The restauration of contemporary works at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence

Abstract

The Opificio delle Pietre Dure (OPD) is a Central Institute of the Ministry of Properties, Cultural Activities and Tourism of the Italian state dedicated to works from each historical period, from the archaeological field to contemporary art. In this latter area the Institute took on the restoration of multi-material works, among them Alberto Burri's Gran Legno, Anselm Kiefer's Cette obscure clarté qui tombe des étoile and Auschwitz's Memoriale Italiano, currently under restoration. Many were the paper pieces from the twentieth and twenty-first century restored by the Opificio such as drawings from Mino Maccari, Franco Zeffirelli and Federico Fellini, informed briefly in this article.

Nowadays, the demand to intervene in a selective way is increasingly felt, mainly insisting on the concept of prevented of programmed conservation, and also on the wait for scientists to provide accurate answers concerning the behaviour and the chemical and physical features of the materials that changed and that still change rapidly; and concerning the validity of the already adopted treatments and those recently incorporated, them as well subject to a continuous and fast development, as with for example chemicals gels.