Current projects

^{Key research themes: dynamic heritage; contested heritage; stakeholders; multi-level perspectives; local/global} 
This research theme studies arts and heritage in the making. It focuses on the ways in which arts, cultural, natural and immaterial heritage are created in processes of negotiation between a variety of actors. Heritage policies have to operate within a field of tensions. On the one hand, arts and heritage are considered to be of increased importance as constitutive for cultural identity and a sense of belonging in an increasingly globalised, multicultural and fast changing environment. On the other hand, arts and heritage are ever more defined as economic assets; the valorisation of arts and heritage can create new jobs and stimulate economic growth. Arts and heritage, in other words, are business: motors that may encourage tourism and, more recently, engage the creative industries. These purposes might go together but very often they conflict with each other and with the traditional goals of arts and heritage conservation.
In this theme, the roles of stakeholders are key; cultural actors, NGO’s, policy bodies and infrastructures such as governmental bodies, cultural foundations, museums and their networking will be investigated. How can we understand the power plays between the various stakeholders and how do they intersect local and global boarders?

Projects:

• The Living History of the Meuse
• Better than Gold: Art in Storage and the Making of Financial Value
• Curating Europe's Changing Nature
• The Atelier Glasschilderkunst F. Nicolas en Zonen in Roermond (1855-1968) and the Revival of Stained-Glass Production in Western Europe in the 19th and 20th century
• Research network LACUNAE: Lasting Legacies: Contemporary Artists’ Estates Between Public Heritage and Private Inheritance

• The Living History of the Meuse
  Imagine walking along the Meuse and when you feel thirsty, drinking directly from the river, as people did in the past. What would need to change to make this possible? What would the new potable riverscape look like? Would a renewed ecosystem, with a balanced integration of old and new, nature and culture, allow cities and villages to enjoy the river throughout the year, in all its stages? These questions form the inspiration for this research project. Against the backdrop of shifting identities, climate change, declining biodiversity and energy transition, our study reconsiders the cultural and natural heritage of the Meuse. Doing so requires an understanding of the spatiotemporal dynamics of cultural, physical and ecological structures in the landscape and their interactions. By mobilizing and (re-)integrating this knowledge and understanding, we seek to identify and define the transformation needed for a river system that ensures the increased well-being of humans and non-humans. The project’s central aim is an integrated assessment for the planning, design and management as well as the imagination of the river’s hybrid landscape. This ‘biography of the Meuse’ looks at the river’s water, identities, landforms, built environment, sediments, drift matter, organisms, pollution, stories, rights and media appeal. The Limburg Meuse reach is the focal point, yet it connects to the wider drainage basin and allows us to develop concepts relevant for river reaches elsewhere, in the Netherlands and beyond.
  ^{Project leader(s): Christian Ernsten & Nico Randeraad 
  Duration: 17 January 2019 -
  Societal partners: S/RHCL; LGOG; Provincie Limburg; Limburgs Museum
  Funded by: SWOL/Universiteitsfonds Limburg; Nationale Wetenschapsagenda; Provincie Limburg; Limburgs Museum}

• Better than Gold: Art in Storage and the Making of Financial Value
  This interdisciplinary research project studies new types art-storage-spaces and their implications for global relations between art and finance. Today, artworks are increasingly insured, collateralized, and securitized in and through storage. This affects public and private practices of ownership and display, speculation and risk, as well as (self-)regulation and taxation.
  Researching how art is currently financialized in and through new types of storage, this interdisciplinary project is the first to analyze the far-reaching implications of such emergent art-storage-spaces. Doing multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork at and around art-storage-spaces, the project studies by means of participant observation and qualitative interviewing the contested technologies, politics, and ethics of art-storage and art-financialization practices.
  ^{Project leader: Christoph Rausch}

• Curating Europe's Changing Nature
  This study concerns the River Meuse and Mount Saint Peter as they are emerging as new nature reserves in Europe. The River Meuse and Mount Saint Peter figure prominently in the history of the City of Maastricht and the Limburg region in general. They constitute hybrid landscapes that present complex patchworks of land use, including nature reserves, archaeological sites, urban edges, industrial complexes, agricultural lands and leisure zones. Currently large-scale projects of nature engineering are underway, altering these landscapes fundamentally. These transitions present a key archive to analyze the shifts, transformations and internal workings of the discourses of heritage and nature development. Moreover, the reconfiguration of the river and the hill as new nature reserves are exemplary in a European context of post-industrial transformation, rapid urban growth and anthropogenic climate change. One of the central concerns of this study is therefore the examination of the different regimes of care surrounding the conservation of the new co-existence of animals, plants, humans and technologies. As such, it is responding to the urgent need for the articulating an integrative framework to cultural heritage and natural heritage in Europe in general, and in relation to the new Dutch Environmental Management Act (to be implemented from 2021) specifically. 
  The study is currently in development and involves collaborations with local museums, historical and archaeological societies as well as natural heritage organizations in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. The analysis of this project will be the result of a multi-stranded research methodology. Alongside archival research and interviews, this will include an ethnographic study of locally situated practices as well as walking as an embodied research methodology. 
  ^{Project leader: Christian Ernsten}

• The Atelier Glasschilderkunst F. Nicolas en Zonen in Roermond (1855-1968) and the Revival of Stained-Glass Production in Western Europe in the 19th and 20th century
  In the wake of the revival of the decorative arts in the second half of the 19th century the production of stained-glass windows also reached new heights. One of the prominent new studios was the “NV Glasschilderkunst F. Nicolas en Zonen, sedert 1940 Max Weiss”, a company based in Roermond. The archives of this company have recently been catalogued and partly digitized. Both the business archive of the company and cartoons that were used to produce the stained-glass windows are made available.
  The Atelier Nicolas produced stained glass that found its way to numerous churches and as well as to public and private buildings in the Netherlands, Belgium and other countries. Starting from the company archives, this PhD research project will look into the mobility of commodities and information between the atelier and its environment.
  The Atelier Nicolas created its own space across local, regional and national borders. The Atelier made clever use of Dutch and foreign designers, craftsmen, styles, etc. to obtain a prominent position on the international art market. With Joep Nicolas, the most famous member of the Nicolas family, the Atelier had an innovative glass painter who solidified the position of the Atelier in an age of increasing international tension.
  The main aim of this project is to explain the rise and fall of this artistic atelier against the background of the emancipation of Catholicism in the Netherlands, ‘lived religion’ in the 19th and 20th century, political turmoil, technological innovation, international competition, and changing cultural taste. 
  ^{Project leader: Prof. Nico Randeraad
  Duration: 1 February 2020 – 31 January 2024
  Societal partners: SHCL
  Funded by: European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 847596.}

