Anna Perkins

Code of Ethics

Big Picture

After many years of revisions by committee with member feedback, the current code of ethics for the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) was adopted in 1994. The essential pledge of this report is to

The code calls for conservator conduct that reflects “informed respect for the cultural property, its unique character and significance, and the people or person who created it” as well as “recognizing the right of society to make appropriate and respectful use of the cultural property” and which “strive[s] to select methods and materials …[which] do not adversely affect cultural property or its future examination, scientific investigation, treatment, or function.”¹

Thus, conservators are obligated to wear the hats of art historians, scientists, artists, and members of society in their conservation and restoration treatment decision-making process for a cultural object. They consider the context of the object in addition to its material condition, and they stay up to date on the scientific literature of the field to minimize issues for expected future conservation interventions.

For instance, it may be best for the preservation of the painting for it to be displayed behind glass in a low-light environment, but that makes it more difficult for the public to properly see the work. Thus, conservators, along with curators, have to balance the risk to the aging artwork with public access to cultural heritage objects.

Authenticity

AIC’s Code of Ethics highlights the importance of authenticity, which often (in the context of art conservation) is synonymous with artist’s intention. Refraining from altering original material is especially crucial for maintaining authenticity. For example, a contemporary conservator would not pick off flaking paint and repaint the area, but they would instead smooth down the flake and strengthen its adhesion to the substrate.

The conservator’s goal is the preservation of original material along with the restoration of the aesthetic and conceptual properties of the work through cleaning and repairing damage. The code says, “[Compensation for loss] should be reversible and should not falsely modify the known aesthetic, conceptual, and physical characteristics of the cultural property, especially by removing or obscuring original material.”¹

In contemporary practice, Vivian Van Saaze, the Director of the Maastricht Centre for Arts and Culture, Conservation and Heritage, explains in Presentation and Conservation of Changing Artworks (2013) that “when the artist is still alive, ‘artist’s intent’ is often considered interchangeable with ‘what the artist says about the work,’” but by contrast, one cannot divine the intentions of artists whose work is centuries old.²

Van Saaze scrutinizes the idea of equating “artist intention” with authenticity. She describes that in the mid-twentieth century, Wimsatt and Beardsley philosophized the “The Intentional Fallacy” (1946) for art criticism that asserted that “artist’s intentions are neither available nor desirable as a standard for interpreting art.”² Meanwhile, in the world of art conservation, the artist’s intention was held onto strongly by a certain scientific faction and deprioritized by a certain aesthetic faction of conservators, and their differing theories reflected in their conservation practices rather than in formal debates.² Van Saaze writes that, to this day, “despite theoretical discussions on the subject of intention in literature and arts, in conservation practice and theory, there is a strong insistence on artist’s intentions as being leading and authoritative.”²

Van Saaze also discusses how the concept of “authenticity” is understood across time and across cultures. She cites historian David Lowenthal’s The Past is a Foreign Country (1999) to explain the nineteenth century paradigm regarding authenticity:

In the nineteenth century, material authenticity – only the paints, varnishes, frames, etc. originally applied by the artist – was the classical Western understanding of “authenticity” according to Lowenthal and Van Saaze. By 1993, art historian Nicole Ex described four types of authenticity in contemporary conservation:

In 1994, the Nara Conference on Authenticity drew conservators’ attention to the need to consider also the cultural context of the art object. The conference “brought together Western and Asian thought on authenticity. The aspect of cultural diversity in principles and views was particularly highlighted.”^2,4 In “East Asian Values in Historic Conservation,” Seung-Jin Chung writes that “conservation principles in the East Asian societies are determined in relation to the spiritual and naturalistic sensibilities of East Asian culture and architecture,” as opposed to the Euro-centric conservation focus on material authenticity⁵ – differing philosophies which lead to diverse conservation outcomes.

Such a conference on the subject of authenticity in art conservation was necessary, according to the Nara Conference attendees, because we live “[i]n a world that is increasingly subject to the forces of globalization and homogenization, and in a world in which the search for cultural identity is sometimes pursued through aggressive nationalism and the suppression of the cultures of minorities. […] [T]he cultural heritage of each is the cultural heritage of all.”⁴

Some of the conference’s conclusions about authenticity were that “mechanistic formulae or standardized procedures” should be avoided and that “multidisciplinary collaboration” and “all available expertise and knowledge” should be employed to “determine authenticity in a manner respectful of cultures and heritage diversity.”⁴ This framework for assessing authenticity decidedly rejected the idea of universal criteria in favor of leaving cultural objects at the discretion of their own culture’s concept of authenticity.

Nicole Ex’s fourth type of authenticity, which considers the history of the cultural object, would include past restorations of the artwork as authentic material. Similarly, paper conservator and educator Muñoz Viñas argues that “objective truth” is one of the “dubious” principles of classical conservation, writing of a Rembrandt that has been previously restored, “[T]he truth…is that the painting is the work of two painters. We do not appreciate one of them very much, and so we make the choice of erradicating[sic] his work. It is a choice based on taste and personal preferences.”⁶ The authenticity of the celebrated artist is prioritized over the aesthetic value provided by the restorer.

Thus, authenticity is commonly understood in the Western art conservation world to stem from the artist’s intention and original material, so previous restoration work is usually cleaned away to reveal more of the artist’s handiwork.

Cultural Significance

The preamble of the AIC Code of Ethics briefly states that the goal of a conservator is the “preservation of cultural property,” which is defined as “objects, structures, or aggregate collections” of “artistic, historical, scientific, religious, or social” significance, “and [which] is an invaluable and irreplaceable legacy that must be preserved for future generations.”¹ The definition of a cultural object as one with cultural significance relies on a collective agreement on what is significant. Muñoz-Viñas argues that our choice of what is an “irreplaceable legacy,” or art that “belong[s] to humanity,” such as the Mona Lisa or the Sistine Chapel, has a Western bias which challenges this classical conservation principle of “universality.”⁶ In his article, “Contemporary Theory of Conservation,” Muñoz-Viñas explains what he sees as several “dubious principles” of classical conservation that are challenged by contemporary theories of conservation. On the subject of cultural significance, he writes:

In addition to Western and elitist bias, there is also a gender bias in which objects are deemed as cultural property. In 2024, paintings conservator Veronica Romero noted that there was a huge gap between the number of works attributed to male artists over those by female artists that her company is tasked to conserve, which reflects the gap that also exists in museum collections, according to Guintcheva and Jemel-Fornetty, writers for The Conversation. ^7,8 Guintcheva and Jemel-Fornetty write that “[i]n the United States in 2019, in the 18 largest museums in terms of visitor numbers, 87% of the artists exhibited in the permanent collections were men.”⁸

References

Retouching Materials Why Conserve?