COLLECTING PLASTICS IS COLLECTING DESIGN HISTORY

Conservation Practices in Museums

Authors

  • Zsuzsanna Böröcz

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52200/docomomo.66.02

Keywords:

design museum, plastic design collections, conservation practices, plastic heritage, Brussels

Abstract

From the 1950’s onward, the myriad qualities of all plastic objects were praised without a second thought. This enthusiasm significantly delayed the awareness of their enormous impact and it took almost half a century to consider these objects a part of post-war culture. This essay aims to sketch the history of the appreciation of the relevance of plastics in the museum world, specifically as a part of design heritage, seen from the viewpoint of the collector and the conservator-restorer. The case of the Design Museum Brussels, established in 2015, shows how a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach on conservation can be developed to the benefit of our plastics heritage.

How to Cite

Böröcz, Z. (2022). COLLECTING PLASTICS IS COLLECTING DESIGN HISTORY: Conservation Practices in Museums. Docomomo Journal, (66), 16–23. https://doi.org/10.52200/docomomo.66.02

Published

2022-12-12

Issue

No. 66 (2022): Modern Plastic Heritage

Section

Essays

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Zsuzsanna Böröcz

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Plaudit

Author Biography

Zsuzsanna Böröcz

Zsuzsanna Böröcz is an art and architecture historian (Ph.D. KU Leuven 2004). She is guest professor at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture and affiliated to both the KU Leuven Department of Architecture A2I research group Architecture Interiority Inhabitation and the University of Antwerp Faculty of Design Sciences Henry van de Velde Research Group. She is also President of Docomomo Belgium and co-chair, together with Bárbara Coutinho, of the Docomomo International Scientific Committee on Interior Design.

References

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