26th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference
Held on 03, 04 Mar 2025
The 26th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference, organised by the Museo Reina Sofía, with the sponsorship of the MAPFRE Foundation, is held on 3 and 4 March 2025. This international encounter sets out to share and debate experience and research, open new channels of study and reflect on conservation and the professional practice of restorers.
Two attendance formats are available for this edition of the conference:
- In-person: this format costs 25 euros and includes in-person attendance on both days, coffee during the scheduled breaks, an attendance certificate (subject to attendance on both days) and free access to the Museo Reina Sofía on Monday, 3, and Wednesday, 5 March 2025.
- Online platform: this format is free of charge but does not include either an attendance certificate or admission to visit the Museo Reina Sofía. Those who have registered will receive a link to the online platform on 28 February 2025 to follow the live stream of the conference.
At the end of each intervention, participants can raise questions in both formats (in-person and online platform).
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Sponsor
The Mapfre FoundationCollaboration
illycaffèMayte Ortega, Department of Conservation-Restoration, Museo Reina Sofía
jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es / Tel. +34 91 774 10 00 Ext. 289647
Programme
Monday, 3 March 2025
09:30am Opening and Presentation
Manuel Segade (director of the Museo Reina Sofía), Jorge García Gómez-Tejedor (head of the Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation-Restoration), Mayte Ortega (coordinator of the 26th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference) and María Martínez Cid (exhibitions manager at MAPFRE Foundation)
09:45am Intervention by Ana Laborde Marqueze, Winner of the 2024 National Award for the Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Heritage
10:00am Tri-Uni-Corn (1981), by Antoni Miralda: uTri-Uni-Corn (1981), by Antoni Miralda: The Balance between Conservation Criteria and the Artist’s Decisions
Paula Ercilla Orbañanos (Museo Reina Sofía), Gema Grueso, Cristina López and Vanessa Magali Truchado (C·ART·A Conservación de Arte Actual)
—Presented by: Paula Ercilla Orbañanos
11:00am Restoration and the Museum Project of Twenty-Seven Paperboards for Picasso Tapestries
Reyes Jiménez (independent conservator-restorer) and Aina Vila and Núria Casademunt (Teixell)
—Presented by: Aina Vila and Reyes Jiménez
11:30am Coffee break
12:15pm BISS-Innovation and Best Practice for International Standards On Sculpture Study And Management
Arianne Vanrell and Mayte Ortega (Museo Reina Sofía)
12:30pm The Conservation and Restoration of the Work of José Luis Gómez Perales, a Master of Geometric Abstraction in Spain
Nuria Fuentes (Complutense University of Madrid)
1:00pm Study for the Application of Absorbents to Conserve Filmoteca Española’s NO-DO Collection
Marta Castellano Fuentes (Filmoteca Española), Sonia Santos Gómez (Complutense University of Madrid) and Patricia Uceda Gil (Filmoteca Española)
—Presented by: Marta Castellano Fuentes
1:30pm Treatment to Recover and Digitise Film Material in a State of Nitrate Decomposition
Patricia Uceda Gil, Paloma Sierra Capel, Blanca Rubio Navarro, Pablo Redondo Suárez and Iker Velasco Salgado (Filmoteca Española)
—Presented by: Blanca Rubio and Paloma Sierra
2pm Lunch break
3:45pm An Approach to Teaching Problems in Relation to Conserving Plastics: The Work of Zoe Leonard for Developing Prototypes
Carmen Moral Ruiz (University of Seville) y Laura Luque Rodrigo (University of Jaén)
—Presented by: Carmen Moral Ruiz
4:15pm The Restoration of Two Sculptures by Artist Giovanni Tamburelli: Rusting as a Core Part of the Creative Process
Camila Restrepo (conservator-restorer)
4:45 h Ana Vieira: Installation manuals
Antonia Gaeta (curator), Astrid Suzano (architect and co-founder and CEO of Passa Ao Futuro) and Sofia Gomes (Researcher and manager of the Collection at Museu de Arte Contemporânea Amando Martins, Lisbon, Portugal)
