14-16 September 2022: Reshaping the Collectible: Learning through Change

On 14-16 September 2022, Tate London organised the online closing conference of its three-year research project Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum, funded by the Mellon Foundation and led by former Head of Collection Care Research at Tate and MACCH affiliated Art Collection and Care Professor Pip Laurenson.

The conference Reshaping the Collectible: Learning through Change brought together conservators, registrars, curators, archivists, artists and scholars from various disciplinaries backgrounds, to share research and insights gained during the project in which new directions for the care and stewardship of contemporary art in a museum context was explored. In numerous lectures, workshops, panel discussions as well as a participatory performance by Guillermo Gómez-Peña, ‘An Open Letter to Museums of the Future’, the conference investigated “artworks that generate archives, the relationship between memory and the future, radical hospitality and love, replication and the carbon impact of exhibition copies, what is at stake in making the practices of conservation and collection management more visible, and what it means to learn an artwork.”

It was during the conference that I realised how much the field has developed over the last decade. Far beyond questions about materiality, the speakers addressed urgent issues about (in)equality, climate concerns, trust building and collaboration. As such, the conference explored how the field of contemporary art conservation is adapting - or should adapt - to new realities, but also how it can contribute shaping new realities. The conference was incredibly rich and thought provoking, and its recordings are a must see for those who missed the event.