Conserving Outdoor Sculpture

When the J. Paul Getty Museum received 28 sculptures from the collection of Ray & Fran Stark, it found itself suddenly in the forefront of the evolving field of outdoor sculpture conservation. This volume charts presents an account of the challenges & how the J. Paul Getty Museum staff met them.

Proceedings from the interim meeting of the Modern Materials and Contemporary Art Working Group of ICOM-CC, Kroller-Muller Museu, Ooterlo, the Netherlands, June 4-5, 2013.

This is a review of 190 years of literature on copper and its alloys. It integrates information on pigments, corrosion and minerals, and discusses environmental conditions, conservation methods, ancient and historical technologies.

Tells the stories behind Baltimore's monuments. From the twentieth-century sculpture of the Inner Harbor's Baltimore Renaissance to the nineteenth-century splendor of Mount Vernon Place, this work invites us to see Baltimore in a fresh perspective.

This publication includes papers presented at the three-day international conference SPark: Conservation of Sculpture Parks that took place in Sisak, Croatia, in September 2015. The contributions to this volume address aspects relating to the preservation, maintenance and protection of open-air sculpture and sculptural landscapes based on case studies in Europe, North America and Australia. Sculpture parks are found in a range of settings -urban, rural, forest, coastal, desert - each facing challenges in relation to its location, climate and management such as negligence and vandalism (including graffiti) and material degradation: physical damage, corrosion, fading and flaking paint, biological growth etc. The authors, sometimes after discussions with the artists themselves, consider methods of conservation and management of both the sculpture park environment and collections of artworks made of different materials: wood, metals and alloys, ceramic, stone, concrete, glass, composites etc.

Kinetic art not only includes movement but often depends on it to produce an intended effect and therefore fully realize its nature as art. It can take a multiplicity of forms and include a wide range of motion, from motorized and electrically driven movement to motion as the result of wind, light, or other sources of energy. Kinetic art emerged throughout the twentieth century and had its major developments in the 1950s and 1960s. Professionals responsible for conserving contemporary art are in the midst of rethinking the concept of authenticity and solving the dichotomy often felt between original materials and functionality of the work of art. The contrast is especially acute with kinetic art when a compromise between the two often seems impossible. Also to be considered are issues of technological obsolescence and the fact that an artist’s chosen technology often carries with it strong sociological and historical information and meanings.