Concrete Happenings: Conserving Industrial Materials and Processes in Art

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2016
Cochrane Woods Art Center, Room 157
5540 S. Greenwood Ave.

8:30am — Breakfast

9:00am — Introductory Remarks
Christine Mehring, University of Chicago

9:10am — Panel 1: Concrete

“Investigation and Treatment of Concrete Traffic”
Amanda Trienens, Cultural Heritage Conservation

“Vostell Concrete”
Christine Mehring, University of Chicago

“Restoring Unity Temple‘s 70s Shotcrete: How Hard Could It Be?
T. Gunny Harboe, Harboe Architects

Moderator: Sean Keller, Illinois Institute of Technology

10:40am — Coffee Break

10:50am — Panel 2: Signifying Surfaces

“Revolutionary Objects: On the Use of Asphlt in Gustav Klucis and Aleksandr Rodchenko’s Works”
Maria Kokkori, Art Institute of Chicago

“Moholy-Nagy and the Paradox of Immaterial Matter”
Carol Stringari, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

“Donald Judd’s Untitled (DSS 133), 1968: A Case Study of Painted Metal”
Ann Temkin, Museum of Modern Art

Moderator: Matthew Jesse Jackson, University of Chicago

12:30pm — Lunch

 

Ellis Parking Garage, East Entrance
55th St. & Ellis Ave.

1:30pm — Concrete Traffic Visit and Discussion; Technical Introduction to Concrete Traffic
Anna Weiss-Pfau, University of Chicago

1:50pm — Busses Depart for the Art Institute of Chicago

 

Sustaining Fellows Lounge, Rubloff Building, Art Institute of Chicago
111 S. Michigan Ave.

2:30pm — Coffee

2:45pm — Introduction
Jacqueline Terrassa, Art Institute of Chicago

2:55pm — Panel 3: Plastics

“”Good things are always complex.” The Conservation of Industrial Design”
Tim Bechtold, Die Neue Sammlung

“Formation and Deformation: Moholy-Nagy’s Paiintings on Plastic”
Joyce Tsai, University of Iowa

Moderation: Ken Sutherland, Art Institute of Chicago

4:00pm — Moholy-Nagy: Future Present Walk Through
Maria Kokkori, Sylvie Pénichon, Carol Stringari, Joyce Tsai, Matthew S. Witkovsky

 

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2016
Logan Center for the Arts, Performance Penthouse (Room 901)
915 E. 60th St.

9:00am — Breakfast

9:30am — Introductory Remarks
Lisa Zaher, University of Chicago

9:40am — Panel 1: Things to Works: Ethical Challenges in the Care and Display of Industrial Materials

“An Eternal Resistance to Death: Preserving the Life of Concrete Traffic”
Christian Scheidemann, Contemporary Conservation, Ltd.

“Considerations in the Treatment and Display of Space History Objects at NASM”
Lisa Young, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“Between Material and Conceptual: Ethical Implications in th Preservation of Three Image Generating Sculptures”
Reinhard Bek, Bek & Frohnert

Moderator: Bill Brown, University of Chicago

11:10am — Break

11:20am — Panel 2: Conserving Object-Images in Space and Time

“Space or Time”
Charles Ray, Artist

“Mise-en-cadre and Significant Form: The Historiographical Lessons of Concrete Traffic”
Lisa Zaher, University of Chicago

“A Thousand Pictures worth of Words: Considering the Virtual with the Physical in Understanding Computerized Art”
Michael Mansfiel, Smithsonian Museum of American Art

Moderator: Richard Neer, University of Chicago

1:00pm — Lunch

 

Logan Center for the Arts, Room 014

2:00pm — peliculas screening
2:15pm — peliculas screening

 

Logan Center for the Arts, Performance Penthouse (Room 901)

2:40pm — Panel 3: Photographic Processes

“Remastering peliculas (1979): Encountering the Limits of Digital Reproduction While Recreating a 16mm Film Installation”
Laura Major, Colorlab
Patrick Clancy, Artist

“Finding Photography: An Interdisciplinary Conversation”
Pip Laurenson, Tate/Maastricht University
Haidy Geismar, University College London

Moderator: Joel Snyder, University of Chicago

4:00pm — Coffee Break

4:10pm — Concluding Roundtable Discussion

 

Gray Center Lab
929 E. 60th St.

5:00pm — Reception

 

Download complete schedule as a PDF.

