Soon Kai Poh
Conservation as a Human Science Fellow, Bard Graduate Center

“Introducing Conserving Active Matter”

Conserving Active Matter is an exhibition that explores the practice of conservation as seen through the lens of the activity of matter, and is scheduled to open in the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in the spring of 2022. The exhibition is the culmination of what will have been a ten-year project supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Cultures of Conservation, which has been dedicated to creating new pathways for exchange and intellectual mingling between conservation and the human sciences (history, archaeology, anthropology, as well as art history).

In this presentation, Poh will introduce the exhibition as it has been collaboratively developed over the past year with the Cultures of Conservation faculty committee. Conserving Active Matter considers the many ways in which objects are active and envisions an expanded role for conservation in their care, in four parts: What is conservation? How are things active? Who acts on objects, when and why? Where is the Future of Conservation? He will also reflect on the process of exhibition development over the past year leading up to these outcomes. Finally, in the spirit of the project, he will briefly explore how conservation is reflexively a form of object-based inquiry not unlike the curatorial process.

Tuesday, February 2, 12:15 pm