What Does Conservation Stand For? Vulnerability and Care of Collections – by Noémie Étienne
Conservation, Restitution, and Institutional Power
On the occasion of the GloCo research project’s second anniversary, Noémie Etienne is releasing a short text written in 2023, shortly before the project was awarded a grant by the European Research Council!
For the last two years, we have been answering some of the questions she raised below. A French version of this text is published in the ABC Arts et Musées, edited by Sara Petrella and Mylène Steity.
Who is entitled to conserve and display art and culture? And what does “conserve” actually mean in the field of heritage, museums, and beyond? These questions are at the heart of contemporary debates about collections, the role of institutions, and demands for restitution. Museum conservation, understood as the practices of conservation, conservation-restoration, and preventive, material conservation, is a crucial – albeit sometimes invisible or invisibilized – aspect of heritage policy.
Preserving collections and making them accessible to the public are central functions of the museum but are also two issues at the heart of ongoing controversies. The (presumed and falsely claimed) inability to “conserve” objects outside European and North American museums is one of the arguments against restitution requests. What is more, restitution requests are often subject to specific conditions, where requirements for physical maintenance are imposed: climate and humidity must be controlled, storage facilities must be secure and protected from insects, and so on. But what does “conserve” really mean?
Τhe Eurocentrism of conservation practices promoted by major non-governmental organizations has come in for criticism since the second half of the 20th century. The “Venice Charter”, issued in 1964 by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), recommended maintaining ancient structures as regards architecture and conservation of the original materials guaranteed the building’s authenticity. In response, many actors in cultural sectors noted that wood is one of the most commonly used construction materials in tropical climates, and this must be regularly replaced to ensure the building’s survival. Thus, the preservation of original materials as a guarantee of authenticity was quickly unmasked as a European vision of heritage, limited from both a theoretical and technical standpoint.
Multiplicity of Conservation Traditions and Meanings
Conservation practices evolved throughout the 20th century. The “Burra Charter” (first adopted by ICOMOS Australia in 1979) calls for the involvement of Indigenous Peoples in conservation processes. These recommendations, however, often remain theoretical and are rarely applied in practice. In 1994, the “Nara Document” in Japan (UNESCO, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) highlighted different conceptions of authenticity, particularly in Asia. In Japan, conservation also takes a very different form when it comes to objects. For example, in ceramic repair, the Kintsugi tradition involves repairing a tea bowl with lacquer, which is often gilded. In the Wabi-sabi philosophy, the bowl regains its material integrity and function, but its crack is highlighted (rather than concealed, as might be the case in other repair styles) with a golden streak.
Kintsugi @Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.
This repair adds significance to the object, bearing witness to its life and uses, and can become the starting point for telling a story, such as a moment shared in a tea ceremony. This example shows the extent to which the Western approach of preserving the integrity of an object or building by concealing repairs is merely one perspective of many. Theories of conservation are also constantly evolving in Europe, and today, in line with the principles of Italian conservation-restoration theorist Cesare Brandi, most museum conservators no longer seek to hide the marks of time. Different conservation traditions do coexist in a variety of contexts, notably cultural, commercial, religious, and museological.
Criticizing the Western-centric nature of conservation practices, however, increases the risk of obscuring an important fact: conservation is not (only) a Western activity. The philosopher Johann Michel identifies repair as an anthropological constant. Humanity, he suggests, is “homo reparans”, a being that, for various reasons, repairs what it creates. Indeed, there are numerous traditions and understandings of what conservation means, which extend well beyond Europe and colonial America.
These principles are theorized in architectural schools, such as in India, where there is a long tradition of architectural conservation. Other traditions are transmitted orally or through practice and observation. In studying Cameroon, Honoré Tchatchouang Ngoupeyou demonstrated how certain carved works are stored in heritage huts and only brought out for specific ceremonies. Preventive conservation norms are also in place, with objects stored high up or set apart. Gourds, for example, are repaired with plant elements or metal staples, and some conservation practices are even kept secret, particularly when collections are not meant to be seen or when the materials involved must not be disclosed.
Repair of a Calebasse, private collection @Noémie Etienne
Conservation, Colonial Histories, and Indigenous Methods
During the second half of the 20th century, conservation served political (soft diplomacy) and colonial agendas, and the training of many African conservators took place in European or North American institutions. At the Institute of National Museums in Kigali, Rwanda, conservators use the “Petit Guide du Laborantin”, a typed document of around twenty pages that focuses on the material preservation of collections and offers solutions based on chemical formulas, for instance, using toxic products to prevent wood rot.
