Professor Pip Laurenson

Pip Laurenson’s writing, research and practice is rooted in a career working with forms of artistic practice which unfold over time, have complex social or technological dependencies, and often unsettle the structures of the museum. 

Pip has 30 years of experience in the conservation of contemporary art, establishing and leading Tate’s pioneering Time-based Media Conservation section from 1996 until 2010. Between 2010 and 2022 she was Head of Collection Care Research, working to develop, lead and support research related to the conservation and management of Tate’s collections. In January 2016 Pip took up a special chair as Professor of Art Collection and Care at Maastricht University which she held before moving to UCL in 2022. She has secured awards for research from a range of funders including private foundations, the European Union framework programme and the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and from 2018-2022 she led the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Initiative Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum. She received her doctorate from University College London, is an accredited member of the Institute for Conservation and is a member of the Steering Committee of the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA). Pip is committed to interdisciplinary research that serves and responds to art of our time and the major challenges facing the conservation of contemporary collections in the 21st Century.

Research

Pip’s research looks at institutional responses to time-based media works of art, installation art, socially engaged practice and performance art, and draws on ideas from the fields of Philosophy, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) to help us think anew about caring for, hosting and conserving these works. Her recent research has looked at ideas of obsolescence and repair and its relationship to our understanding of conservation; the ways in which contemporary artists interact with and challenge standard practices of conservation and the museum; and the politics of knowledge operating within contemporary art conservation. Her research is engaged with understanding the meaning and significance of contemporary art conservation as a practice within society and the impact of current societal challenges on conservation practice and theory. 

During her time at Tate Pip has acted as the Research Lead or Principle Investigator on the following research projects:

2018 – 2022 Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum. Tate Research Project. Funder: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 
2020 – 2021 Finding Photography: Rineke Dijkstra. Tate Research Project privately funded. 
2015 – 2019 New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art (NACCA). Consortium member in this Horizon 2020 Marie Curie doctoral training centre led by Maastricht University.  
2017 – 2018 Finding Photography: Catherine Yass. Funder: Victoria and Albert Research Institute (VARI): Encounters on the Shop Floor (Co-I) via a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
2013 – 2018 Pericles. Led on Media and Arts for the project. Funder: Framework 7, European Funding. 
2013 – 2015 Presto4U.  Led the community of practice expert group for video art. Funder: European Union 7th Framework Programme.
2012 – 2014 Collecting the Performative: A research network examining emerging practice for collecting and conserving performance-based art. Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council and Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.
2004 – 2007 Inside Installations: The Preservation and Presentation of Installation Art Funder: Culture 2000 European Funding. 

Selected Publications

Journal articles

[Co-authored with Falcao, P., Dekker, A ] “An Exploration of Significance, Dependency, and Virtualization in the Conservation of Software-based Artworks Electronic” Media Review, 2016. 

”Emerging Institutional Models and Notions of Expertise for the Conservation of Time-Based Media Works of Art.” Techne, 37, 2013.

”Authenticity, Change and Loss in the Conservation of Time-Based Media” Tate Papers, 6, 2006. 

”The Management of Display Equipment in Time-based Media Installations”, Tate Papers, 3, 2005. 

”Developing Strategies for the Conservation of Installations Incorporating Time-based media with Reference to Gary Hill’s “Between Cinema and a Hard Place”’ Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, Vol. 40, 3. 2001.

BOOK CHAPTERS

“Charisma and Desire in the Conservation of Performance Art” in Performance: The Ethics and the Politics of Care, Vol. 1, edited by Hanna B. Hölling; Jules Pelta Feldman and Emilie Magnin. Routledge, 2023.

[Co-authored with Vivian van Saaze and Renée van de Vall] “Bridging the Gaps between Theory and Practice through Cross-Institutional Collaboration in the Conservation of Contemporary Art” in Engaged Humanities: Rethinking Art, Culture, and Public Life edited by Aagje Swinnen, Amanda Kluveld, and Renée van de Vall. Amsterdam University Press. 2022. 

[Co-authored with Lucy Bayley] ‘”Neurosis of the sterile egg” Permanence and Paradox:  Museum strategies for the Representation of Gustav Metzger’s Auto-destructive Art’ in Impermanence: Exploring Continuous Change Across Cultures. Edited by: Haidy Geismar, Ton Otto and Cameron David Warner. UCL Press, 2022. 

[Co-authored with Haidy Geismar and Catherine Yass] ‘Obsolescence, Precarity and Persistence: The social world of embodied knowledge in contemporary art photography’ in Hands-On Learning and Making: Interdisciplinary perspectives on embodied engagement Edited by Marta Ajmar (V&A Research Institute) and Catherine Speight (V&A Research Institute). UCL Press. Forthcoming 2022. 

