Tate Papers no.35 2022–3

This issue focuses on the conservation of very different types of art. A group of five articles offers new research into the methods and materials of paintings by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. The group builds on a collaboration between conservators, curators and scientists from several institutions that was born out of the exhibition Modigliani at Tate Modern in 2017–18. The first group of research articles, based on new technical examinations of the paintings, was published in a series of articles in the Burlington Magazine in 2018. The co-curators of the Tate exhibition, Nancy Ireson and Simonetta Fraquelli, subsequently worked with project authors Barbara Buckley, Senior Director of Conservation at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, and Tate conservator Annette King to devise Modigliani Up Close, a conservation-driven exhibition at the Barnes Foundation in 2022–23. Their work coincided and drew from the ‘Modigliani’s Secrets’ project co-directed by the Lille Métropole Musée d'art moderne (LaM) and the C2RMF in Paris, which focuses on works by Modigliani in French national collections. This edition of Tate Papers has been five years in the making and includes many of the authors involved in both the other major Modigliani research projects.

In addition to this series, three papers by Tate conservators present their experiences with installations by Ima-Abasi Okon and Richard Bell, revealing how these ‘unruly’ artworks can change the museum’s existing concepts of care.