Cultures of Conservation

The Cultures of Conservation initiative, a ten-year project generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, modeled new approaches to integrate the insights of objects conservation and materials science with those of the human sciences (anthropology, archaeology, art history, history). It brought Bard Graduate Center’s cross-disciplinary perspective on objects into conversation with conservators’ study of materials, techniques of making, and practices of use and re-use, as well as scholarly studies of materials and materiality. It further explored the meaning of active matter for the field of conservation through the lenses of materials science, history, philosophy, and Indigenous ontologies that never assumed matter was inactive.

As part of the Cultures of Conservation project, BGC offered students new courses devoted to conservation perspectives, augmented existing courses to link the study of materiality directly to conservation, and created a new faculty position dedicated to teaching conservation science. These changes transformed BGC’s curriculum and provided a model of how other higher education institutions might do the same.

Over ten years, Cultures of Conservation supported the publication of five books; the creation of three exhibitions; the appointment of six research fellows, one visiting professor, and one full professor; the development of nineteen new courses; the presentations of thirty-nine guest speakers in thirty-four BGC courses and 145 scholars at fifty-two events; and the evolution of a local steering committee of New Yorkarea conservators and professors that met annually to review progress towards the project’s goals and consider new possibilities of inquiry.

The project culminated with the exhibition Conserving Active Matter, a book of the same title, and a range of events. Information about these concluding activities is given on the next page.

Soon Kai Poh in conversation in BGC’s Object Lab. Video still by Byline Studio.

FOCUS EXHIBITIONS

Conserving Active Matter and Richard Tuttle: What Is the Object? are Focus Exhibitions. Bard Graduate Center faculty members and postdoctoral fellows propose and lead these projects in collaboration with interested students. Each exhibition originates with faculty research and is developed through seminars, workshops, and “In Focus” courses that proceed from broad issues of conception and definition through the specific challenges of selection, layout, and interpretation in two and three dimensions. Students are involved from genesis through execution and contribute substantively to each project’s form and content.