Abstract
Works of contemporary art pose particular difficult conservation problems which cannot be solved along the lines of the so-called ?scientific freeze? paradigm that until recently was the standard in conservation theory and ethics. In the last 15 years conservation professionals from museums and heritage institutions have initiated a series of international research projects, which have resulted in the development of instruments and the implementation of measures that have improved the conditions for conservation practice and in the trying out of new conservation strategies. Yet there is still an urgent need for scholarly research and reflection on the aims, procedures and consequences of these new strategies. This interdisciplinary research proposal aims to empirically investigate the impact of museum conservation practices on the material constitution, meaning and agency of a number of problematic art works and provide a philosophically argued model for conservation theory and ethics that is useful for this type of works.