Culture and Creativity Seminar Series 2023

Hosted by the Everyday Heritage Team and Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, University of Canberra

The Object of Conservation  

PRESENTER: Sian Jones, University of Stirling
WHEN: Wednesday, 12 July 2023
TIME: 12:30 – 1:30pm
WHERE: 06C12, University of Canberra, 11 Kirinari St, Bruce ACT 2617

Recordings are available here

How are heritage objects made and what kind of conservation work does this involve? In this lecture, Siân Jones will discuss some of the conclusions arising from her recent book (co-authored with Tom Yarrow). Based on a multi-sited ethnographic study of conservation practice in a national heritage organisation, The Object of Conservation (2022) examines how historic buildings, monuments and artefacts are cared for as valued embodiments of the past. Conservation practice involves various kinds of intervention to keep heritage objects in some sense as they are, in the face of various challenges, changes and threats. In doing so, conservators play an active, and at times decisive, role in their biographies, (re)assembling them conceptually and materially whilst grappling with the paradox of how to keep something essentially the same whilst changing it.

Image credit: Routledge, 2022