Contemporary Art: Who Cares?

Following our contribution to the ACCESS2CA seminar at the Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana (Slovenia) last year, the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN) has invited us to give a number of workshop at this year’s symposium ‘Contemporary Art: Who Cares?’. This international event will take place at the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam this summer and is organized for (up-and-coming) professionals, from diverse disciplines, who are connected to the conservation of modern and contemporary art.

The symposium is co-organized by the Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art in the Netherlands (SBMK) and the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Key note speakers include Stedelijk Museum‘s conservator Bart Rutten, Van Abbemuseum‘s director Charles Esche, Tate‘s Pip Laurenson, artists Eija Liisa Ahtila and Nedko Solakov and various other people from around the world with an interest/stake in contemporary art conservation with a special focus on complex, large scale multimedia installation works.

Our series of workshops will look at how contemporary art conservation can be made accessible to the public and the role of conservators and conservation information in this process. Participants of the sessions will learn about how organisations (in and outside of cultural heritage) are using new media and emerging technologies to engage with audiences. The workshop exercise wil give participants a first hand experience with (online) media, including various social networks, gaming, mobile applications and data visualization.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila, ‘The Wind’ (2002) from reel aesthete on Vimeo.