Conservation is defined by the American Institute for Conservation as the profession devoted to the preservation of cultural property for the future. The term cultural property describes a wide variety of material culture including objects, collections, specimens, structures, or sites identified as having artistic, historic, scientific, religious, or social significance. (1)
The terms preservation, conservation, and restoration are often used interchangeably in describing the profession but when discussing a treatment for cultural property, there are real and nuanced differences in each of their meanings.
- Preservation refers to passive or preventive action carried out by a conservator; instead of working directly on the art, the conservation professional strives to affect agents of deterioration in order to create a stable environment. In doing so, we can limit, reduce, or even slow down any further natural or human-influenced deterioration from occurring to the object. There are many parts that go into creating a stable environment. It can include limiting temperature and relative humidity fluctuations, reducing the amounts of light exposure or eliminating certain wavelengths of light, dealing with the influences of indoor and outdoor pollution agents, pest management, and improper handling procedures.
- Conservation is a term that is used to describe a more active or remedial action on the part of the conservator to deal with immediate concerns to the physical or aesthetic qualities of the art. This can include cleaning, stabilization, and/or repair of selected elements of the cultural property or the entire work of art. The decision on what actions are to be carried is done in consultation with the owner, balancing the risk against the benefit, in order to maintain as much of the original material as possible.
- Restoration can be described as taking a treatment to the next stage based on an aesthetic judgment; we are restoring an object based on a perceived notion of how it should look.