Newsletter of the ICOM Committee for Conservation working group

“Art Technological Source Research”

Vol. 3 (2008), nr. 1 (July)

ATSR Business meeting in Glasgow (UK)

Present: Mark Clarke, Esther van Duijn, Erma Hermens, Jo Kirby Atkinson, Stefanos Kroustallis, Jilleen Nadolny, Sylvie Neven, Doris Oltrogge, Kathrin Pilz, Carol Potters, Ron Spronk, Ad Stijnman (Coordinator), Arie Wallert, Maartje Witlox

Place: The History of Art Department, Glasgow University.

Date: 11 June 2008.

Agenda

- Welcome

- Order of the agenda

Present ATSR activities:

- ATSR website

- List of ATSR participants

- List of publications interesting to ATSR

- List of suppliers of historically accurate artists’ materials

- New ATSR coordinator

Issues for the new Coordinator to consider:
- Changes of performance of the working group
- Internal communication
- External communication
- ATSR publications

- Courses and conferences

ICOM-CC activities:

- Continuation of our presence in ICOM-CC

Present ATSR activities:

- ATSR website: Mark Clarke hosts ATSR on his website http://www.clericus.org/atsr/; thanks to his generosity the working group can advertise itself.

- List of ATSR participants: Elena Cenalmor and Marie Louise Sauerberg have been compiling and keeping a list of participants, asking everyone for their particular interest in joining ATSR and asking the affiliated institutes for permission to mention their institutional names on our pages (partly uploaded already); the list being basically finished, will be used internally only; Elena will keep it updated.

- List of publications interesting to ATSR: Meta Chavannes started organising the information; Ad will further prepare the list for uploading on our pages.

- List of suppliers of historically accurate artists’ materials: Jilleen raised the issue, got support from Mark D. Gottsegen for American addresses, and will consider how to continue further.

- New ATSR coordinator: Ad will organize the election for a new Coordinator; dates were agreed upon for the election of a new coordinator, but due to personal circumstances Ad could only start organizing two weeks later.

Present schedule:

Until 07 July 2008: persons can be nominated and volunteers can apply.

Per 07 July 2008: nominees and volunteers are asked (1) whether they are willing and capable to operate as Coordinator of the ATSR working group starting per 01 October 2008 for a period of three years; (2) if so, to send a short note about why they would like to be Coordinator and with their intended program.

Per 15 July 2008: names of candidates with their notes are sent around, all ATSR participants are invited to vote; the voting closes on 04 August 2008 GMT+9.

5 August 2008: the name of the candidate chosen is mailed to the working group.

ATSR is an ICOM-CC working group under probation. During the ICOM-CC Triennial in New Delhi in week 39, the meeting of Directory Board and Coordinators will first vote whether ATSR is accepted as their official 23rd working group or not. If positive, during the second voting for the new Coordinators of all working groups, also the new ATSR Coordinator will receive an official position under ICOM-CC. If negative ATSR will leave ICOM-CC and we will continue independently with the new Coordinator.

Issues for the new Coordinator to consider:
- Changes of performance of the working group: Ad will release his Assistant Coordinators (Elena, Mark, Erma, Jo, Maartje) from duty; the new Coordinator will invite new ACs; present communication with the working group is by direct e-mail and occasional business meetings, other forms of communication are to be considered
- Internal communication: solicit suggestions for discussion of the issues we started with, for the development of new concepts, for ways to get more participants involved (discussion list?), in order to concentrate the focus of the group.
- External communication: draw the attention of an extended audience – especially outside of conservation & restoration - to the concepts of ATSR; development of the ATSR pages, for example by asking permission to publish some articles on the general principles of art technological source research and on reconstruction levels; develop personal contacts in the fields of history, art history, history of science & technology, but be selective and find those sensitive to it; contact other working groups (within ICOM-CC and further), institutions (first contacts are with institutions in Scandinavia and Brazil) and projects (‘Impact of Oil’ in the Netherlands); present sessions at conferences for historians, art historians, and historians of science & technology.
- ATSR publications: presently the proceedings of our bi-annual conferences; the two year gaps are found to be too large; an annual publication in paper is wished for because long lasting, with better pictures and more impact, but it may be difficult to convince our present publisher; an on-line publication could be considered, but will cost a lot of work, too, and the www is clogging, getting more sensitive to technical problems and is increasingly suffering from censorship.

- Courses and conferences: Stefanos is preparing a course on historic pigments in Madrid in 2008; Ad is preparing a master class on mediaeval art recipes in Wolfenbuettel (Germany) in the winter of 2009/2010; ideas for new ATSR symposiums in Vienna (2010) and Cologne (2012) were proposed after the close of the meeting.

ICOM-CC activities:

- Continuation of our presence in ICOM-CC:

Operating of the working group under the umbrella of a larger organisation or having a desk at an institute has been a returning issue on our agenda. Whether ATSR will become its 23^rd working group will be decided during the ICOM-CC Triennial in New Delhi. The working group, though, should have an opinion of its own about this and not let others decide. Discussion on the subject had started when we had to leave the building. Because of this the meeting did not get any further then “let’s see what happens and leave the issue to the next Coordinator”.

Some pro’s and cons of ATSR being a working group under ICOM-CC expressed during the meeting:

- reference to ICOM-CC (its logo on official letters) is found helpful in Spain, not so in the UK and the Netherlands

- ICOM-CC is internationally organized and recognized, but internal communication is poor; the Directory Board has been behaving in a rather patriarchal way; reports are sent only months afterwards decreasing efficiency of discussions and decisions

- ICOM-CC offers a forum at Triennials and recently started an internet forum; the various working groups organize interim meetings to bridge the three year gap and the internet forum is hardly active

- all discussions between Directory Board and Coordinators have been about administrative issues in the past three years; any discussion on joint professional interest has been almost absent and the information sent about professional subjects has been utterly poor

- neither ICOM-CC nor the local national ICOM committees have offered any support at all when asked for; not even a letter of recommendation could be given, while on the other hand working groups are obliged to submit financial reports of their activities (conferences).

- the ICOM-CC community is potentially interested in our activities because of the material aspects all are dealing with professionally, but it is in the field of conservation & restoration only; historians, art historians and historians of science & technology are to be found elsewhere