Artists as Futurists? On the History of Durability in Art and the Making of the Future

Our cultural heritage comprises many art objects that are hundreds and sometimes thousands of years old. How did they survive this long? While many factors determine if and how art can be preserved, one has fundamentally impacted its long-term survival: The desire to make and own objects that withstand the test of time. In this presentation I will show how the ERC DURARE project studies the impact of artisan’s and patron’s ambitions to craft, own and theorize durable objects on the long-term development of the visual and decorative arts.

Combining research into textual sources and art objects with hands-on reconstructions of materials and techniques, the DURARE-project considers how the initial desire for, and continuous efforts to produce objects that have the ability to last, stimulated materials knowledge about aging and stability and shaped ideas about what it means for materials and objects to be durable in the field of cultural heritage conservation. Indeed, the history of durability in art is a history of looking forward, about making and imagining the futures in which art objects would endure.

Marjolijn Bol is Associate Professor in Technical Art History and PI of the ERC Project “Dynamics of the Durable: A History of Making Things Last in the Visual and Decorative Arts (DURARE)”. Trained as an art historian, her research intersects with historical studies of craft, knowledge, and the environment with a special focus on performative methods (reconstruction) and written sources on art technology. Marjolijn is a member of De Jonge Akademie of the KNAW and the Utrecht Young Academy. Two recent publications include The Varnish and the Glaze (University of Chicago Press, 2023) and The Matter of Mimesis , co-edited with E.C. Spary (Brill, 2023). She on the editorial boards of Studies in Art & Materiality (Brill), a peer-reviewed book series dedicated to innovative scholarship about the relation between art, materials, and making and of Art Matters, an international journal for Technical Art History.

Scientific Organization: Sietske Fransen and Érika Wicky

_{Image: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/187334?sortBy=Relevance&when=A.D.+1400-1600&where=Europe%7cVenice&what=Glass&ft=Italian%2c+Venice+(Murano)+wine+glass+16th+century&offset=0&rpp=40&pos=1}