Art conservation and restoration

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Conservation is the profession devoted to the preservation of cultural property for the future. Conservation activities include examination, documentation, treatment, and preventive care, supported by research and education. (Definition taken from the Core Documents of The American Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Works - see external links.) Art conservation is not identical to art restoration. Restoration is a process that attempts to return the work of art to some previous state that restorer imagines to be "original". This was commonly done in the past. However, in the late 20th century a separate concept of conservation was developed that is more concerned with preserving the work of art for the future, and less with making it look pristine. Restoration is controversial, since it often involves some irreversable change to the original material of the artwork with the goal of making it "look good." The attitude of restorers in recent years is to make all the restoration they undertake reversable. The use of watercolor paints to inpaint damages on fresco is an example of a technique utilized to achieve almost complete reversability.

Art conservation can involve the cleaning and stabilization of art work. Ideally, any process used is reversible, departures from that ideal not being undertaken lightly. Cleaning is not a reversible process and can sometimes be controversial due to fears that cleaning would damage a piece, or on the grounds that damage or residue forms part of the history of a given piece and should not be modified. Michaelangelo's statue of David has undergone two cleanings to remove dirt that had accumulated on the statue's surface.

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In North America, five colleges/universities offer a graduate degree in art conservation:

The University of Delaware (in association with Winterthur Museum)
Buffalo State College, New York
Queen's University, Ontario
New York University [1]
UCLA/Getty Program in Archaeological and Ethnographic Conservation

In addition, the University of Texas, Austin offers a Certificate of Advanced Study in the conservation of library and archival materials as part of its Master of Science in Information Studies program.

The International Committee for Conservation (ICOM-CC) [2] is the largest of the International Committees of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) with over 1500 members worldwide from every branch of the museum and conservation profession. ICOM-CC aims to promote the conservation, investigation and analysis of culturally and historically significant works and to further the goals of the conservation profession. ICOM-CC is built up of specialist Working Groups, which actively communicate with their members through newsletters, meetings and at the Triennial Congress. The Triennial Congress brings the membership of ICOM-CC together to report and to review current research. Over 1000 papers have been published in the Congress Pre-prints in the past twenty years.