One of the challenges in museum settings is the knowledge and application of situated conservation methods, often referred to as “alternative” or “traditional”. In Kigali, Chantal Umuhoza explores the history of non-European conservation practices, which include, for example, the storage of textiles in pottery kept in cool places, sometimes even underground, to protect them from degradation. Today, the goal is not only to dismantle the myth of European superiority in conservation but essentially to bring attention back to the many traditions and alternatives in this field.
One of the challenges for the future of this discipline is how to broaden or even redefine conservation. Many artists and activists directly question both the very concept and its methods and assumptions. This is particularly true of Indigenous artist Rosana Raymond. Raymond touches, manipulates, and performs with the Pacific objects she encounters in numerous European and North American collections.
Rosana Raymond @Stefan Marks.
Rosana was first invited by Noémie Etienne and Lotte Arndt in 2022, for a conference entitled “Conservation divergente,” held in Paris @ INHA.
In her own words, she “activates” them. Here, heritage conservation is redefined as the care and preservation of connections between people, places, and objects. It is the depth of relationships between humans and non-humans that needs to be repaired rather than the materiality of the collections. Reactivating collections allows fragments to be put back together. By employing practices that extend, deepen, and bring meaning to the objects seized and transported into museums, Heritage transcends the mere material domain.
Ecological and Ethical Shifts in Conservation
Currently, museum conservation is influenced by a dual shift. The ecological direction, on the one hand, encourages critical reflection on toxic practices and, in general, the sustainability of the materials used in preventive conservation and conservation-restoration interventions. Solvents or varnishes, for example, may be harmful to the health of professionals. The post-colonial direction, on the other hand, highlights the fact that acts of conservation are not neutral and, like other museum practices (cataloging, inventories, databases), conservation is bound to a specific history that reflects power dynamics, in particular those collections which are preserved outside the communities that created them. To counter this harm, Isabel Garcia Gomez, a conservator-restorer at the Geneva Museum of Ethnography (Musée d’ethnographie de Genève), speaks of “kindness” to describe her approach to collections.
Ecological and decolonial issues are partly interconnected. Traditional conservation techniques, such as fumigating with plants to repel insects, help avoid the use of certain pesticides, and from this perspective, limited economic resources might actually be beneficial. The potentially violent practice of “anoxia”, which involves depriving collections of oxygen for an extended period by isolating them in a sealed space and replacing the oxygen with gas, is also criticized. The aim is to asphyxiate the insects that may inhabit the collections, potentially damaging them. If we regard the collections to be ancestors rather than inanimate objects – living beings that need to breathe –, depriving them of oxygen becomes an act of brutality that shifts conservation into the realm of extermination.
Repair, Vulnerability, and the Future of Heritage
The question of repair involves multiple factors, both material and immaterial, symbolic and physical, human and non-human. Artists and thinkers are directly addressing the connections between physical, psychological care, and museum conservation, in addition to considering ways of coexisting in a world undergoing repair. Since the 2000s, artist Kader Attia has highlighted the visual and symbolic connections between different forms of vulnerability and repair, associating photographs of the ravaged faces of World War I soldiers with those of repaired African objects, where the sutures have been left visible. In so doing, he highlights the variety of aesthetics that repairs can assume and suggests continuity between bodies, buildings, and objects.
Attia participated in the Dakar Ateliers de la Pensée in 2019, on a panel dedicated to “exposure to vulnerability”, where political and economic questions (reparations following slavery), psychoanalytic issues (repairing trauma), and cultural aspects (repairing objects) were linked. The concept of the “vulnerabilization” of people and collections would suggest that this is not an inherent identity but rather a process of fragilization (the exposure of collections to vulnerability). Sometimes, the museum is in itself a place for vulnerabilization.
In this regard, author Nafissatou Diallo drew on kintsugi as a metaphor for personal repair, highlighting the potential to appreciate both collective and individual fractures (Nafissatou Diallo at the Ateliers de la Pensée in Dakar, 2019 — see the full panel online; the relevant segment begins at 03:01. I thank Lotte Arndt for bringing this reference to my attention). The crack is simultaneously a separation and a connection. The golden or silver line of kintsugi emphasizes the scar that binds things and people together, a scar marking both rupture and connection.
