Repositioning the challenge

Contemporary artworks require a new type of research for their perpetuation

While I acknowledge the valuable research conducted on the subject of documentation, a key point is understated: behind the challenge of the effective documentation of contemporary artworks lies a critical problem regarding the type of the research required to perpetuate those works.

As becomes clear when considering the theoretical debates explored in Chapter I, contemporary artwork’s perpetuation demands complex, laborious and ongoing research on the artwork’s identity and ontology. Contemporary artworks —being often context and site specific, manifesting variability in their instantiations and spatial configurations, using often ephemeral material and technologies that become obsolete— in addition to posing challenges in terms of their material and technological constitution (and re-constitution), they also pose challenges with regard to managing their identity and their ontology. Currently, this problem is only hinted at in the documentation discourse and I want to argue that, in order to have a chance of solving the challenge of perpetuating contemporary artworks, it is of vital importance to bring this problem to the fore and to seek to confront it directly.

As explored in Chapter I, with regard to a contemporary artwork, what is constitutive of its identity is not self-evident. A contemporary artwork’s different instantiations can vary significantly, and, although varied, each instantiation is presented to audiences as the same artwork. For every instantiation, decisions are made which make claims about the artwork’s contingent and constitutive properties. In other words, each instantiation constitutes a statement regarding the artwork’s identity. Therefore, regardless of whether we consider the artwork’s identity as fluid and multiple (where change constitutes an evolution), or as concrete and singular (where change constitutes an alteration), if the work is to continue being instantiated, the artwork’s identity remains a complex and never-ending area of research. Research which moves continually from the archive to the exhibition space, and from the exhibition space to the archive, and back again.

141 A second unique challenge of contemporary art pertains to the ontology of the artworks.

Stephen Davies, explaining the importance of an artwork’s ontological investigation, has noted: “we have to be able successfully to pick out particular artworks and their contents before we can go on to analyse, describe, perform, appreciate, or evaluate them” (Davies 2016, 80).

For contemporary art in particular, the ontology of a work can be rather complex to decipher.

This is due to contemporary artworks not sharing the same ontology between them, and, further, artworks not easily conforming to a standardised ontological categorisation. Sherri Irvin has argued that “we must consider the ontological status of each contemporary artwork individually” (Irvin 2008, 1). In this heterogenous landscape, there are, also, cases where the ontology of a single work can evolve or be altered over time.²³⁰ On this matter, Renée Van de Vall, while exploring the complex ontology of Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings has remarked: “[a]s soon as conservation decisions have to be made that might intervene in the physical and conceptual constitution of the work, the work’s ontological ‘nature’ ceases to be a matter of interpretation only: its future is at stake” (Van de Vall 2015b, 2-3).

One could assume that an artist would provide all the answers in relation to their artwork’s identity and ontology. However, as it has been extensively discussed in literature the situation is rarely so straightforward.²³¹ As it has been reported, artworks are most likely to enter museum collections with information that is insufficient to answer even the most basic questions for the artwork’s perpetuation, and it is the museum team that has to perform the required research in order to bring this information together. The situation becomes quite complex when the artist (for various reasons) is not available to answer questions, and, even more complex, when the artist provides contradicting information.²³² In this landscape, it becomes the museum’s responsibility to trace and understand a contemporary artwork’s identity and ontology through continuous research and a critical evaluation of findings.

The process of this research needs to alternate between two phases: one where data are collected/generated, and another where data are analysed. In the analysis of the data, appropriate questions are formulated around why things were done a certain way, taking into account the artist’s intent and the artwork’s institutional life, and eventually leading to concluding claims on the identity and ontology of the work.

230 See, for instance, the example of Abstract Film No.1 by VALIE EXPORT, which was transformed after 44 years, from a performance to a sculpture, as conservation scholar Glenn Wharton illustrated in detail, in his 2016 paper “Reconfiguring contemporary art in the museum.”

