ArtMatters Special Issue #1 - Proceedings of the Glasgow and Cologne NACCA conferences published

Expanding Notions of ‘Making’ for Contemporary Artworks examines critical issues related to the often protracted and distributed making of contemporary artworks, within and alongside their care, conservation and display. The contributors draw upon diverse theoretical frameworks from anthropology to ethnography, organisational theory, semiotics, sociology, gender studies, feminist theory and new materialism, among others. They critically examine the implications of an expanded notion of making for the custodianship and perpetuation of contemporary artworks.

Across the various contributions, the authors reflect on the processes of knowledge production that surround the making and conservation of contemporary art. The papers consider how this produced and synthesised knowledge informs our sense of the artworks’ identities, and how these identities are not static or absolute but mediated, situated and often closely connected to the processes of (re)making and the artworks’ materiality. These expanded ideas of knowledge-making and identity formation in relation to contemporary art objects are also explored in the context of the actors and networks that enable their continuation, revealing the negotiated and contingent nature of their objecthood.

This first ArtMatters Special Issue presents papers from the symposia Material Futures: Matter, Memory and Loss in Contemporary Art Production and Preservation (28–30 June 2017, University of Glasgow) and From Different Perspectives to Common Grounds in Contemporary Art Conservation (25– 26 June 2018, Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences, TH Köln). The papers were contributed by researchers and other speakers both from within and without the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN) New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art (2015–2020). NACCA comprises 15 researchers working with and supervised by conservation professionals (technical) art historians, heritage scientists and curators from 10 partner institutions, both universities and museums, and spread over six European countries: The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom. All papers are published open access.