As part of the European project “Taking Care”, researcher Wayne Modest approaches the task of a curator as a form of caring not only for collections but for the humans and stories linked to them. Lastly, from a critical perspective, museum professional Bonaventure Ndikung examines the limitations of this notion of “care”. Through examples in policing, health policies, and the museum world, he asks if care might not become an infantilizing form of guardianship. Who is caring for whom? To what extent might care (and conservation) be desired or imposed, and even be used as a justification for placing a certain heritage, people, or region under tutelage? In our “Global Conservation” project, we will collectively redefine what conservation is, and who benefits from it.
Do you want to read more on the topic? Have a look here!
Related Publications, both co-edited by Lotte Arndt and Noémie Etienne:
Contested Conservation. Museums & Social Issues, Vol. 17, 2024
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ymsi20/17/1-2
On the Threshold of Conservation, Troubles dans les collections, no. 7, 2024
https://troublesdanslescollections.fr/numeros/contested-conservation/
Bibliographic References
Sources
Lodwijks, Johan and Béatrice Coursier. 1977. Conservation et restauration des collections du musée de l’IFAN à Dakar. Programme des Nations Unies pour le développement.
Emmanuel Gakwaya and Egide Harelimana. 1993. Petit Guide du Laborantin, document dactylographié. Rwanda.
Secondary Literature
Clavir, Miriam. 2002. Preserving What is Valued: Museums, Conservation, and First Nations. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Étienne, Noémie. 2022. Who cares? Museum conservation between colonial violence and symbolic repair. Museum and Social Issues: 1-12.
Étienne, Noémie. 2018. When Things Do Talk (in Storage). Materiality and Agency. In Caroline van Eck (dir.). The Materiality of Display (pp. 164-177). Dresde: Sandstein.
Garcia Gomez, Isabel. 2023. The Bientraitance of Colonial Collections: A Mobilizing Utopia?. Museums & Social Issues 17 (1-2): 65-79.
Hoeane, Mabafokeng and Isabelle Mc Ginn, 2021. Making a case for the Spiritual Significance of Dinkho tsa Badimo as sacred ceramics in museum collections. Pharos Journal of Theology 1: 1-11.
Lazali, Karima, Attia, Kader, Dia, Nafissatou, Taubira, Christiane, « Réparations, résilience et dévulnérabilisation », Dakar, Les ateliers de la pensée. 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8FlaBiASbc
Mbembe, Achille. 2003. Necropolitics. Public Culture 15/1: 11-40.
Michel, Johann. 2021. Le réparable et l’irréparable, L’humain au temps du vulnérable. Paris: Hermann.
Modest, Wayne. 2020. Museums are Investments in Critical Discomfort. In Margareta von Oswald, Jonas Tinius (dirs..), Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial (pp. 65-74). Louvain: Leuven University Press.
Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Bonaventure. 2020. The Delusions of Care, Dijon: Les Presses du réel.
O’Hern, Robin; Pearlstein, Ellen; Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth. 2016. Beyond the Surface: Where Cultural Contexts and Scientific Analyses Meet in Museum Conservation of West African Power Association Helmet Masks. Museum Anthropology 39: 70-86.
Raymond, Rosanna. 2021, C o n s e r . V Ā . t i o n | A c t i . V Ā . t i o n. Museums, the body and Indigenous Moana art practice. Thesis. Master of Philosophy, Auckland University of Technology, https://openrepository.aut.ac.nz/items/54fb9b6f-b123-4ada-aacc-74d8ba83b35f
Singh, Kavita and Saloni Mathur (dirs.). 2015, No Touching, No Spitting, No Praying: The Museum in South Asia. New Delhi: Routledge.
Sully, Dean (dir.). 2007. Decolonizing Conservation: Caring for Maori Meeting Houses outside New Zealand. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Tchatchouang Ngoupeyou, Honoré. 2018-2019. L’intégration des acteurs locaux dans les politiques de conservation des musées camerounais. Patrimoines: revue de l’Institut national du patrimoine 14: 164-169.
Wharton, Glenn. 2012. The Painted King: Art, Activism, and Authenticity in Hawai’i. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Wijesuriya, Gamini, and Lee, Sujeong. 2017. Asian Buddhist Heritage. Conserving the Sacred. Rom: ICCROM.