PRESERVE / REPAIR / DOCUMENT

Workshop

Careful conservation, documented diagnosis and reversible modifications.

⚠ SAFETY FIRST

CRT televisions and power supplies can retain lethal voltages even when unplugged. Electrical work must be performed by trained personnel.

Exterior cleaning

Begin with the least invasive intervention and document the initial condition.

Diagnosis

Do not replace components without measuring, verifying and recording the reason.

Conservation

Control humidity, sunlight, batteries and incompatible materials.

Reversible modification

Always retain the original parts and avoid permanent damage.

Data recovery

Work from copies and preserve the original medium without writing to it.

Traceability

Record tools, products, parts and every technical decision.

GUIDES / VERIFIED

Documented guides

Analysis · 1970

From Intervention to Documentation: The Professionalisation of Museum Restoration in Spain, 1970–2009

Between 1970 and 2009, restoration in Spanish museums can be read as a shift from poorly documented interventions towards coordinated projects combining historical research, conservation, the recovery of interiors and renewed museum displays. The Prado, Museo Cerralbo, MAN and National Library make it possible to trace that change without reducing it to a merely technical timeline.

Open story

Analysis · NOW

A Film Museum Does Not Preserve Films Alone

The planned new Film Museum in the former NO-DO building offers a way to reconsider what preserving film heritage means: not merely safeguarding copies, but also caring for media, documentation, cultural uses and the conditions of access that make audiovisual history intelligible.

Open story

Analysis · NOW

Digitisation Is Not Enough: Context as a Museum’s Central Piece

Technology can broaden access to collections, support their documentation and reduce handling of some originals. Yet an isolated image or record does not, by itself, preserve an object’s history. This analysis explains why inventories, identifiers and contextual metadata are essential parts of cultural preservation.

Open story

Analysis · pre-1950

Everyday Life Enters the Archive: What Museums Can Learn from Their Documents

Museum archives are not merely administrative back-up. Institutional records, photographs, and collections linked to communities make it possible to study how the memory of everyday life is constructed, preserved, and interpreted—provided their limits and production contexts are taken into account.

Open story

Analysis · pre-1950

Restoration Also Means Documentation: The Archive as the Memory of Collections

The institutional evidence available shows that conservation and restoration are not limited to repairing objects: they depend on reports, inventories, protocols and traceable decisions. A look at the Prado, the MNCN and Spanish public documentation to understand why the record of an intervention becomes part of the object itself.

Open story

Analysis · 2000

From Ephemeral Comics to Archives: Why Preserving Comics Also Preserves Culture

Comics and comic magazines were created as widely circulated, inexpensive, and vulnerable printed matter. The available documentation shows how archives, museums, digital projects, and collectors have helped reconsider them as cultural sources whose preservation requires context, description, and access—not storage alone.

Open story

Analysis · NOW

A Console Is Not Enough: Why Archives Change How We Preserve Its History

Preserving a console as an isolated object says little about its cultural life. Drawing on museum and archival principles, this analysis proposes viewing the console, its documentation, context, and public access as an inseparable whole, without assigning a specific model a history not documented by the available evidence.

Open story

Guide · NOW

Before Switching It On: Documenting an Arcade Machine as Heritage

An editorial guide to approaching an arcade machine through documentation and preventive conservation: identify what is known, record its condition and context, and separate verifiable data from memories.

Open story

Analysis · 1970

From Undocumented Intervention to Documented Restoration

Between 1970 and 2009, several Spanish institutional examples reveal a decisive shift: restoration ceased to be understood only as an intervention on an object and increasingly required documentation, professional coordination, and a historical reading of spaces.

Open story

Guide · NOW

The Computer Does Not Replace the Object: Documenting Collections to Preserve Their Context

A guide to understanding the computer as a museum-documentation tool: not as a replacement for objects, but as a means of linking provenance, conservation condition, images, movements and institutional history.

Open story

Analysis · NOW

Preserving Music Is More Than Saving Sounds: Archives, Context and Cultural Memory

A reading of musical heritage as a set of documents, practices and social contexts. Preservation requires cataloguing, prioritising, digitising and describing material without reducing music to an isolated carrier.

Open story

Analysis · NOW

Restoration Also Means Documentation: The Record of Every Intervention

The holdings of the Prado, MNCN-CSIC and publications from Spain’s Ministry of Culture point to an essential idea in conservation: restoration is not merely acting upon an object, but leaving a verifiable record of its condition, needs and the decisions made.

Open story

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