30TH

THE MODERN AND
CONTEMPORARY ART
RESEARCH INITIATIVE
BY TOM LEARNER AND JIM CODDINGTON
THE GCI’S MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART RESEARCH
Initiative 1 (ModCon) has been a major component in the Institute’s
overall research portfolio since its official launch in 2007. By then,
our interest and involvement in the conservation issues of modern
and contemporary art had been growing for years, as had that of
many other institutions and colleagues. One of the Institute’s first
activities in this area was the 1998 conference “Mortality Immortality?
The Legacy of 20th-Century Art.” This Getty event sought
to foster a cross-disciplinary discussion among artists, art historians,
collectors, conservators, and curators—collaboration that has
now become the norm. Later, in 2002, as many research groups
had begun to scientifically explore modern materials used in contemporary
art, the GCI started a long-term study of conservation
issues of modern paints, initially in collaboration with Tate,
London, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Although a relatively recent addition to the GCI portfolio,
ModCon is now in full swing, and it is not too soon to reflect on
some of the advances made in the field since then and on how
needs are evolving.
ModCon was launched in response to a growing realization
within the conservation profession that research in this area
was a priority. Many key issues had already been identified, including
broad philosophical and ethical matters and specific materials
questions. Ethical dilemmas concerning the conservation
and care of contemporary art have led to uncertainty in the art
world. For example, an artist’s wish to refabricate a deteriorated
work to recapture the object’s original appearance—frequently, if
problematically, referred to as “the artist’s intention”—challenges
conservation ethics on reversibility and conservation of original
materials. Similarly, replacing obsolete technological elements of
a technology-based work raises questions of how closely such a
work now reflects the original, both materially and intellectually,
and what role conservation plays in making that determination.
The vast increase in the variety of materials used by artists to
create works is a significant practical problem, since each of these
materials has its own, often unique, set of aging properties, as well
as display or storage requirements. Materials that are inherently
unstable quickly show signs of deterioration and are, of course, of
great concern to conservators. (One commonly cited example is
early cellulosic plastics used in twentieth-century sculpture and
A January 2013 meeting of experts convened by the GCI and the Getty Museum to discuss the conservation
of Jackson Pollock’s Mural, (1943). Painting: University of Iowa Museum of Art, Gift of Peggy Guggenheim, 1959.6.
Reproduced with permission from the University of Iowa. Photo: Stacey Rain Strickler, J. Paul Getty Museum.
CONSERVATION PERSPECTIVES, THE GCI NEWSLETTER 29