—Presented by: Sofia Gomes
5:15pm Coffee Break
5:15pm Studio Under Mud: Reflections and Learning from the Impact of the DANA Floods on Juan Olivares’s Paintings
Silvia García Fernández-Villa (Complutense University of Madrid) and Juan Olivares (artist)
6:00pm Do Not Discard. Recovering Home Cinema after the DANA Floods in Valencia
Salvador Vivancos, Laura García, Laura Oliver and Clara Sánchez-Dehesa (La red del cine doméstico)
—Presented by: Laura Oliver and Clara Sánchez-Dehesa
6:45pm The Project Sorkuntzatik-Kontserbaziora/From Creation to Conservation in Gordailua, Gipuzkoa’s Heritage Collection Centre
Irene Cárdaba (Gipuzkoa’s Heritage Collection Centre) and Itziar Gutiérrez Fernández (art historian)
—Presented by: Irene Cárdaba
7:15pm Challenges During the Documentation Process of Escultura dentro da Floresta (1968-1969), by Alberto Carneiro
Inês Tavares (MA from the School of Arts, Universidade Católica Portuguesa de Oporto, Portugal) and Joana Cristina Moreira Teixeira (Research Center for Science and Technology of the Arts CITAR and School of Arts, Universidade Católica Portuguesa de Oporto)
—Presented by Inês Tavares
Presentation in English
7:45pm Conclusion
Tuesday, 4 March 2025
9:30am Juan Gris: Between Forms and Colours. An Approach to His Composition Method
Alicia García González (conservator-restorer) and Humberto Durán Roque (Hduran Conservation-Restoration)
—Presented by: Alicia García González
10:00am Intervention on an Arte Povera Work by Artist Jannis Kounellis. Textile Reinforcement in Burlap Sacks
Aitziber Velasco
—Presented by: Miren Oteros (UPV-EHU) and Aitziber Velasco (Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa)
10:30am h Using a Cutting Plotter: Applications in Conserving and Restoring Documents
Ludivine Leroy-Banti (National Archives of France) and Manon Van Hooydonck (Provincial Archives of Ille-et-Vilaine, France)
— Online presentation in English
11am Technological Obsolescence in Contemporary Art: Conservation and Restoration Intervention on the Artwork Radiologias (1979), by Silvestre Pestana
Francisca Carneiro de Brito de Lafuente (School of Arts, Universidad Católica Portuguesa de Oporto, Portugal) and Joana Cristina Moreira (the CITAR Research Centre for Science and Technology in the Arts and the School of Arts, Universidad Católica Portuguesa de Oporto, Portugal)
—Presented by: Francisca Carneiro de Brito de Lafuente
Presentation in English
11:30am Coffee break
12:15pm Strategies of Production and Conservation Applied to Ephemeral Installations Built with Soil: Delcy Morelos’s Profundis in CAAC
Ana Posada Baraldés and Manuel Cid Medrano (artists and researchers from the Fine Arts Department at the University of Seville), Alice Borsani (graduate in the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage from the University of Seville), José Carlos Roldán Saborido (conservator-restorer from the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo) and María Arjonilla Álvarez (professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts’ Painting Department at the University of Seville)
—Presented by: Ana Posada Baraldés, Manuel Cid Medrano and Alice Borsani
12:45pm Predictive Conservation and New Technologies as a Tool in the Conservation and Restoration of Contemporary Art
André Maragno (conservator-restorer of contemporary art, Brazil)
—Online presentation in English
1:15pm The Model of the Yhyakh Festival of Sakha by Fedor Markov: Navigating the Conservation of an Ethno-Contemporary work
Alicia de la Serna (British Museum, London)
1:45pm Final Note and Conclusion
Submitting proposals (closed)
The deadline for presenting proposals ends on 13 October 2024. Those interested must send an email to jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es , submitting the following documents:
- An unpublished proposal related to the conservation or restoration of contemporary art.
- A 1,700-word summary, written in Word, on the theme addressed. Please indicate the topic at the top of the document with five keywords and the presentation format (in-person or virtual).
- CV and contact details.
