Art Conservation and Quantum Physics: The Example of Mold Remediation

Abstract

Art conservation involves the care and preservation of artwork, while art conservation curriculum attempts to formally educate art conservation students in preparation for joining the profession. This research proposes significant amendments to how both processes are conceived and practiced. We contend that the current field of art conservation fails to appreciate, explain, or speculate on the shared transformations, traumas, pieces of knowledge, intensities, or affects activated between humans and nonhumans through preservation processes. Art conservation and its education must offer new ways to think about what is happening in conservation—to the art objects and the human beings involved. The field of physics has inspired fresh insights for conservation. This chapter highlights the implications and potentialities of entanglement—a term describing the literal intertwining of meaning and matter—for art conservation and its curriculum. Mold remediation is a prime example, providing insights into the intra-agency and intra-activities involved in entangled art conservation processes. Harnessing quantum mechanics’ concept of entanglement, we contend that the nonhuman art object and human are interwoven, materially altering and modifying. New materialist perspectives bring art conservation into applied physics, defined as a bridge between physics and related scientific disciplines. Conservation practice and curriculum as applied physics speculatively advances and extends the field.