‘A New World, a New Way of Seeing’: The Role of Paper Conservation Training in the Professionalization of the Field

Abstract

ABSTRACT It is often stated that conservation is rooted in ‘artistic and craftmanship traditions’. The present contribution aims at exploring this commonplace in more detail, using the development of conservation education at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna as a model. Since its first beginnings in the early twentieth century, the programme was focussed on the conservation of paintings and sculpture exclusively. When Otto Wächter introduced paper conservation in 1965, he opened teaching activities at the Master School to a wide range of objects such as works on paper and innovative methods. Beyond these technical aspects, new forms of teaching, social structures, behaviour, and communicating, as well as general approaches to issues of ethics and aesthetics developed within this new area of specialization. In order to also document aspects of social practices and cultural patterns, over 50 guided expert interviews with former students and teachers of the programme were conducted and complemented with archival sources and published literature. This paper will characterize the genesis of a relatively new area of specialization within conservation and will discuss how it related to the tradition of ‘painter-restorers’ which had been established at Vienna Academy in the early twentieth century.