Conservation Thinking in Japan brings together scholars from Japan and the United States to explore the history of conserving in Japan. Among the topics to be discussed are the role of replicas in a culture of conservation, the relationship between traditional materials and conservation practices, the conservation of wooden sculptures and Buddhist sculptures, the transition from antiquarianism to cultural heritage, the history of heritage legislation, and the relationship between conservation and museums. The afternoon presentations on paintings will constitute a symposium within the symposium, with presentations offering a microhistory of a single painting’s conservation history, a discussion of conservation of Buddhist paintings, and a roundtable discussion with paintings conservators focusing on the way the mounting of paintings—and the different ways conservators are trained to think about mounts—shapes the practice of conservation.

Conservation Thinking in Japan is the first of two days of symposia to focus on the robust and distinctive conservation traditions of Japan and India. When launching Cultures of Conservation in 2012 BGC hoped to foster a dialogue between the field of conservation and scholars of the human sciences and bridge the gulf generated by institutional divisions and the inevitable self-siloing of successful research agendas. The associated research project, “Conserving Active Matter,” then taught us that the ways in which we conceive of “conservation,” like the ways we think about “matter” and “activity,” reflect the shape of European and then Euro-American institutional and intellectual history. The working group on Indigenous ontologies of matter made us aware that the Euro-American model described but one set of possibilities. A recognition that the conservation worlds of India and Japan operate differently reinforced our discovery of the provincialness of Western conservation thinking, regardless of how globalized it has become. As Cultures of Conservation comes to an end, we launch exploratory probes into these different conservation worlds in the hope of reshaping an understanding of conservation as a human science.

Conservation Thinking in Japan and Conservation Thinking in India are being held in conjunction with the current exhibition, Conserving Active Matter (March 25–July 10). It is the concluding event in Cultures of Conservation, a ten-year initiative largely funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and dedicated to modeling a cross-disciplinary conversation between conservators, conservation scientists, and humanists.

Friday, May 6, 9 am–5:30 pm
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall / Zoom