Generating and sharing knowledge about the conservation of contemporary art by museums, institutions and universities.
April 30th 2011 marked the end of PRACTICs; a European project for interdisciplinary collaborative research, sharing knowledge and learning about the conservation of contemporary art. 33 leading museums, institutions and universities joined hands for two years to assess and implement knowledge gained through European projects of the last decade.
Contemporary Art: Who Cares? (I do!)
The many challenges entailed in the conservation of contemporary art have led to a great diversity of knowledge and experience in conservation practice. The PRACTICs project aimed to collect, compile, share and supplement with case studies, knowledge on the most urgent issues: installation art, documentation, decision-making, artist participation, research and education.
The project was organized by the RCE in collaboration with six European organizations: Tate Modern in England, Restaurierungszentrum Düsseldorf and Cologne University of Applied Sciences in Germany; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Spain, the Museum of Contemporary Art (SMAK) in Belgium and the Conservation Foundation for Contemporary Art (SMBK) in the Netherlands. A few years earlier this group had successfully collaborated on the Inside Installations project (2004-2007). The project was funded by the Culture Programme (2007-2013) of the European Commission and the Mondriaan Fund.
Installation Art: Who Cares? is a 25-minute documentary that offers a peek behind the scenes of European museums, revealing the problems museum professionals face in the conservation and exhibition of installation art. The content of the documentary gave rise to a number of public meetings where the museum public's reactions to the documentary were used to judge whether the documentary form is the most suitable means to convey such information.
The main results of the PRACTICs project: