Delights and Risks of Artistic Pursuit

Abstract

The conservator as a performing artist metaphor, suggested by Carolusa González Tirado, is acknowledged as an improvement over the classical metaphor of the conservator-as-artist. However, there is an inherent danger in suggesting that conservation is an artistically creative activity: this would mean that the conservator would, or indeed should, transform an object according to his or her personal aesthetic views –even though that transformation may directly affect other people; and in spite of the fact that, in many cases, the object may not have been originally conceived of as an artistic work at all.