Tim Bechthold trained as a cabinet-maker in Bad Tölz, Germany from 1991 to 1993. The following three years he studied conservation at the College Goering-Institute, Munich, Germany, where he graduated in 1996 as a state-approved conservator for furniture and wooden sculptures. The following year he worked as a freelance furniture conservator in Munich, Germany.
From 1997 to 2002 he proceeded to study at the Chair of Conservation, Arts Technology and Conservation Science, Technical University Munich, Germany, focusing on modern materials. At that time he completed several conservation projects on the degradation of plastics, among others at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna, Austria, and at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany. In 2002 he graduated with a diploma thesis on “Polyurethane in 1960’s furniture design”. Since 2002 he is Head of Conservation at Die Neue Sammlung, The International Design Museum Munich, Germany. He set up the Conservation Department which has become an important hub for the conservation and maintenance of modern design objects, through research into the deterioration and preservation of the collections, the development of new conservation processes and the knowledge of its original technology. He initiated and organized the FUTURE TALKS conferences and is editor of the corresponding three post prints: “FUTURE TALKS 009.
The Conservation of Modern Materials in Applied Arts and Design,” “FUTURE TALKS 011.
Technology and Conservation of Modern Materials in Design.” “FUTURE TALKS 013.
Lectures and Workshops on the Conservation of Modern Materials in Design.” Tim Bechthold has given numerous lectures on the conservation of plastics.
He is teaching at the University College of London (UCL) in Doha, Qatar and the Technische Universität in Munich, Germany.

Reinhard Bek Prior to enrolling in the Conservation program of the HTW, University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, Reinhard Bek apprenticed as a ship-builder in Hamburg (1993 to 1996), and completed internships in the conservation departments of several museums in Germany. He was a Fellow at the Swiss Institute of Art Research (SIK), Zurich, Switzerland, in 2001, and completed his training as an objects conservator in 2002. He holds a graduate degree in the Conservation of Objects. Reinhard joined the Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland, and was Chief Conservator from 2002 to 2012. In 2005 he co-organized the symposium Moving parts on the preservation and documentation of kinetic artworks at the Museum Tinguely. He was a participant of the European Conservation Research projects Inside Installations and PRACTIC’S, 2003-2010. In 2009 he was a twelve-month Conservation Research Fellow with The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since 2012, Reinhard Bek is partner of bek&frohnert LLC based in New York City.

Christian Scheidemann received his training in the conservation of medieval paintings and polychromed sculptures, as well as in art history, in Bonn, Germany. After further studies in conservation labs in museums (Pinakothek Munich, Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Hamburger Kunsthalle), he opened his own practice in Hamburg in 1983. Since then, Scheidemann has worked with some of the most important collections in Europe and specializes in the conservation of works from artists who have been charging non-traditional materials—such as petroleum jelly, elephant dung, chewing gum, soap, or chocolate—with iconographic significance. Scheidemann is the founder and president of Contemporary Conservation Ltd. in New York City, a studio specializing in the conservation of contemporary art. He has lectured and published extensively on conservation and on the meaning of material and process in contemporary art. See: contemporaryconservation.com

Patrick Clancy is a new media artist, writer, theorist and curator, whose work bridges many disciplines in the sciences and humanities. Clancy co-founded Pulsa, a collaborative group of artists that pioneered early electronic and interactive computer-art through viewer-activated light, sound and video installations in the mid-1960’s and early 1970’s, including the first voltage-controlled hybrid digital and analogue audio synthesizer. Writings and essays include “Telefigures and Cyberspace” in Rethinking Technologies, University of Minnesota Press; “The Role of the Artist in the Age of Autopoietic Simulation” in FutureFusion: Application Realities for the Virtual Age, International Society on Virtual Systems and Multimedia, Gifu, Japan; and “Notes on the Science of Alchemy and the Engendering of Simulacra,” in Growing Things: New Media Institute, The Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta, Canada. For 20 years he was co-curator with Gwen Widmer of ELECTROMEDIASCOPE, an international survey of contemporary work in experimental film, video, new media and performance art, presented at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.

Haidy Geismar has a PhD in Anthropology and Material Culture from UCL (2003). She has long-term fieldwork experience in both the South Pacific and within museums, in the Pacific, North America and Europe where she has worked both with South Pacific and with photography collections. She is particularly interested in issues of intellectual and cultural property and how digital technologies are reorganizing knowledge systems within museums. Recently she has been researching the digitization of cultural collections, the incorporation of indigenous protocols into museum databases and she is in the early stages of a book looking at new practices and forms of digital photography. Dr. Geismar is also founder and chief editor of the Material World blog and has worked extensively with digital tools to enhance teaching and research practices.

