AIC 53rd Annual Meeting

Collaborations among scientists, conservators, and curators have been fundamental for understanding and conserving objects like from fine and modern arts. Those collaborations have been successful in many cases, but in others, have been limited especially due to challenges associated with team dynamics. Professionals from different fields may use different terminologies and have different understandings of how cultural items should be used, conserved, and studied. The challenges are intensified when considering the engagement with non-academics, who have other terminologies and may be personally and culturally attached to the cultural items. For example, collaboration with local non-academic Indigenous people may be vital when scientifically investigating cultural items of communities still practicing their traditions. But when, why, and how scientists can or should cooperate with them?



In my research group, we are investigating a still unknown blue colorant among technical art historians and conservation scientists (https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage7090222). Such colorant has been prepared by the Tikuna/Magüta people, who live in the Amazon Forest near the borders of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia. The ethnologist and anthropologist Curt Nimuendajú described in his book, published in the 1950s, that "the juice of one fleshy fruit (T., na’inku) furnishes a dark violet which, upon contact with iron, changes into a clear blue." To investigate materials like this, scientists usually select cultural items from museums for analytical investigation, try to make the colorant using the historical recipe, or get a sample of the colorant directly from the community. All those options consider the publication of the results in scientific journals, which are usually investigator-driven and academically centered strategies that generate benefits mainly for the researchers and their scholarly fields. However, the Tikuna/Magüta people are a living culture, still producing colorants from natural sources, and it is vital to consider their collaboration in the research for mutual benefits



Among the different approaches for community-engaged research, we use community-based participatory research (CBPR). CBPR has social justice and empowerment at its foundation and considers community members' participation from formulating research questions to developing methods and collecting, interpreting, and using data. It considers power-sharing with the community members, is based on the community's strengths and resources, promotes reciprocity and mutual learning, considers the outcomes' sustainability, and disseminates results for all interested parties and partners. In these kinds of research, Indigenous members can participate as collaborators instead of subjects or sources of materials



CBPR has been employed in fields like health, archaeology, and education. Still, it has yet to be explicitly and systematically explored in technical art history and conservation science. In this presentation, I will address the challenges and benefits of CBPR in the context of technical art history and conservation science, based on our case study of the Tikuna/Magüta blue colorant and experiences of CBPR in other fields from different authors. With our work and this presentation, I also aim to stimulate discussions about how we can promote more socially responsible and inclusive practices in technical art history and conservation science.