Proposals may be submitted in Spanish and English and will be evaluated by a Scientific Committee, which will select the submissions to be presented during these conferences and will determine their possible participation in a subsequent publication, the inclusion of which will undergo a second and definitive evaluation by the Editorial Committee.
For submissions in a virtual format, participants must send a recording following certain technical requirements they will receive once participation is confirmed.
Más actividades
Rethinking Guernica
Monday and Sunday - Check times
This guided tour activates the microsite Rethinking Guernica, a research project developed by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Collections Area, Conservation and Restoration Department and the Digital Projects Area of the Editorial Activities Department, assembling around 2,000 documents, interviews and counter-archives related to Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica (1937).
The visit sets out an in-situ dialogue between the works hung around the painting and a selection of key documents, selected by the Museo’s Education Team and essential to gaining an idea of the picture’s historical background. Therefore, the tour looks to contribute to activating critical thought around this iconic and perpetually represented work and seeks to foster an approach which refreshes our gaze before the painting, thereby establishing a link with the present. Essentially revisiting to rethink Guernica.
Dear Felix:
Saturdays at 6pm
The immediately recognisable art of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, which is on display, from May to October 2026, in the show Sweet Revenge, moves beyond the transmission of messages laden with poetic evocation, vital or biographical reflection, or even a clear political or ethical positioning. Rather, it seeks an active response by visitors to the exhibition. His work invites engagement with these messages so that, whether delighting, moving or challenging, it still prompts viewers to participate in the dialogue and complete the artistic undertaking with their own actions.
Thus, the guided tour Dear Felix: offers a shared, dialogue-inflected tour through the show, with the aim of collectively thinking and feeling the gestures the artist’s work puts forward. Ostensibly simple actions such as crossing through a beaded curtain to take a sweet and eat it, taking a poster from a stack of paper or simply observing a billboard closely, all contain ways of understanding life, loss, love, injustice or the passing — never linear — of time. The tour’s ultimate aim is not to set meanings or create an overload of interpretations of the work, nor does it seek to crystallise an image of the artist and his life in a response to questions which are not there. It looks instead to provide a space to open shared meaning in these apparently simple objects and to attempt a possible correspondence of return from the here and now. A lumbering attempt at responding which starts with a simple Dear Felix:
1926–2026: One Hundred Years of the Lyceum Club Femenino
Thursday, 2 July 2026
The Lyceum Club Femenino (Lyceum Women’s Club) was established in Madrid in 1926, constituting a space which opened new pathways for women to participate in Spain’s intellectual, artistic and political life in the first third of the twentieth century, and for figures such as designer Victorina Durán, pedagogue María de Maeztu, lawyer and politician Victoria Kent and artist Ángeles Santos, to name but a few. To mark the Madrid Club’s one hundredth anniversary, this research symposium examines its role as a key place for studying women’s and feminist culture in Spain’s Silver Age by analysing and vindicating the different agencies, trajectories and cultural projects that structured the space.
By way of three lectures and two round-table discussions, the symposium sets forth a journey through the Lyceum Club Femenino and the cultural context from which it emerged, from its standing as a pioneering institution to the study of cultural material from the period and the process of constructing the figure of the “modern woman”. These talks and discussions look to shed light on how new ways of thinking, creating and occupying public space were shaped, expanding the gaze on cultural, educational and social networks linked to the Lyceum — as much concerning its ties with other intellectual and artistic circles as the continuity and transformation of these networks during Republican exile. Finally, the symposium features three artistic interventions conceived to recover the artistic legacy of this space in Madrid.
The Museo Reina Sofia joins the Ministry of Culture’s cultural programme focused on the centenary of the Lyceum Club Femenino via these sessions, co-organised with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).
Robert Capa
Friday, 26 June 2026 – 6pm
This international encounter centred on the figure of Robert Capa (Budapest, 1913 — Thai Binh, Vietnam, 1954), one of photojournalism’s pre-eminent figures, is held within the framework of the government initiative Spain and Freedom. Fifty Years and in conjunction with a cluster of three locations — the building on number 10 Calle Peironcely, the Plaza del Fotógrafo Robert Capa and the San Carlos Borromeo Parish in Vallecas — declared as a Place of Democratic Memory.
