Editorial

I begin this Editorial with the news that, from this issue onwards, articles in the Journal will now have their title and abstract published in Arabic and Portuguese as well as Spanish and Mandarin. This follows discussion by the Editorial Panel on how to increase access to articles for large geographical areas currently under-represented in the profession, and how this can advance opportunities for a wider representation across the Journal’s pages. This echoes something written in the last Editorial about how theory and practice always map over each other and allow for a more pluralistic approach in what is a continually growing field.

Engineering offers other kinds of ‘structured systems of communication’ for conservators to engage with, and the first article of this second issue of 2024 deploys the science of prognostics to offer the means to predict a thing’s ‘remaining useful life’ (RLU). In Aditi Rawal et al.’s ‘A prognostic and health management approach using colour fade to determine the condition of silk in a museum display environment’, naturally aged samples of silk upholstery from the Wallace Collection in London are used to develop a novel mathematical model to predict colour fade of the silk upholstered furniture on display in the Great Gallery. This model-based approach allows for informed decision-making regarding the continued display and storage of the upholstery under scrutiny.

Language is at the heart of Josep Grau-Bove’s ‘A dialogue between science and conservation: another naïve exploration in response to Salvador Muñoz-Viñas’ in which, as the title suggests, he offers a response to an article in this Journal by Salvador Muñoz-Viñas in 2022,¹ in which the latter argued how heritage science alone can never provide sufficient information for making treatment decisions, as tacit understanding is required which science can never encompass. In contrast, Grau-Bove argues how heritage scientists depend on the knowledge of conservators to bridge any ‘perceived disciplinary boundaries’. And as he and others have noted, ‘the way we ask questions shapes the way we answer them’, so it’s only through mutual respect and inclusion that the sector can collectively breakthrough the limits of current knowledge.

Peter Brimblecombe’s ‘Predicting the changing insect threat in the UK heritage environment’ offers a review of the available data and literature to predict changes in insect demographics in the UK because of climbing temperatures, albeit with the caveat that much of these data relate to historic properties rather than museums. The article summarises some of the putative changes as predicted from the data in species distribution—with continental newcomers from Europe potentially benefitting from an increase in warmer temperatures and increases in wood moisture—and outlines their potential threat to heritage buildings and their contents.

Afework Hailegiorgis Abebe’s ‘The prioritisation of development projects and devaluation of cultural heritage: the case of material culture in Wolaita, southern Ethiopia’ investigates the often pernicious pressures brought by development and how it endangers cultural heritage through its devaluation. The study focusses on an extensive but fragmented eighteenth-century stone wall built to defend the Wolaita kingdom, it’s population in part defined by its unique language, Wolaytatta-Donaa. Using a qualitative approach through interviews and surveys, the author sought to understand the significance of the wall on a local and regional level to try and better situate its importance not only in terms of it being a legacy of an ancient civilisation, but also as a focus to galvanise Wolaita identity on a national and global scale.

The final article in this issue is Aga Wielocha’s ‘Instilling liveliness: archives of neo-avant-garde art as sites of activation’, in which the author addresses how heterogeneous archives might best capture the ‘dematerialisation of art’ from the 1960s onwards. By examining the archive of a Swiss cadre of Fluxus artists, Ecart, the author argues that the ‘activation’ of this material from a dormant state in the archive instils a new ‘liveliness’ to the art work through communicating with contemporary audiences. The flipside of this expanded approach to archival materials is the expansion of the conservation field beyond conservators alone, as they necessarily share a collective responsibility for prolonging these works with other invested stakeholders.

We hope you enjoy the five articles gathered here; they emphasise something about the scope conservation has to communicate about the many scales of understanding people have around the production, continued preservation and, arguably, the ontological open-endedness of the cultural heritage that everyone in the field engages with.

Notes

1 Salvador Muñoz Viñas, ‘Conservation Science, Conservation Practice and the Conservator’s Knowledge: A Naïve Exploration’, Journal of the Institute of Conservation 45, no. 3 (2022): 173–89.