The stroke of luck for HERITAGE-PRO: the restoration of the “Night Watch”

An absolute stroke of luck for HERITAGE-PRO is the recently started restoration of Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” at the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum: The restoration of this icon of European art history will take place for 12 months in public and accompanied by social media. 20 natural scientists, conservators, restorers, and photographers of the Rijksmuseum will provide an insight into their restoration work and the findings that will result from it.

For weeks we (Isabel Verdet, communication specialist of ENCATC, Susanne Gill and Sascha Kolhey of the Development Agency Rhineland-Palatinate and Dr. Karin Drda-Kühn of Association Culture and Work) searched for good examples and case studies for the training topic “communication of restoration via social media” in the Internet and the social media, in order to be able to illustrate, which possibilities exist in the social medium communication. We ourselves had tried social media and asked the restorers’ community for help. Many good examples were reported back to us, but a really spectacular example from the European area was not among them – all the more we are now happy about this case study. Thank you, Rijksmuseum!

We are also pleased about the public restoration for a second reason: the social media will most probably also show how many different experts are involved, which – possibly completely unpredictable – problems arise, how the future of the picture will look like. The entire process will reflect exactly what HERITAGE-PRO is all about, namely professional interdisciplinary work – we are very excited about this example!

Many good examples and case studies on “Communication in cultural heritage preservation” will be found in the HERITAGE-PRO training modules – as inspiration for cultural heritage managers!

You can read more about the Night Watch restoration at the (mostly English) Facebook pages of the  museum and their website.

(Picture: Screenshot of the Rijksmuseum homepage )

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