J.4 The Technical Study of Art
Sat Oct 29 / 11:00 – 12:30 / Debates Room, rm 2034, Hart House
chair /
- Evonne Levy, University of Toronto
With the material turn and the interest in recapturing artisanal knowledge, technical studies are of growing interest to art historians, diminishing the distance between museum and academy in place since the theoretical turn of the 1980s. Although technical studies are largely initiated by museum conservators, art history has made a claim on this burgeoning area of research with the term “Technical Art History.” This session invites methodological reflection on the understanding of “Technical Art History”—or the Technical Study of Art—by the different disciplines involved (art history, conservation, material science). Papers are sought (especially from direct participants in technical studies) that address the nature of the multi-disciplinary collaborations, how technical evidence and art historical notions shape research questions, and the institutional investments that make technical studies possible. Case studies, preferably of large technical studies rather than single works, are welcome insofar as the address the methodological questions.
keywords: technical studies of art
J.4.1 The materials and techniques of Kathleen Munn—Reflections on a Post-Graduate Fellowship
- Stephanie Barnes, Canadian Conservation Institute
During a Koerner Fellowship in Conservation at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in 2018/2019, one of my primary projects was the conservation of a deteriorating artwork by Canadian modernist Kathleen Munn, in preparation for an upcoming exhibition focusing on underrepresented Canadian women artists. The AGO was already the largest public repository of Munn’s work, featuring an archive with hundreds of sketches, along with notebooks, a lightbox, paintbox, and other ephemera. A recent resurgence in interest in Munn’s practice, combined with the private donation of 13 additional works to the AGO in 2018 made this the perfect occasion to evolve the project into a larger technical study of the artist’s paintings. The project focused on the technical imaging of paintings from the AGO and other public and private Ontario collections. This was combined with curatorial and archival research at the AGO and paint analysis in collaboration with the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI). This talk will discuss the benefits of collaboration between disciplines, as well as touch on the role that postgraduate fellowships can play in initiating technical studies, and how this relates to my current role as a conservation scientist.
keywords: conservation, Kathleen Munn, technical imaging, collaboration
Stephanie Barnes is a conservation scientist at the Canadian Conservation Institute. She was Koerner Fellow in Conservation at the AGO in 2018-2019. Her background combines art and science, with degrees in chemistry (M.Sc. 2010, Université Laval) and art conservation (M.A.C. 2014, Queen’s University), and previous conservation internships and fellowships at the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Conservation Institute, and the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute. Her research interest is in the materials and techniques of Canadian artists.
J.4.2 The Technical Study of Bernini's Bronzes: The Museum and the Complex Collaborative Technical Study Projects
Lisa Ellis, Art Gallery of Ontario
In this talk, I will discuss my contributions as an objects conservator on the Technical Study of Bernini’s Bronzes: Art History, Conservation, Material Science, a Canadian-led project now in its third year. Drawing also on my work on the Small Wonders exhibition and the technical study of Renaissance Prayer Beads and miniature carving, my talk will outline the institutional, technical, financial and intellectual components involved in executing a complex interdisciplinary collaboration in technical studies from my perspective as a museum conservator.
keywords: museum conservation, technical study of art, Bernini, collaboration
Lisa Ellis has been the Conservator, Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Art Gallery of Ontario since 2007. Before that she held objects conservation positions, fellowships and internships at the MFA, Boston, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Historic New England, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Parks Canada, the Redpath and McCord Museums (Montreal), as well as at the Agora Excavations in Athens, Greece, and at the Institute of Nautical Archaeology labs in Bodrum, Turkey. Currently, Lisa is part of an international research team devoted to understanding the bronze works of Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). Most recently, she was the technical lead for the award-winning exhibition Small Wonders: Boxwood Gothic Miniatures which opened at the AGO in 2016 and went on to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rijksmuseum. Lisa has lectured and published widely on the use of cutting edge technology used for both the fundamental research and in the exhibition space of Small Wonders, in particular Micro CT scanning, Advanced 3D Analysis software and Virtual Reality.
J.4.3 Technical Art History in practice: Three decades of looking closely
- Ron Spronk, Queen's University
Since 1994, Ron Spronk has been closely involved in several major Technical Art History (TAH) research and exhibition projects, on, among other topics, Piet Mondrian’s Transatlantic paintings, Early Netherlandish diptychs, Mondrian’s Victory Boogie Woogie, the (still-ongoing) restoration of the Ghent Altarpiece, Jheronimus Bosch, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. In this presentation, Spronk will discuss a range of methodological aspects of TAH and how these have developed over the last three decades. Among the topics to be addressed are the importance of standardization (regarding equipment, documentation, and research procedures), and the role of the art historian within complex interdisciplinary projects. The communication of research findings with specialists and general audiences in print and online will also be addressed.
keywords: technical art history, collaboration, documentation, popular audiences, online results
Ron Spronk teaches Netherlandish Painting and Technical Art History at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and at Radboud University in the Netherlands. Among his publications are two award-winning exhibition catalogues: Prayers and Portraits, Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych (with John Hand and Catherine Metzger) received the 2007 Wittenborn Memorial Book Award. In 2002, Mondrian: The Transatlantic Paintings (with Harry Cooper) was awarded the CAA/Heritage Preservation Award. From 2010 to 2012, he coordinated the pre-restoration technical documentation campaign of the Ghent Altarpiece, for which he continues to coordinate the website Closer to Van Eyck; The Ghent Altarpiece Restored. He became a member of the Bosch Research and Conservation Project in 2011, for which he co-authored a two-volume monograph (2016). From 2016 to 2019 he co-curated the exhibition Bruegel; The Hand of the Master for the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, for which he also co-authored the catalogue, co-edited an essay volume, and co-coordinated the website Inside Bruegel.
