Publication of Art Matters Special Issue: Expanding Notions of ‘Making’ for Contemporary Artworks

The papers present work from an interdisciplinary group of both early-stage researchers and established scholars, who critically examine the implications of an expanded notion of making for the custodianship and perpetuation of a wide range of contemporary artworks.

This first ArtMatters Special Issue presents papers based on presentations from two symposia organised in 2017 by the University of Glasgow and in 2018 by the Cologne University of Applied Sciences, as part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN) New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art (NACCA, 2015–2020). NACCA comprises a training network of 15 early-stage researchers working with and supervised by conservation professionals, (technical) art historians, heritage scientists and curators from 10 partner institutions, both universities and museums, and spread over six European countries: The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom.

Drawing on infrastructure theory, Iona Goldie-Scot explores how the extended realms of the making of performance-based artworks test traditional notions of the art object and force new dependencies for care within and beyond the museum. Whilst, Artemis Rüstau proposes the notion of the relational site, which recognizes the underexplored role of the artist-collector relationship in the creation and custodianship of site-specific artworks.

Thanks go to the fantastic team of editors, Brian Castriota, Zoë Miller, Gunnar Heydenreich, Dominic Paterson and Erma Hermens, as well as to the partners from NACCA, the European Union H2020 Programme for financial support, and the team Archetype Publications for making this publication possible.