T. Gunny Harboe In March of 2006 Gunny Harboe began his own architecture firm specializing in historic preservation and sustainable design. Prior to that he spent 17 ½ years at McClier (and Austin/AECOM) where he was responsible for all of the firm’s projects involving preservation, restoration, or rehabilitation of older structures of historic or architectural significance. He is a registered architect having received his M. Arch. degree from MIT, which included study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark. He also has a M.Sc. in Historic Preservation from Columbia University, and an A.B. in History from Brown University. In 1998 he completed the course in Architectural Conservation at ICCROM in Rome, Italy. Mr. Harboe has gained a national reputation for his award winning work on the Rookery Building and Reliance Buildings. Both these projects received national Honor Awards from the American Institute of Architects and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Mr. Harboe was named a “2001 Young Architect” by the National AIA, and in 2002, he was made a member of the GSA’s National Register of Peer Professionals. Mr. Harboe recently completed three years of service on the national board of the AIA, as a Regional Director from Illinois. He is also a Past President of AIA Chicago. His other volunteer activities include serving as current Secretary General of the ICOMOS ISC on 20th Century Heritage, past Vice President of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois; and past Vice President of DOCOMOMO-US, where he currently remains a board member. Mr. Harboe has lectured extensively internationally and all over the U.S., and has published numerous articles about his work. Recent projects include; Holabird and Roche’s Marquette Building, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple, Mies Van der Rohe’s Crown Hall, Louis Sullivan’s Carson Pirie Scott Store and Holabird and Root’s Chicago Board of Trade Building, all National Historic Landmarks.

Maria Kokkori is a research fellow at the Art Institute of Chicago. She holds an M.S. degree from the University of Cambridge and received her Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 2008; she then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Courtauld Institute. During 2009-2011 she was a postdoctoral fellow of the Malevich Society in New York. She is a member of Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre (CCRAC) advisory board and member of the board of directors of the Malevich Society in New York. Her research covers the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with special emphasis on the examination of painting materials and techniques used by avant-garde artists; material properties and technologies; color and light theories; and artists as producers. Her publications on early-twentieth-century art include numerous articles and two books.

Pip Laurenson is the Head of Collection Care Research at Tate in the UK and holds a special chair as Professor of Art, Collection and Care at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. She has over twenty years of experience in the conservation of contemporary art beginning her career in Sculpture Conservation and going on to establish and lead Tate’s pioneering Time-based Media Conservation section from 1996 until 2010. In her current role, she develops, leads and supports research related to the conservation and management of Tate’s collections. Pip is committed to interdisciplinary research that serves and responds to art of our time and in exploring what it means for a contemporary art museum to be a research organization. Pip has secured awards for research from a range of funders including private foundations, the European Union framework program and the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. She received her doctorate from University College London, is an accredited member of the Institute for Conservation, a trustee of the UK’s National Science and Heritage Forum, and is a member of the Steering Committee of the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA).

Laura Major received her Masters Degree in Library and Information Science at the University of South Carolina in 2009. She is currently the Film-to-Film Project Coordinator at Colorlab Motion Picture Film Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland. She has been involved with the Orphan Film Symposium and Home Movie Day for many years, and has worked on the summer staff of the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar since 2006. She is also a board member of the cinema arts non-profit MONO NO AWARE.

Michael Mansfield is a curator and scholar of the moving image and electronic media in contemporary art. He studied photography and art history at the University of Houston and holds an M.A. in digital and electronic media from the Maryland Institute where he was a fellow with the Mount Royal School of Art. In 2007, he was appointed as an associate in the director’s office at the National Museum of Photography in the Czech Republic where he helped organize and exhibition on the dissident writer and filmmaker Bohumíl Hrabál. Michael joined the Smithsonian Institution in 2008, organized the museum’s Media Art Working Group, and is a founding member of the Smithsonian Institution’s Time Based Media Art Conservation Initiative. In 2009, he established and designed the museum’s first permanent gallery space devoted to moving image installations, and has curated an ongoing series of exhibitions titled “Directions in the Art of the Moving Image.” Michael stewards numerous graduate fellowships and research collections including the Nam June Paik archive and in 2012, together with John G. Hanhardt, co-curated the exhibition “Nam June Paik: Global Visionary.” Currently, he is organizing a major exhibition on the work of artist Trevor Paglen opening at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2018.

