Preventive Conservation (Taught)

Do you want to make a difference to the future preservation and care of our shared cultural heritage? The MA Preventive Conservation is a unique one-year full-time programme that will prepare you for a professional career in the heritage sector.

Preventive conservation does not involve the treatment of damaged cultural heritage, but rather addresses the causes of potential damage before it happens. These threats can take many forms, some more obvious than others – fire and flood damage may quickly come to mind, but cumulative deterioration caused by higher light levels, or very dry or humid conditions, can require specialist monitoring equipment to detect. Working as a preventive conservator, you could be using these monitoring systems daily, behind the scenes in a museum, to keep an eye on environmental conditions or even track the movements of insect pests. You could be asked to advise on the design and maintenance of museum spaces and new exhibitions, to make sure that collections are safely housed inside, or come up with strategies for salvage in the event of fire or flood.

The course will equip you with a sound understanding of the principles and practicalities of preventive conservation, giving experience in identifying, measuring and addressing potential threats to objects and allow you to collaborate with others to put these into practice through the development of new methods and strategies to preserve collections.

The MA Preventive Conservation at the Courtauld Institute offers face-to-face teaching, tuition and mentoring in this fast-developing discipline. The degree is taught by in-house conservation and science specialists complemented by outside professionals with particular areas of expertise. While a strong emphasis is placed on the scientific underpinning of preventive conservation and the ethical frameworks used in decision making, students also acquire practical skills in identification of hazards to collections and the measurement of environmental parameters. The Conservation Department at the Courtauld possesses cutting edge scientific equipment, allowing students to carry out imaging and analysis that helps them to understand the materials they will encounter in collections.

Students benefit from studying alongside peers on the well-established and highly regarded MA programmes in easels painting conservation and wall painting conservation. In addition, collaboration with the Courtauld Gallery and with the department’s existing partners in the cultural heritage sector, all of whom who have day-to-day responsibility for the preventive care of collections, provides a setting for field trips and practical monitoring exercises, and potential topics for the end-of-programme project and dissertation.

Semester 1 focuses on a number of key areas that establish the theory and principles of preventive conservation and introduce the practical and intellectual skills needed by students. The programme begins by tracing the history of preventive conservation, its emergence as a discrete field of study and practice, the definition of the now well-established ‘agents of deterioration’ at the core of current practice and considering the ethical framework surrounding conservation decision-making.

Students are introduced to a broad range of historical materials found in collections and their interaction with the various agents of deterioration, including how scientific and technical study can inform this understanding. Topics covered will embrace photo-documentation, instrumental analytical methods, materials testing and chemical tests, and include guidance on selecting the appropriate techniques for a particular situation.

An emphasis is also placed on practical monitoring methods of monitoring deterioration processes and the agents of deterioration. Teaching will describe each agent, how it can be monitored and its impacts assessed. Assessment will include a monitoring exercise that familiarises students with different types of datalogger and the interpretation of the data produced.

Students will begin learning research skills to aid their preparation for subsequent modules and their final dissertation.

Semester 2 strengthens students’ knowledge of preventive conservation theory and materials in cultural heritage objects and will move into applying this knowledge in situations likely to be encountered in future roles in the sector. The consideration of the principles and theory of preventive conservation will examine its interaction with interventive conservation treatments and look at how to commission and use expert advice and surveys. Emphasis will be placed on working with other professionals to establish priorities by assessing condition, value and significance, as a way to help develop policies and strategies.

Working together in small groups, students will conduct an environment survey project, using pre-existing environmental and condition data to consider a case study and offer their recommendations. A site visit helps to place taught elements in the context of a building and collection and highlights the practicalities of designing and implementing preventive conservation measures and monitoring programmes.

The development of research skills in the second semester will focus on helping students prepare a proposal for their MA dissertation project. Students will have a series of one-to-one tutorials to support their thesis research and writing, including a tutorial to review a draft submission.

In the Summer students work independently on their dissertation research to produce an 8000-word thesis. During their course students will also complete 100 hours of conservation volunteering at one or more heritage organisation. They will reflect on this experience in a short piece of writing for assessment and produce a short video or audio piece.

A range of methods to ensure students develop and demonstrate different presentation and writing skills. Some modules are evaluated through essay or report writing, sometimes accompanied by an assessed group presentation. Reports from practical exercises also require students to interpret results and reflect upon their significance and consequence. The volunteering module will be assessed through a piece of reflective writing and a short audio/video piece to raise public awareness or engagement. The final assessment will be an 8000-word dissertation produced over the last months of the programme.