• Research network LACUNAE: LAsting Legacies: Contemporary Artists’ Estates Between PUblic Heritage and Private INheritAncE
  Introduction: 
  The death of the generation of visual artists living and working in Europe who redefined art practice in the latter part of the 20th century is imminent. These artists engaged with innovative forms of artistic practice such as performance and time-based media, leaving behind a significant material and immaterial heritage. Many contemporary artists individually and collectively developed practices that sought to question conceptions and structures of authority, power and identity. These artists often problematized the dominant politics, technologies and ethics of collecting, classifying and archiving artworks, thereby also fundamentally challenging public and private institutions in the preservation of art and cultural heritage. Frequently, such challenges result in a failure of these public and private institutions to engage with contemporary artists’ estates. This is further compounded in the case of BIPOC, LGBTQI+ and women artists, where we see a history of systematic marginalization and denial of their artistic legacies by established museums and the art market. The problem of an underrepresentation of these marginalized artists is confirmed by internal audits in major art institutions and has been put in the spotlight by social movements such as Black Lives Matter. Artists working in ephemeral media are particularly at risk of marginalization and thus face a double exclusion and neglect.
  The LACUNAE research network explores how emerging networks of care around contemporary artists’ estates are currently assembled, and how they could better involve marginalized artists and their communities to co-construct lasting legacies. We use the term contemporary artists’ estates to define the actual, legal inheritances (material and immaterial) as bequeathed to and represented by a public or private entity (association of heirs). When we refer to artists’ legacies, we mean the cultural heritage left behind by artists in a broader sense and as interpreted, contextualized and appreciated by art history, as well as by museums and the art market. 
  Contemporary artists’ estates are cultural heritage and identity in the making. Currently, there is a surge of interest in the estates of established contemporary artists from private market actors such as gallerists, consultants, lawyers, and financial advisors. These actors rival art historians, conservators, and curators embedded in national public institutions in their attempts at valorizing these artists’ legacies. However, in this field of tensions caring for marginalized artists´ estates cannot depend on powerful market forces alone, but also requires established institutions to reconsider their collecting practices. That is why we aim to understand who cares: who owns, controls and manages contemporary artists’ estates, what is being cared for, how and why?
  What we do: 
  In order to better understand how heritage is being done and diverse identities are negotiated and contested, and to improve the care for marginalized artists’ estates, we investigate who speaks authoritatively and legitimately about these artists’ legacies (politics), how these legacies can be effectively shared and put to common uses (technologies), and how they can critically inform effective and affective networks of care for art and cultural heritage (ethics), now and in the future.
  Our central research question is: 
  How can networks of public and private actors and factors in the field of contemporary art contribute to more inclusive practices of caring for marginalized artists’ estates and of sharing their legacies, now and in the future? 
  We take this central question as a basis for collaborative political, technological and ethical reflection and debate. The following sub-questions operationalize our central research question:
  1. What are the institutional politics of caring and sharing in the preservation of contemporary artists’ estates and how are they publicly and privately contested when it comes to marginalized artists’ legacies?
  2. What different public and private technologies of caring and sharing are employed in the making of artists’ legacies and how can contemporary artists’ estates make good use of them to counter marginalization?
  3. What are established ethics in the caring for and sharing of contemporary artists’ estates and how could alternative norms and values yield relevant affects and effects for marginalized artists’ legacies?
  With LACUNAE we react to a clear and present need for a new forum of exchange between the private and public sector in dealing with artists´ estates. Focussing on challenges for marginalized artists´ estates and developing frameworks and guidelines our project will help to diversify, de-canonize and decolonize existing institutional structures and empower communities to care for marginalized artists´ legacies. Unique historical sources are endangered and there is a risk of them being lost for research purposes. Against this perspective of loss, we need to strengthen networks of care through shared expertise and collaboration. By putting marginalized artists' estates in a broader perspective of emerging networks of care – in between public and private approaches – we can better understand the challenges of preserving the transnational cultural heritage of contemporary art.
  Who we are:
  Oriana Baddeley (University of the Arts London, UK); Joana Baiao (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, PT); Lydia Beerkens (SRAL, NL); Valentina Curandi (artist and PhD candidate in artistic research, D/IT); Adrian Glew (Tate, UK); Robert Jarosz (Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, PL); Marika Kuzmicz (Fundacija Arton, PL); Pip Laurenson (Tate and Maastricht University, UK); Susana Martins (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, PT); Adam Mazur (University of the Arts Poznán, PL); Christoph Rausch (Maastricht University, NL); Vivian van Saaze (Maastricht University, NL); Anna Schäffler (Preservation as a Service, Berlin, D); Eliza Steinbock (Maastricht University, NL); Mark Waugh (Art 360 foundation, UK); Miriam Windhausen (independent advisor artists‘ estates, NL); Renée van de Vall (Maastricht University, NL)
  Past events:
  - 10 June 2021: Networks of Care: Preserving Artists' Legacies through Collaborative Archival Practices Hosted by neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (NGBK),  Berlin
  - 23 & 24 January 2020: Preserving Artists’ Legacies: Research Workshop
  Hosted by the Hybrid Lab in Berlin, a joint initiative of the Technical University of Berlin and the Berlin University of the Arts

^{Key research themes: values; authenticity; ownership; global art market}
Rather than focussing on the stakeholders, this research theme focuses on what is ‘at stake’. The research conducted in this frame, explores the valorisation of arts and heritage and the ways cultural values are constituted and legitimatized by analysing both past and present heritage practices with particular attention to the interplays of the legal, cultural, political, social, economic, material and ethical fabrics that make up arts and heritage worlds. How for example to go about the tensions between the preservation of authentic historical sites and economically viable re-use? How to understand and improve these processes? Contemporary artists such as street artist Banksy challenge existing notions of ownership and expertise. Whose work is it and what are the legal and economical ramifications of his way of working? Complex issues such as these require a multidisciplinary perspective in order to understand and anticipate on the ways artists, experts, and art investors feed into these kind of tensions.

