So what exactly is an archive? In this series of videos, you will come across everything from jukeboxes to sketchbooks, from careful documentation to experiments in chance. Take a look at how an archive can become a creative laboratory, not only tracing and documenting an artist’s work, but also inspiring others in the process. How can sketchbooks bring an artist’s art and practice to life? How can we preserve something as time-based and ephemeral as performance art? How can old archives inspire us to make art in new ways?
How do artists engage with memory? Some believe the task of art is to catalogue and preserve images for the future, giving memory a visible form. Then there are artists who create objects meant to convey a personal memory or evoke shared cultural memories. Still others play with images and ideas from the past, reframing them in new ways to encourage us to think about the reliability of historical memory as well as our own. Can we ever trust memory to be objective, or even true? Can art help us explore the fickle nature of what we remember, and how?
Conservation_Behind_the_scenes
Even the greatest works of art require care as they age—how do we preserve works of art, and how do we fix them if they have been damaged? In this tutorial, take a look behind the scenes at the work of the conservation team as they preserve works of art in unstable environments, restore great paintings that have been vandalised, and even create their own works of art in order to subject them to extensive experimentation. Learn about the art and science of conservation here.
Want to test your knowledge of art? Try these activities first or come back to them after you finish the tutorial.
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