Contributors
Katharina Ammann
has studied art history and English literature at the University of Geneva, University of Oxford and the University of Bern (Ph.D. 2008). Her book Video ausstellen—Potenziale der Präsentation (Bern 2009) laid grounds for the understanding of the relation between the aspects of presentation, interpretation, and preservation in video art. Ammann was curator and collection conservator at the Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur and at Art Museum Solothurn, where she curated exhibitions and contributed to exhibition catalogues. She is currently head of the Art History Department and Member of the Board of Directors at the Swiss Institute for Art Research SIK—ISEA.
Francesca G. Bewer
is Research Curator for Conservation and Technical Studies Programs and Director of the Summer Institute for Technical Studies in Art at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA. Studies at the Warburg Institute and the Institute of Archaeology (London) concerned historical studies of the Renaissance and of bronze technology. Bewer has published on art technology and on the history of conservation. Her book A laboratory for art. Harvard’s Fogg Museum and the emergence of conservation in America (ca. 1900–1950) won her the 2012 CAA/AIC Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation. She is a founding member of the Copper Alloy Sculpture Techniques and History: International Interdisciplinary Group (CAST:ING).
Judit Bodor
is an independent curator, producer, and researcher based in Glasgow, Scotland. She works with archives, galleries, museums, and universities and has held positions with Artpool (Budapest), East Street Arts (Leeds), Dartington College of Arts, and York St John University. She currently works as Associate Tutor, MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) at The Glasgow School of Art, and as Producer at WAVEparticle. Her areas of expertise include artists’ archives, performance art conservation and performative modes of curating. Recent projects include Left performance histories (nGbK, Berlin, 2018) and Silent explosion (Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, Cardiff, 2015–16). A trained art historian and arts manager, she has degrees from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (2002), Dartington College of Arts (2005), and a practice-led Ph.D. in curating from Aberywtwyth University (2017).
Thea Burns
holds a B.A. (1st class honours in Fine Arts) from McGill University, a Master’s degree in Art Conservation from Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, a certificate in Paper Conservation from the Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, and a Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute, University of London (2002). She taught paper conservation in the master’s degree program in art conservation at Queen’s University (1987–2001) and served as the Senior Paper Conservator for Special Collections in the Weissman Preservation Center, Harvard University Library (2002–2008). She is the author of several books: The invention of pastel painting (London 2007), The luminous trace. Drawing and writing in metalpoint (London 2012), L’art du pastel (Paris 2014) with Philippe Saunier, translated into English as The art of the pastel (New York 2015), and Compositiones variae. A late eighth-century craftsman’s technical treatise reconsidered (London 2017).
Birgit Cleppe
studied architecture at Ghent University and the Politechnico di Milano. She has worked as an art and architecture critic and has co-curated architecture exhibitions for the Flanders Architecture Institute, Antwerp, and Bozar, Brussels. At the Department of Art History (Ghent University), she is preparing a Ph.D. dissertation entitled ‘The golden age of the European experimental art documentary (1940–1960)’. With Dimitrios Latsis and Steven Jacobs, she is preparing an edited volume for I. B. Tauris on mid-twentieth-century art documentaries. Her recent research activities are centred on museology, the visual arts, and architecture.
Paul Eggert
is Martin J. Svaglic Endowed Chair in Textual Studies, Loyola University Chicago, and a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. A scholarly editor and theorist of the editorial act, his principal arguments are brought together in Securing the past (Cambridge, UK 2009) and Biography of a book (University Park, PA 2013). His scholarly editions include the short stories of 1890s writer Henry Lawson and volumes in the D. H. Lawrence and Joseph Conrad Cambridge Works series.
Hanna B. Hölling
is Lecturer in the History of Art and Material Studies in the Department of History of Art, University College London, where she co-convenes the History of Art, Materials and Technology program, and Research Professor at the University of the Arts in Bern. Before joining UCL, she was Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Professor, Cultures of Conservation, at the Bard Graduate Center in New York (2013–2015). She is the author of two monographs, Paik’s virtual archive. Time, change and materiality in media art (Oakland 2017) and Revisions. Zen for film (New York 2015), which accompanied an eponymous exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York (17 September 2015–22 February 2016).
David Lowenthal
(1923–2018), emeritus professor of geography and honorary research fellow at University College London, was an American historian of conservation and heritage and adviser to UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICOM, the Council of Europe, and museums and heritage agencies in the UK, the US, Canada, Norway, Italy, Australia, and the Caribbean. He was renowned for his work on heritage and conservation history. He was awarded the International Institute of Conservation’s Forbes Lecture Prize in 2010 and the British Academy Medal in 2016 for his book The past is a foreign country —revisited (Cambridge, UK 2015). The medal honors “a landmark academic achievement which has transformed understanding in the humanities and social sciences” in a book that explores “the manifold ways in which history engages, illuminates and deceives us in the here and now.” His career spanning some seventy years culminated in his last book Quest for the unity of knowledge (Routledge, 2019) which conjoins insights into physical nature and human culture that are of concern to those in conservation, ecology, history of ideas, museology, and heritage studies.
Jorge Otero-Pailos
works at the intersection of art, architecture and preservation. He is the Principal and Founder of Otero-Pailos Studio, an art and architecture studio focused on experimental preservation. The studio stands for the idea that existing buildings and monuments can be reimagined into powerful agents of cultural change through contemporary art and architecture. He is Professor and Director of Historic Preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York. His artworks and public art installations have been commissioned and exhibited by major museums, foundations, and biennials, notably the Artangel Trust, the 53rd Venice Biennale, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Louis Vuitton Museum La Galerie, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2017.
Elizabeth Pye
is Emeritus Professor of Conservation for Archaeology and Museums at University College London (UCL), where she taught conservation for much of her career. Her professional practice includes field conservation at archaeological sites around the Mediterranean, and, with ICCROM, involvement in museum training in sub-Saharan Africa. She is author of Caring for the past. Issues in conservation for archaeology and museums (London 2001) and a number of papers on conservation and editor of The power of touch. Handling objects in museum and heritage contexts (London 2007). Her interests are in pre-industrial technologies, access to heritage, and philosophy of conservation.
Dawn V. Rogala
graduated from the M.A./C.A.S. program in art conservation at Buffalo State College of the State University of New York and received her Ph.D. in preservation studies from the University of Delaware. She has authored and co-authored papers on materials behaviour, paint analysis, and research methodology, including a monograph on the materials and techniques of Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann for The artist’s materials book series from the Getty Conservation Institute. Rogala is a Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation and the International Institute for Conservation. She works as a paintings conservator at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Conservation Institute, where she pursues the conservation and technical study of paintings with a focus on modern and contemporary artworks and artists’ materials.
Anna Schäffler
is an art historian, curator and fellow within the research group BildEvidenz. History and Aesthetics at the Free University Berlin. In her Ph.D. thesis she examines posthumous preservation practices of processual installation art. This analysis is based on her experience installing the Ensembles of Anna Oppermann since 2010, when she was assistant curator at Temporary Kunsthalle Berlin. Her recent projects, publications, and teaching focus on displaying contemporary art preservation and linking art history, conservation theory and curatorial approaches. Schäffler has been co-coordinator of the interdisciplinary Ph.D. and Postdoc Network CoCARe (Conservation of Contemporary Art Research). She is also engaged in research on artists’ estates as sites of knowledge and a new grassroots movement.