Abstract
In 1977, the Art Institute of Chicago acquired Seven Panels and Index, a pivotal work by the German Conceptual artist Hanne Darboven. Representative of Darboven’s calendrical ‘non-writing’, the piece consists of 266 sheets of soft graphite on paper, 823 pieces of pressure-sensitive tape, particle board, and aluminum framing elements. It is monumental in scale (3.81 × 7.67 meters) and complex in its construction. Improper storage of the work had resulted in near catastrophic damage. In the course of its three-month-Iong treatment, Seven Panels and Index was completely disassembled, all pressure-sensitive tape was removed and adhesive residues were reduced. After stabilization, humidification and flattening, the work was reassembled using ‘archival’ tape, reformatted and reframed. This presentation explores technical and ethical conservation challenges, elucidates recent advances in the analysis of pressure-sensitive tape adhesives, and offers a thought provoking approach to the conservation of twentieth-century works of art on paper.
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