Christine Mehring is Chair and Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Blinky Palermo: Abstraction of an Era (Yale, 2008) and Sabine Moritz: Limbo (2013), and the coeditor of Gerhard Richter: Early Work, 1951-1972 (Getty, 2010). Her writings on abstraction and postwar European art have appeared in the pages of Artforum, Grey Room, October, and Texte zur Kunst, and in exhibition catalogues such as Bauhaus, 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity, The Art of Two Germanies: Cold War Cultures, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, and Manfred Kuttner: Survey. More specifically, her research, writing, and teaching focus on abstraction, particularly the ways in which non-mimetic forms, colors, and materials come to signify in relation to specific historical contexts; postwar European art, especially the impact of World War II and the transformation from an international art world to a global one; the cross-overs between art and design, including interior and furniture design, wall-painting, and the traditionally feminine applied arts like weaving and embroidery; and photography and the relations between old and new media, including their convergences with histories and practices of abstract art. She is currently working on a book with IIT architectural historian Sean Keller on the art and architecture of the Munich Olympics, addressing their multiple significances for West German and North American cultures coming to terms with their “postwar” identities, for transatlantic exchange and the formation of an international art world, for the dilemmas of postwar national monumentality, and for computational methods of contemporary architectural design. Developing out of her Neubauer Collegium-sponsored research project Material Matters, she has overseen the research, conservation, and return to campus of Wolf Vostell’s Concrete Traffic, and is the faculty director for the related yearlong program “Concrete Happenings,” of which this symposium is a part. Together with Lisa Zaher, she is editing a book of essays on Vostell’s work with concrete and on Concrete Traffic for the University of Chicago Press.

Charles Ray is widely regarded as one of the most significant artists of his generation. He is best known for his sculptures of altered and refashioned familiar objects. In 1993 Ray made Firetruck, a 12-by-47-foot replica of a toy fire truck, which he “parked” in front of the Whitney Museum of American Art during that year’s biennial exhibition. In 2007 the artist completed a ten-year project—a re-creation in Japanese cypress (Hinoki) of a fallen and rotting tree he had found in a meadow, hand carved by Japanese master woodworkers. In 2009, Ray installed Boy with Frog, his first outdoor commissioned work, at the Punta della Dogana in Venice. Grand in size and realized with a smooth white finish that references the important tradition of marble sculpture in Italy, it depicts a boy holding a goliath frog above the Grand Canal. In 2015 the artist completed Horse and Rider, a ten-ton equestrian statue machined from solid stainless steel, with Ray himself as the rider. Ray (born 1953) has exhibited at Documenta IX (1992), Venice Biennales in 1993, 2003, and 2013, and five Whitney Biennials, and he has had one-person museum exhibitions in Basel, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Milan, Bern, Vienna, and Oslo, among other cities. Ray lives and works in Los Angeles and is represented by the Matthew Marks Gallery.

Carol Stringari is deputy director and chief conservator of the Guggenheim Foundation. She joined the Guggenheim staff in 1992. She is responsible for assessing and developing policy and procedures for the care and treatment of the collection. Working closely with the conservation, curatorial, and registration staff, she identifies priorities for collections care and oversees research and treatment. She manages conservation for a global loan and exhibition program, working with the team of conservators to assess risk and develop guidelines for safe travel, installation, and storage for the collection. Stringari has led an initiative to garner advocacy for conservation by establishing Friends of Conservation, and has recently overseen the design of a new satellite lab in the museum. She has carried out research and treatment on a wide range of artworks including those by Vincent Van Gogh, László Moholy-Nagy, Robert Ryman, Bruce Nauman, Alberto Burri, and Ad Reinhardt. Stringari played a key role in formulating and implementing the Variable Media Initiative at the Guggenheim Museum. She co-organized an exhibition on the theme of variable media in 2004, entitled Seeing Double: Emulation in Theory and Practice. In 2008, she curated the exhibition Imageless, the culmination of a long-term research project on the scientific analysis and experimental laser treatment of a damaged study painting by Ad Reinhardt. She is a founding member of the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA), an adjunct professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and has lectured throughout the world on ethical considerations and the conservation of contemporary art. Stringari holds a BA in art history from the University of Pennsylvania and an MS from the art conservation program at Winterthur Museum/University of Delaware. Before her tenure at the Guggenheim, she worked at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Ann Temkin assumed the role of Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture in 2008, after joining The Museum of Modern Art in 2003 as Curator. During her tenure, Ms. Temkin has focused especially on the acquisitions program of the Department of Painting and Sculpture, and the reimagining of the Collection Galleries at the Museum. Ms. Temkin is currently preparing an exhibition on the work of Donald Judd. Exhibitions she has organized or co-organized at MoMA include: Picasso Sculpture (2015); Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor (2014); Jasper Johns: Regrets (2014); Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New (2013); Ellsworth Kelly: Chatham Series (2013); Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store and Mouse Museum/Ray Gun Wing (2013); Abstract Expressionist New York (2010); Gabriel Orozco (2009); and Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today (2008). Ms. Temkin is an ex-officio Trustee at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and a member of the California Institute of the Arts Board of Overseers. She was born in Connecticut, and received her BA from Harvard University and her PhD in the history of art from Yale University.