231 See: Hummelen and Sillé 2005: 272-81 and 391-9; Sommermeyer 2011.

232 See: GCI 2009; Ex 2005, 321; Giebeler and Heydenreich 2016.

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It is important to note that referring here to concluding claims, there is no intention in making reference to objective and unquestionable truths. In a 2016 public presentation by Pip Laurenson, at MoMA (NY, USA), exploring how contemporary artworks exist and evolve within a museum collection, a collector (member of the audience) posed a question in relation to the artwork Only Good News (1999) by artist Roman Ondak.²³³ The artwork consists of a piece of furniture (a cabinet) filled with regular news-papers and the collector brought up the problem of the news-papers fading and him having to find the right answer on how to approach their replacement over time. Laurenson answered: “one of the real problems in this area (…) is that there is no one right thing to do (…) you will need to make a decision (…) but there won’t be a clear right decision.” In other words, Laurenson declares here that there can be different arguments on how to perpetuate the work. However, Laurenson also asserts that the question cannot remain without an answer: “you will need to make a decision”, therefore, one approach would need to be chosen. Although different approaches may exist, any decision and any action (even non-action) will constitute an answer to the question.

What I suggest is that in order to make an informed and reasoned decision on how to perpetuate Only Good News (and in fact any artwork of the contemporary art paradigm) particular research is required on the artwork’s identity and ontology. Additionally, it follows that the said decision and its rationale need to be documented back into the archive, as an acknowledged fragment of the artwork’s biography, available for future scrutiny and criticism and, notably, as material to inform subsequent decision-making.

The new type of research and regular stewardship roles within museums

How can the museum ecosystem accommodate the new and challenging research requirement that contemporary artworks pose? As becomes clear in Chapters I, II and IV, conservators and curators (the main two research roles currently associated with the perpetuation of contemporary artworks) are, in many cases, challenged by the demands of this new type of research.

The conservation profession is rather diverse. Conservators can arrive to conservation studies with different research interests and from different backgrounds: humanities, hard sciences and technology. Although the profession is diverse, in most cases, conservators self-identify and are understood as primarily focused on researching an artwork’ material

233 See: Laurenson 2016, reference to Only Good News at 1:11:20.

143 constitution.²³⁴ Subsequently, there have been voiced concerns about how the regular conservator’s role can adjust to the new demands posed by contemporary art. For instance, Vivian Van Saaze has commented: “[b]ecause some decisions go against the principles and practices which were developed for conserving traditional art forms (…) conservators sometimes express feelings of discomfort in making decisions” (Saaze 2013, 23). While, Tom Learner has noted:

Conservators, on the whole, are very good at figuring out how to do things—such as designing a cleaning system to remove a varnish or choosing an appropriate adhesive for pieces of ceramic. But with contemporary art, isn't it often much more about figuring out what we should be doing? And to answer that, other areas of the art profession have to be involved. (GCI 2009)

To respond to Learner, I would argue that (as is evidenced by examples of scholarship and practice discussed in this thesis) there are specific conservators who are perfectly capable of figuring out what the museum “should be doing” regarding a particular contemporary artwork, and may even be amongst the leading scholars building the theoretical foundations on how the artwork’s identity and ontology can be traced and delineated. However, as shown by multiple accounts (discussed in Chapter II), there are also many conservators who have neither the skillset nor the mindset to successfully perform the required research.

The profession of the curator is another which is rather diverse. As explored in Chapter III, the role of the curator has a myriad of responsibilities which individual practitioners prioritise differently. In this varied landscape, much like with conservators, there are curators who are deeply engaged with issues of perpetuation and the associated required research.

However, again, this doesn’t seem to be the default situation, and this is also reflected in the absence of relevant discussions in the canonical curatorial discourse. Based on this discourse the curators’ nominal role can be understood as one of researching and synthesising personal, social, historical, exhibitionary, and collection narratives around given artworks. This is not the same role as dissecting, investigating, and documenting the detailed constitutive properties of the individual artwork over time. When the role of the curator in researching the identity of an artwork is discussed in literature, in most cases, it is presented as a circumstantial

234 See, for instance, the definition for the conservator’s role by ICOM-CC, and Domínguez Rubio 2014.

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involvement for the occasion of an exhibition set-up or a conservation treatment.²³⁵ This type of involvement cannot serve the same purposes as those served by the kind of dedicated and systematic research required, which, I repeat, is involved and laborious.

