Despite the growing interest in performance artworks, museums
worldwide still show some reservations when it comes to
incorporating such works into their collections. This paper aims
to explore the conservation challenges that these works present
for museums.
Through the analysis of the relevant literature, the practices and
theories surrounding the conservation of performance-based
artworks are contextualized and examined. Notions of the
conservation of performance artworks are reassessed in the light of
ideas relating to archives and repertoires (Taylor 2008), which can
be considered essential to the study of these works. By combining
reflections about performance art acquisition and performance art
conservation, a new conceptual framework based on an expanded
view of conservation, which regards preservation as a process that
includes presentation strategies, is proposed. In order to illustrate
this examination, two case studies are presented as examples:
sexyMF (2006) by Ana Borralho and João Galante (f. 2002, Lisbon)
and Ad Verbum (2010), by Vasco Araújo (b. 1975, Lisbon)
