Art under Nanotechnological Care: Bridging Conservation and Scientific Practices

• In Event: Sensing the Liveliness of Things and the Fragility of Life: Bringing Care and Maintenance Together II

Abstract

Physical chemists today are developing new nanotechnologies to help conserve objects of art and cultural heritage. In this paper, I discuss my ethnographic fieldwork in a laboratory at the University of Florence, where Italian scientists examine modern and contemporary artworks with the aim to reframe art’s materiality to the nanoscale and its future to nanotechnology’s promises. I investigate how these chemists incorporate input from their collaborators in conservation into their own particular understanding of “nature” to produce a range of nontoxic tools — such as nanoparticles, microemulsions, micellar solutions, and gels — with which to save and preserve cultural objects of “aura.” Laboratory knowledge and practice are enrolled here to help clean, for instance, Federico Fellini’s ink drawings on paper and Pablo Picasso’s paintings. Inspired by a history of interdisciplinary cooperation that grew in the wake of the 1966 flood of the Arno River — a disaster which killed over a hundred people and damaged countless heritage artifacts — these chemists abide by the laws governing chemical substance and intermolecular forces to help differentiate between what is and is not worth preserving about artworks and to advance more ethical ways of protecting them. This paper intends to shed light on how technoscientific expertise and innovation are said to improve upon the traditional materials and craft techniques used to care for and extend the life of art.

Author

• Grace Kim, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)