[Co-authored with Haidy Geismar] “Finding Photography: Dialogues between Anthropology and Conservation”. In Photo-Objects. On the Materiality of Photographs and Photo-Archives in the Humanities and Sciences. Editors: Julia Bärnighausen, Costanza Caraffa, Stefanie Klamm, Franka Schneider, Petra Wodtke Publisher: Edition Open Access (EOA) in the series “Studies”, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin 2019. 

“Old Media, New Media? Significant Difference and the Conservation of Software Based Art.” In New Collecting: Exhibiting and Audiences after New Media Art, edited by Beryl Graham: Ashgate, 2014.

[Co-authored with Vivian Van Saaze] “Collecting Performance-Based Art: New Challenges and Shifting Perspectives.” in Performativity in the Gallery, ed. O. Remes. Bern. Peter Lang, 2014.

“Vulnerabilities and Contingencies in the Conservation of Time-Based Media Works of Art ” in Inside Installations: Theory and Practice in the Care of Complex Artworks, ed. T. Scholte and G. Wharton. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011.

 “The Mortal Image” – The Conservation of Video Installations’, in Material Matters: The Conservation of Modern Sculpture, ed. J. Heuman. Tate Publishing, 1999.   

“Edward Onslow Ford, The Singer”, in Material Matters: The Conservation of Modern Sculpture, ed. J. Heuman, Tate Publishing, 1999. Reprinted in 2013 as part of an In Focus Project on Edward Onslow Ford via Tate Online.

Conference proceedings

[Co-authored with Kontopoulos, E, Riga, M., Mitzias, P., Andreadis, S., Stavropoulos, T., Lagos, N., Vion-Dury, J. Meditskos, G., Falcão, Kompatsiaris, I. “Ontology-based Representation of Context of Use” in Digital Preservation. Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Humanities in the Semantic Web - WHiSe, co-located with the 13th Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2016). Volume: CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol-1608, pp. 65-72 Edited by Alessandro Adamou, Enrico Daga, Leif Isaksen. 2016. 

“The Management of Display Equipment in Time-Based Media Installations.” in Contributions to the Bilbao Congress, 13-17 September 2004 : Modern Art, New Museums, ed. A. Roy and P. Smith. London: The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 2004.

Online Publications

”Introduction: Tony Conrad, Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain”, in Reshaping the Collectible: Tony Conrad , Tate Research Publication, 2022. 

Reports 

[Co-authored with Bell, N., Strlic, M., Fouseki, K., Thompson, A., Dillon, C.] “Mind the Gap; Rigor and Relevance in Heritage Science Research.” Report for the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The National Archives, 2014.

Online resources

[Co-authored with Cardiff, R., Hills, M., Williams, H.] ‘Inside installations: Mapping the Studio II’ An e-learning package on the preservation and presentation of Bruce Nauman’s Mapping the Studio II with color shift, flip, flop, & flip/flop (Fat Chance John Cage) Tate On-line, 2006.

Teaching and Supervision

Pip is the Director of the MSc in the Conservation of Contemporary Art and Media which will open in September 2023 at UCL East. This year Pip will teach the undergraduate courses Theory and History of Conservation and Methods and Materials.

Current PhD students:

Ellen Pavey Making the Invisible Visible in the Contemporary Art Museum (joint supervisor with Theano Moussouri, secondary supervisor Jeremy Tanner). 

Dirk Leemput  The Maintenance of Technologies in Time-based Media Art (joint supervisor with Harro van Lente, Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Maastricht University; Vivian van Saaze, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University). 

Zoe Miller Ownership, Information, Control, and Access: A Study in Practice and Ethics (joint supervisor with Prof. Hildegard Schneider, Faculty of Law, Maastricht University and Dr. Anke Moerland, Faculty of Law, Maastricht University). 

Patricia Falcao Artists, Conservators and Game Developers: A Comparative Study of Software Preservation in Three Domains (joint supervisor with Professor William Latham and Professor Frederic Fol Leymarie, Computing Department, Goldsmiths College, University of London). 

Past Doctoral Students:

Monica Marchesi Reproduction as a conservation strategy for photographic artworks (joint supervisor with Prof. Kitty Zijlmans, University Leiden). 

Tom Ensom Technical Narratives: Analysis, Description and Representation in the Conservation of Software-based Art (joint supervisor with Mark Hedges, Digital Humanities, Kings College, London University). 

Contact

Office: Marshgate, UCL East
Office Hours: Tuesday 4.30 – 5.30pm and Friday 4-5pm. To book an appointment with Pip, please email p.laurenson@ucl.ac.uk.