Projects:

• Collaborative PhD project with Tate
• Language Culture in Limburg
• A New Baroque Organ for the 21st Century

• Collaborative PhD project with Tate
  In October 2018, Dirk van de Leemput started his collaborative PhD project with Tate, London. Since the 1960s artists have been using a range of media technologies to create art. These artworks are dependent on these technologies and their associated networks of people, materials and skills, not only for their production but also for their on-going display and access. The research will consider manifestations of the precarity or persistence of the technological networks and their associated consequences for the conservation of these artworks.
  The traditional museum model, based on collection knowledge and conservation capacities that is held within the museum, is challenged. Instead, the contemporary art museum is increasingly dependent on socio-material networks outside the museum which are beyond the museum's direct control and which circulate in alternative economies, often dominated by different commercial concerns. The museum needs better understanding of these networks to inform and build upon methodologies such as risk assessment and other tools for imagining the future viability of particular works in contemporary art collections. Dirk will study from the collection of Tate three artworks that build upon diverse technologies such as 16mm film, CRT’s and programming language.
  The PhD research is part of ‘Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum’, a three-year research project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and led by Pip Laurenson, Head of Collection Care at Tate, and Professor Art, Collection and Care at Maastricht University.

• Language Culture in Limburg
  The construction of local identities through language cultural practices; processes of place-making, globalisation in the margin, code-switching, bidialectal child acquisition; multilingualism.
  ^{Project leader: Prof Leonie Cornips (FASoS) In collaboration with Dr Vincent de Rooij (UvA) and Dr Irene Stengs (Meertens Institute)
  Researchers FASoS: Kristel Peters; Jolien Clijsen; Kirsten van den Heij, MA; Dr Charles van Leeuwen
  Societal partners: Digital Library of Dutch Literature; Limburgs Museum; Huis voor de Kunsten; Cultuuradvies Art Dujour; Lubert.nl}

• A New Baroque Organ for the 21st Century
  This project aims to research and document the building of a new baroque organ at the Orgelpark in Amsterdam. This concert venue in Amsterdam, founded in 2007, has an extensive collection of instruments, including a replica of a medieval organ and three Romantic organs. The new baroque organ that is to be built will be more than just an ordinary baroque organ. The main research question is how the process of building the instrument can be used as an innovative way to study performance and composition practices, listening practices, and organ building practices. The primary interest lies in how the organ can be used in relation to both contemporary and historically oriented ways of making music. The research focuses specifically on how knowledge, techniques and craftsmanship are developed in the practice of building a new baroque organ. The construction of the baroque organ dovetails with the international trend of research organs. These instruments of knowledge create experimental situations: they can be ‘read’ and queried with regard to a diverse range of questions. The baroque organ project thus hopes to contribute to an exchange of insights between fields such as new musicology, science and technology studies, sound studies, and artistic research.
  The Baroque Organ project is funded by the Utopa Foundation in Leiden.
  ^{Project leader: Dr Peter Peters (FASoS)
  Societal partners: Organ Park Amsterdam; Utopa Foundation, Leiden}

^{Key research themes: protection; restitution; return and trade of cultural objects; provenance research; authenticity and authentification; global art market}
Contemporary intersections between art, cultural heritage and the market are complicated by a variety of ethical, legal, business and financial issues, which frequently are directly related to complex global and historic relations. This research theme examines the ways in which values are constituted and legitimatized by analyzing both past and present arts and heritage practices with particular attention to the interplays of the legal, cultural, social political and economic fabrics that make up these arts and heritage assemblages.
Research topics include: pillage and looting in the past and in the present and the protection of cultural property in times of war and peace, licit and illicit trade, art and heritage disputes, contested heritage and restitution policies, fakes, forgeries, authentication and the role of experts and art market participants, trust and transparency in art markets, auction house predictions of prices (point price estimates) and their relation to actual sales prices.
MACCH researchers collaborate with private and public partners, such as the Royal Academy and the Sotheby's Institute of Art.

