We are pleased to announce a special, hybrid edition of the NICAS colloquium on Thursday 16 February 2023 from 16.00 to 17.00 hrs. The colloquium will take in Conference room B of the Ateliergebouw in Amsterdam for those who wish to attend physically, but will also be streamed through Microsoft Teams. The presentation at the Ateliergebouw will be followed by drinks.
This is a special edition of the Colloquium, focusing on recent work of an invited researcher. Professor Peter N. Miller, Dean and Professor of Cultural History at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City, will give an introduction to his new book: Conservation as a Human Science.
In conjunction with this Colloquim Extra, we are organising a special NICAS Seminar on Friday 17 February, from 10.00 to 12.00 hrs. The Seminar will also take place at the Ateliergebouw in Amsterdam. Participants will discuss specific subjects from his forthcoming book in depth with professor Miller. In advance of the seminar, a chapter of the book chapter will be distributed, serving as a focus for the discussion. For those interested in the seminar, please see the separate event page that will allow you to register.
What Would It Mean for Conservation to be a Human Science?
This presentation, drawn from the Introduction to a book manuscript with this title, makes the case for thinking about conservation in a much broader intellectual landscape. The challenge in the project is two-fold: it asks conservators to think about what they do in terms that place it in a conversation with history, philosophy, and literature, not just art history. And it also asks humanists in those other fields to take the idea of conservation seriously as having a central place in human experience. Finally, we will explore the impact of this broader way of thinking on the possible identity of the conservator: as historian, poet, care-giver and writer.
About the speaker:
Peter N. Miller is Dean and Professor of Cultural History at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. He is the author of a series of books on the early seventeenth-century antiquarian, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc, on the history of antiquarianism in Europe, and on the modern study of objects as evidence. He co-curated Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margarieta van Varick (BGC, 2009) and Conserving Active Matter (BGC, 2022), the exhibition and website that concluded the ten-year long project he directed, “Cultures of Conservation,” funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
His main current interest is in the how and why of research, whether done by professional historians or by curators, conservators or artists. He has been at Bard since 2001. He previously taught at the University of Cambridge, University of Chicago and University of Maryland, College Park. He was a research fellow at the Warburg Institute, University of London, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin/ Institute for Advanced Study, and visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Marseille and École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.