J.CAC VOLUME 48 (2024)
Changing an “Uneasy Relationship”: Collaboration in Conservation and Archaeology Education
Conservators and archaeologists share common interests around the preservation of important iconographic information as manifest in physical remnants, but there has long been an “uneasy relationship” between the two fields, partly due to a divide that begins early in the education of both professions. North American graduate-level conservation programs and classical archaeology departments have been making efforts to bridge divisions in learning through coursework, joint workshops and field training. In Canada more specifically, faculty from the Master of Art Conservation Program and the Department of Classics and Archaeology at Queen’s University have addressed this issue by fostering interdisciplinary exchanges using the Diniacopoulos Collection, a collection of ancient Mediterranean artifacts that was acquired by Queen’s University for the purpose of training students. Queen’s faculty took collaborations to the next level through an initiative that called for archaeology and conservation students to create something together: in 2022 graduate students developed an exhibition and symposium – Antiquities through Modern Eyes – highlighting their investigative work on an Athenian black-figure lekythos, an Athenian red-figure lebes gamikos, a Tanagra group and coins. In addition to the exhibition, students created a printed catalogue of the pieces on exhibit and a website in order to share images and didactic information on the artifacts. This paper will outline the process of deepening interdisciplinary understanding through joint knowledge sharing.
Download: JCAC48 Kim & Zaccagnino