Works created by Janine Antoni’s ‘Lick and Lather’ performances, made of chocolate and soap, require unique preservation methods. Credit: Photo of artwork by Janine Antoni by Ian Abbott/Flickr
Contemporary art’s affinity for nontraditional materials has often presented dilemmas for those tasked with the storage and installation of fragile works. 

In a Thursday presentation at Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Dr. Susan Libby, professor of Art History at Rollins College, and Isaac Gorres, the college’s Fred W. Hicks curatorial intern, will delve into the challenges of conserving and preserving contemporary art – assisted by some serious visual aids: actual works from the museum’s collection.

In an expanded material field, contemporary artists play with ephemerality, toxicity, temporality and technologies on the brink of obsolescence in their work, creating paradoxes of conservation and preservation. In a field that often privileges originals over reproductions, how can the aura or presence of a work be retained through translations, reformatting and degradation over time? Will someone 100 years from now, long after her death, be able to touch the soap and chocolate contours of Janine Antoni’s sculptural busts created through performance, Lick and Lather? What can museum professionals do to ensure the passage of our current cultural heritage on to future generations? Find the answers, and some new questions, right here.

Credit: Image via Cornell Fine Arts Museum

Thursday, March 12 at 12:30 p.m. | Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, 1000 Holt Ave., Winter Park | 407-646-2526 | cfam.rollins.edu | free

– This story appears in the March 11, 2020, print issue of Orlando Weekly. Stay on top of Central Florida news and views with our weekly Headlines newsletter.

This article appears in Mar 4-10, 2020.