see. So thank you all. That's it. Have a good afternoon. Bye, everybody. Bye. Have a good afternoon. Thank you. Take care. Thank you.