The emblematic photo Robert Capa took in 1936 of this area of Republican Madrid, featuring anonymous children talking in front of a bullet-riddled building attacked by Nazi-fascist air forces, has, in recent years, become a catalyst for impassioned collective action vindicating memory and denouncing the horrors and brutality of wars, past and present.
Within this context, representatives from cultural and academic spheres and civil society organisations from Germany, the USA and Spain discuss the legacy of Capa and photojournalism in European democratic memory, exploring in greater depth two citizen initiatives constructed by Europe from its shared memory: #SalvaPeironcely10 (#SavePeironcely10), in Entrevías (Puente de Vallecas), and the Capa Haus Initiative in the Lindenau neighbourhood of Leipzig, both united by the protection and conservation of historical heritage and by the defence of peace.
The round-table discussion features the participation of Cynthia Young, Juan Miguel Sánchez Vigil, Ulf-Dietrich Brumann and José María Uría Fernández and is moderated by Myriam Soto Lucas. Carmina Gustrán Loscos, the commissioner of Spain and Freedom. Fifty Years, will also join the discussion.
equipoMotor
Jueves alternos, 23 de octubre, 2025 - 11 de junio, 2026 - 17:30 h
El programa equipoMotor regresa en su edición 25-26 con un aire espectral y mutante para lanzar la pregunta: ¿y si el Museo fuera «un poco más Frankenstein»? Inspirándose en dicho monstruo y en todas aquellas criaturas que desafían la norma desde los márgenes, el proyecto de mediación cultural Galaxxia diseña y acompaña una edición incisiva, intergeneracional y descentralizadora, donde saberes invisibilizados, cuerpos raros y deseos molestos se entrelazan para generar nuevas formas de imaginación crítica y radical. En los sótanos y corredores del Museo —un particular laboratorio— las dudas no se esconden: son materia prima.
Así, para este curso el equipoMotor convoca a personas de todas las edades que hayan participado en ediciones anteriores de los distintos equipos del Área de Educación a recorrer el Museo como quien manipula un cuerpo abierto: descoyuntando algunas de sus categorías teóricas y artísticas —la necropolítica, lo crip-cuir, la lucha de clases, las políticas del malestar, la decolonialidad, la temporalidad cuir, la descentralización institucional o el feísmo— para articular un relato díscolo, remendado y palpitante.
El programa se estructura en bloques temáticos sobre lo freak como metodología, el trabajo cultural, la intergeneracionalidad y la diversidad territorial. Cada bloque a su vez se despliega en sesiones que combinan disparadores teóricos y estéticos, visitas a exposiciones y espacios liminales del Museo, talleres artísticos con artistas, ejercicios de curaduría audiovisual colectiva y de relatoría radiofónica, así como instancias de activación pública, mediante proyecciones de cine experimental y coloquios compartidos con el público, en complicidad con el archivo Hamaca y el Área de Cine y Nuevos Medios del Museo.
De este modo, la presente edición incorpora una particularidad: el grupo de participantes irá transformándose en un «colectivo curatorial audiovisual temporalmente autónomo», con capacidad de incidir en la programación del Museo y de abrir la conversación de equipoMotor al público general, cuestionando y expandiendo así los límites entre las cabezas que deciden, las manos que producen y los cuerpos y presencias que habitan la institución. Las personas seleccionadas en la modalidad oyente serán invitadas a las proyecciones públicas, así como a otras activaciones y momentos de apertura del equipoMotor.
Frente al relato de un museo homogéneo, pulcro y lineal, apostamos por un Museo disidente, contradictorio y lleno de vida residual. Un Museo que no tema hacerse preguntas incómodas ni mostrar sus cicatrices. equipoMotor. Un poco más Frankenstein no busca repensar el cuerpo de la institución, sino habitarlo en sus desgarros, tal como es: híbrido, inacabado, infecto, fantasmagórico… y cargado de esporas y chispas por venir.