Amanda Trienens received her graduate training in Historic Preservation and Conservation from the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked for leading practitioners and educators in the field of conservation prior to starting her own firm. An expert in concrete conservation, her project portfolio includes Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal at JFK Airport, Frank Lloyd Wright’s campus buildings at Florida Southern College, Pier Luigi Nervi’s George Washington Bus Station, and concrete sculptures by Donald Judd. Trienens is the founder and principal of Cultural Heritage Conservation, LLC, which provides a range of services to address the conservation needs of buildings, monuments, and sculptures. Website: http://www.culturalheritageconservation.com

Joyce Tsai is a specialist in modern and contemporary art whose work focuses on the recurrent artistic engagement with abstraction from the 19th to the 21st century. Her recent book project examines the persistence of painting in the work of László Moholy-Nagy. In addition to her training in the history of art, she also earned an MA in German with an emphasis on realism, critical theory and aesthetic philosophy. Her interests include the history of photography, art conservation and conservation science, and the European avant-garde. Tsai has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, Dedalus Foundation, and Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. She is currently Clinical Associate Professor of the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Iowa, and Curator of the University of Iowa Museum of Art.

Anna Weiss-Pfau is the University of Chicago’s Campus & Public Art Collection Manager and Conservator, a position oriented between the Office of the Provost and the Smart Museum of Art. Anna manages the care and study of works of art in over 150 buildings on campus, primarily focusing on the conservation of outdoor sculpture. Prior to her appointment at the University, Weiss-Pfau was a Conservation Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. At NASM, Anna conserved space and flight objects, primarily focusing on the conservation and technical study of the German WWII plywood aircraft the Horten Ho 229V3, thought to be one of the world’s first “stealth” aircraft. Additionally, Anna has worked in conservation at the National Museum of the American Indian, the American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum of Natural History, in private practice, and on excavations in Greece and Italy for UCLA, Queen’s University, and the Athenian School of Classical Studies. Weiss-Pfau holds a MA in Art Conservation from Queen’s University in Canada and a BA in Art History from Bradley University. Her research interests include nano-particle coatings for outdoor sculpture and monuments, emergency management and response, and the intersections of conservation and restoration for the preservation of industrial materials.

Lisa Young has served as objects conservator at the National Air and Space Museum since 2009. She earned her B.Sc. (Honors) in conservation at the University of Wales, Cardiff. She has worked at NASM since 1997, where she has conducted primary research on the degradation and preservation of spacesuits and related materials. From 1999 to 2006 she served as the project conservator to the Save America’s Treasures Project “Saving Threatened Artifacts from the Apollo Era.” Under this project she consulted on the conservation of the Saturn V rocket assembly in Houston, Texas and performed a technical study and condition survey on over 200 spacesuits in the National collection. She has treated a variety of aerospace materials, and as one of the Safety officers for the conservation laboratory at NASM she helps to oversee the identification, testing and treatment of hazmat materials in the collection. She has written and published articles and technical information on the conservation of spacesuits and related materials, and has given numerous presentations at professional meetings as well as to school groups and the public. In 2015, she collaborated with NASM colleagues and participated in the first Smithsonian Kickstarter project and raised over $750,000 to conserve, display and digitize Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit for the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11 in 2019. She is currently Outreach Chair for Washington Conservation Guild from 2005-2007 and is a Fellow of AIC since 2016.

Lisa Zaher is the inaugural UChicago Arts Conservation Research Fellow (2015-17) and a Lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her primary research and teaching focus on the history, theory and historiography of modern and contemporary art. She is currently completing a book on the American avant-garde filmmaker, photographer and theorist Hollis Frampton. In her position as UChicago Arts Conservation Research Fellow, she has conducted research informing the conservation of Concrete Traffic (1970), and has organized a series of events and programs celebrating the sculpture’s return as part of the University of Chicago’s Concrete Happenings initiative. With Christine Mehring, she is editing a collection of essays on Concrete Traffic and Wolf Vostell’s related works in concrete. Zaher received a Master’s degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art (2001), and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (2013).