The session focuses on the development of a science-based conservation practice and the emergence of art history as a ‘science of art’ (or Kunstwissenschaft) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With which scientific methods was technique in the arts studied, and how did they relate to larger developments in modern science and technology? And in which institutional contexts was expertise in the study of art claimed? From the nineteenth century conservators turned to chemistry and material science (developing, for example, methods of pigment analysis) to understand the material make-up of art objects. Moreover, the early twentieth century saw the adoption of new imaging techniques (especially X-ray technology) requiring new observational skills from art historians. These developments are connected to the establishment of museum laboratories in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, the disciplinary formation of art history, and the professionalization of conservation. Questions of authenticity and the attribution of art works were settled in courtrooms where judges weighed the conflicting opinions of experts. This session investigates these conflicts of expertise between chemists, art historians, artists and art dealers to understand who was considered an expert in the arts, and for which reasons. It has been argued that artistic expertise, or connoisseurship, emerged in the eighteenth century in the context of changes in the art market and museum practice. This session investigates the effects of the emergence of a science-based conservation practice and of art history as a ‘science of art’ for the delineation of expertise and connoisseurship.
