Held on 24 Feb 2022
The 23rd Contemporary Art Conservation Conference, organised by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation and Restoration and supported by MAPFRE Foundation, will be held on 24 and 25 February 2022. As an international encounter it sets out to share and debate experiences and research, open new channels of study and reflect upon the institutional management of conservation and the professional practice of restorers.
This edition is held in a virtual format via 20-minute contributions from speakers, followed by a five-minute Q&A session live with the audience. It features participation from universities, museums, art centres, and restorers’ associations, among others.
People who sign up will receive an email with instructions and a link to the online platform enabling them to follow and participate in the event.
- All talks with be streamed bilingually in Spanish and English.
- Questions will be taken at the end of each presentation via the chat.
- For any technical issues during the streaming, please contact: jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es
- Times will be synchronised with CET (Central European Time).
- An attendance certificate will be issued to people registered previously. This certificate must be requested via email by writing to jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es from 26 February to 4 March.
Programme
Thursday, 24 February 2022
3:45pm Opening
4pm Presentation and welcome
Jorge García Gómez-Tejedor (head of the Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation and Restoration), Leyre Bozal (collections conservator in Fundación MAPFRE’s Culture Area) and Mayte Ortega Gallego (coordinator of the 23rd Contemporary Art Conservation Conference)
4:15pm Reflecting Upon the (In)Visibility of the Conservator’s Creative Agency (in English)
Andreia Nogueira (Centro de Tecnologia, Restauro e Valorização das Artes - Techn&Art, from the Polytechnic Institut of Tomar - IPT, Portugal)
4:45pm Discovering a Mexican Suitcase: Characterising a Collection of Work by Pictorialist Photographer Hugo Brehme
Alejandra Nieto Villena (Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, Mexico). Co-authors: José Refugio Martínez Mendoza and Álvaro Solbes García (Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, Mexico), and Juan Cayetano Valcárcel Andrés (Polytechnic University of Valencia)
5:15pm Eugenio Granell’s Films Newly Preserved
Carolina Cappa (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, San Sebastián)
Co-authors: Pablo Adiego, Amaia Badiola, Julia Cortegana de la Fuente and Borja Rodríguez Gimeno (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, San Sebastián).
5:45pm Traditional Pigments in Contemporary Art: Enamel Blue
Patricia de los Reyes Félix (independent restorer)
Co-authors: Beatriz de los Reyes Félix and Marta Plaza Beltrán (Complutense University of Madrid)
6:15pm Presentation of the Work Group Contemporary Art and New Media. Monograph and New Projects from GE-IIC
Rita Amor García (The Spanish Conservation Group GE-IIC)
6:30pm Round-table Discussion. The Evolution of Creation and Documentation Processes in Complex Artworks. The Experience of Kinetic Artist Elías Crespín
Elías Crespín (artist), Jorge García, Carmen Muro, Mayte Ortega and Regina Rivas (Museo Reina Sofía)
—Moderated by: Arianne Vanrell (Museo Reina Sofía)
7:15pm Conclusions
Friday, 25 February 2022
3:45pm Opening
4pm A Paradigmatic Agreement to Conserve Art Stations in Naples. Case Study: Restoring Enzo Cucchi’s Work Untitled in the Salvator Rosa Underground Station
Giovanna Cassese (Accademia di Belle Arti, Naples)
Co-authors: Maria Corbi (Ufficio Patrimonio Artístico, Azienda Napoletana Mobilità - ANM, Naples) and Manlio Titomanlio (Accademia di Belle Art, Naples) and Alfreda Capone (student)
4:30pm Deploying Metal Soaps in Oil Painting. Experimental Methodology to Determine the Influence of Variable Relative Humidity
Marta Pérez Estébanez (Complutense University of Madrid)
Co-authors: Susanna Marras, Ruth Chércoles and Margarita San Andrés (Complutense University of Madrid) and María Antonia García (Cultural Heritage Institute of Spain)
5pm Study Methodology to Determine the Behaviour of Pen Inks Exposed to Radiation
Luis Erick Miraval Gómez (Complutense University of Madrid)
Co-authors: Ruth Chércoles Asensio, Marta Pérez Estébanez and Carmen Pérez González (Complutense University of Madrid), and Ramón J. Freire Santa Cruz (University of Castilla-La Mancha)
5:30pm The Textile Creations of Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo and Henriette Negrin. Their Conservation and Restoration
Silvia Montero (Museo Reina Sofía)
6pm Farewell and conclusion
Submission of Lectures (closed)
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The deadline for submitting lecture proposals ends on 21 November 2021. Those interested must send an email to jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es attaching the following documents:
- An unpublished proposal related to contemporary art conservation and restoration.
- A 1,700-word summary, written in Word, on the addressed subject matter, which should be stated at the start of the document using a keyword.
- CV and contact details.
The proposals can be presented in Spanish and English and will be evaluated by a scientific committee, which will select the lectures to be presented during the conferences and will determine their possible inclusion in a subsequent publication, which in turn will undergo a second, and definitive, evaluation by the editorial committee.
For online presentations, participants must send their recording in accordance with the technical requirements they will receive upon notification of participation.
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Collaboration
illycaffèSponsor
The Mapfre Foundation
Más actividades
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Institutional Decentralisation
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This fourth and final session centres on films that take the museum away from its axis and make it gaze from the edges. Pieces that work with that which is normally left out: peripheral territories, unpolished aesthetics, clumsy gestures full of intent. Instead of possessing an institutional lustre, here they are rough, precarious and strange in appearance, legitimate forms of making and showing culture. The idea is to think about what happens when central authority is displaced, when the ugly and the uncomfortable are not hidden, when they are recognised as part of the commons. Film that does not seek to be to one’s liking, but to open space and allow other ways of seeing and inhabiting the museum to enter stage.
Ordinary, Common and Public. Common Fixes for Ordinary Communities
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Ordinary, Common and Public. Common Fixes for Ordinary Communities is the title of the fourteenth encounter run by Sociología Ordinaria, a transdisciplinary research group that explores daily knowledge deemed ordinary, superficial or frivolous from a traditional academic and intellectual viewpoint.
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Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Sweet Revenge
26 MAY 2026
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The conversation begins with the exhibition’s title itself, Sweet Revenge, understood as a paradoxical notion that articulates much of the artist’s thinking. From there, the tensions running through his work are explored: the coexistence of opposing registers, ambiguity as a method, and the simultaneously affective and political charge of his works.
The dialogue also touches on some of the themes that run through his body of work, such as thenotions of identity, citizenship, and authority, alongside experiences linked to the AIDS crisis, and emotions such as love, loss, grief, and optimism. Special attention is given to the way in which Gonzalez-Torres shifts languages associated with Arte Povera, conceptualism, and minimalism towards open, participatory, and deeply personal structures.
The session also includes a reflection on the research process that shaped the exhibition, providing context for the curatorial decisions and criteria that structure it. In this context, Gonzalez-Torres’s work emerges as a device that actively engages those who activate orinterpret it, distributing responsibility for the production of meaning—a process that is alwaysunstable and constantly under negotiation.
These inaugural conversations, part of the main working strands of the Museo’s Public Programmes Area, aim to explore in greater depth the exhibition narratives of the shows organised by the Museo from the perspective of artists, curators and specialists.