Projects:

• Doing Private Practice Conservation in the Contemporary Art Market
• Trafficking Transformations (2020–2024)
• Legal Proceedings Marei von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum of Art (2015-)
• Expert Opinion and Reputation in Art Markets
• Workshop on Law & Art - Annual Activity

• Doing Private Practice Conservation in the Contemporary Art Market
  Mareike Opeña has joined MACCH as an external PhD candidate with a project focusing on decision-making processes in conservation for the contemporary art market. Her research is predominantly located in New York City, where she has lived and worked in private practice conservation for the past decade. In conservation literature, decision-making processes are implicitly situated in a museum-like environment, where the artwork is naturally seen as a permanent part of a collection with indisputable cultural value. In this context, the practice of conservation aims to preserve a work’s symbolic meaning and to enable its communicative powers. Conservation practice in the public art museum is predominantly meant to prepare artworks to be exhibited publicly to visitors willing to ‘experience’ art as a means of personal, cultural enrichment. However, contemporary art for sale on the art market is often viewed by a very different public – a public that may be approaching art for collection or investment purposes. In this context, an artwork is not only considered for its cultural value, but also evaluated for its economic value. In fact, value appraisals of artworks for sale fundamentally rely on a work’s material condition, for which - among others - conservators’ expertise is relied on. Here, a conservator is called upon to evaluate an artwork’s material composition and stability for durability, authenticity, and traces of previous conservation interventions. The ideal outcome of such an evaluation, from an investment point of view, is the pristine, impeccable condition which promises high value appraisals in the future. Hence, different to conservation in a museum setting, works of art on the market are inspected from the front and the back. As an experienced practitioner of conservation for New York’s contemporary art market, Mareike Opeña investigates decision-making processes and ethical considerations in the daily lives of conservators in private practice, where the task is to preserve both cultural and monetary value of privately owned art. Drawing from her professional experience, Mareike applies qualitative research methods to address three central issues fundamental to the ethics of decision-making in private practice conservation: stakeholder networks, authority negotiation, and knowledge organisation. The research is supervised by Vivian van Saaze, Christoph Rausch and Jessica Mesman.

• Trafficking Transformations (2020–2024)
  In January 2020, MACCH affiliated researcher Donna Yates joined the Maastricht University Faculty of Law as PI of the ERC Starting Grant-funded project Trafficking Transformations: Objects as Agents in Transnational Criminal Networks. This project draws upon the multidisciplinary collaboration of MACCH and combines methodologies from criminology and arts research to understand the trafficking networks related to the movement of illicit antiquities, fossils, and collectable wildlife. This project brings formal partnerships with criminology researchers at the University of Cape Town and Victoria University at Wellington. Total budget: € 1.5000.000.

• Legal Proceedings Marei von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum of Art (2015-)
  Expert witness and advisor of defense team representing the Norton Simon Museum of Art. The project covers, among other things, research into the Dutch post-war restitutions and restoration of rights process regarding artworks looted during the Second World War.
  ^{Project leader: Lars van Vliet (Faculty of Law)
  Societal partner: Norton Simon Museum of Art
  Business partner: Munger, Tolles and Olson LLP}

• Expert Opinion and Reputation in Art Markets
  In this project we study asymmetric information in art markets. How expert opinion manifests itself in the price of artworks auctioned. In particular we focus on the major collectors and dealers from the 18th and 19th century, and how they were able to influence art markets. Using empirical data from 1767-1911 from London art auction markets we observe the strategy of expert collectors and dealers in the London art market. This data approach is highly innovative in nature and new techniques are used to construct a database of over 30,000 entries of art auction sales data for this period. A number of important characteristics are also collected. These variables help determine the price of the works of art sold at auction. The major dealers of the time, prominent in the 18th century are analysed and their strategy.  Collection values are also studied.
  The project uses innovative research methods and requires an interdisciplinary team of researchers, including historians, psychologists and social scientists.  The aim of the project is to help understand expert opinion and how asymmetric information influences behaviour in art markets.
  ^{Project Leader: Prof. dr. Rachel Pownall (School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University)
  Other UM researchers: Dr. Marina Gertsberg (School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University)
  Partners: Sotheby's Institute of Art; Sotheby's Auction House}

• Workshop on Law & Art - Annual Activity
  At the annual Ius Commune Conference, a workshop on law & art is presented.
  ^{Researchers: Hildegard Schneider, Lars van Vliet (Faculty of Law)}