Another possible implication is one of conflicting interests, and concerns the expected role of the museum’s curator in privileging and highlighting (and sometimes even constructing) certain meanings in relation to an artwork, while ignoring others, in order to frame the artwork under the particular context of a given exhibition.²³⁶ This type of authorial emancipation can be beneficial for the purpose of creating an exhibition or building a museum’s collection.

However, it can easily be at odds with the role of a researcher who is responsible for untangling the web of details that compose an artwork’s identity and ontology, while avoiding to privilege (let alone impose) particular meanings.

As becomes evident in Chapters II, III and IV, in the case of the museum roles of both conservators and curators, an artwork’s identity and ontology research is not, by default, approached as primary responsibility for their roles.²³⁷ At the same time, I would like to observe that the responsibility to lead this complex research (on the identity and ontology of every artwork in a collection) seems to be too demanding to be combined with attending to the already challenging responsibilities of a regular conservation or curatorial position. With regard to conservators, contemporary artworks are materially and technologically challenging, in most cases requiring continual material and technological migrations. The professional, in a regular conservation position, is thus required to respond to a plethora of challenges, for instance: constantly changing new technologies, artworks incorporating unconventional and unstable materials, rapid obsolescence of chosen elements, and even requirements to co-produce artworks. While, in the case of curators, the visibility, prestige and social influence of the role comes with a breadth of pressing responsibilities —from building a signature outlook to art and the world at large, to leading their institution’s public face and status through extended networking— which divert away from the specifics of a collection’s stewardship. I would, thus, suggest that, in both the case of conservators and that of curators, expecting from the same individual to manage a series of diverse and important responsibilities while devoting the required attention to an artwork’s identity and ontology research can be proved unrealistic and put a collection at risk.

235 See: Irvin 2006; and, Schubert 2009.

236 The authorial role of curators has been discussed in Chapter III. For key contributions on the subject, see, for instance: Altshuler 1994; Groys 2006; Bishop 2007; and, Morgan 2013, 27-8.

237 With the exception of distinct cases of selected individuals.

145 Case studies discussed in literature²³⁸ show that there are certain conservators and curators who have the mindset and skillset to successfully perform the required research and documentation that the perpetuation of contemporary artworks necessitates. However, as discussed in Chapter IV, the fact that a museum has a conservation and a curatorial team does not itself guarantee that the required research and documentation is implemented with the required thoroughness. Even museums that are dedicated to contemporary art and are valuable contributors to the contemporary art perpetuation discourse, express that they struggle with the research and documentation task. In an interview with Rudolf Frieling, when discussing the challenges SFMOMA²³⁹ faces with regard to contemporary artworks, Frieling referred to the importance of “tracing the variability of a work,” and he pointed to troubling issues concerning documentation: “we sometimes struggle with the archival definition of what a work is” pointing in particular to the need of “clarifying what things are and why things were done in a certain way.” Further, discussing an artwork by artist Julia Scher, Frieling mentioned:

[W]e have now an extensive archival record for Predictive Engineering, as a matter of fact it is so extensive that…who is ever going to read all of this? So, you also need a moment of synthesis and a kind of a summary, to say: here is really the essence of this long interview or this long record of an internal discussion.

(Theodoraki and Frieling 2018)

Frieling expresses here the struggle to extract the artwork’s identity from the plethora of available data. The question arises: is there a way to support curators and conservators in handling the complex identity and ontology of contemporary artworks so they can concentrate on their respective research?

238 See, for instance, the MAWC project.

239 SFMOMA is an innovative and self-reflective museum that has developed state-of-the-art structures that foster paradigmatic interdepartmental collaboration. At the same time, the members of curatorial and conservation teams have an important publishing record and sustained active presence in leading conferences and important cross-institutional research projects on the subject of perpetuation.

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