Skip to Main Content

The Institute of Fine Arts Faculty

 

Contact

Christine Frohnert

Research Scholar and Time-based Media Art Conservation Director

As a conservator and scholar of contemporary art, I am interested in artworks as dynamic entities whose material, technological, conceptual, and experiential dimensions unfold over time. This understanding guides my conservation practice, research, and teaching, particularly in relation to time-based media and other contemporary works whose identity and meaning may depend on behaviors, interactions, technological systems, and conditions of experience.

My conservation practice encompasses a wide range of contemporary and often ephemeral materials, with a particular focus on artworks that require documentation, interpretation, reactivation, and translation across technological and cultural contexts. I approach time-based media works as more than collections of material components: they can be understood as score-like entities, defined by work-defining properties, behaviors, relationships, and conditions of experience. This framework has also led me to consider the broader implications of conservation for contemporary art, including questions of authenticity, iteration, re-enactment, change, and the relationship between material continuity and the continued life of a work.

At the Institute, I teach and develop courses in time-based media and contemporary art conservation. In 2018, I co-founded the first graduate program in time-based media art conservation in the United States here at the Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, where I currently serve as Research Scholar and Program Director for Time-Based Media Conservation. My teaching and research address the conservation of artworks incorporating motion, sound, light, moving images, interactivity, electronics, software, and other technologies, as well as emerging forms of contemporary practice that challenge conventional distinctions between object, process, performance, and systems. I have organized workshops, conferences, and educational initiatives that have contributed to the development of time-based media conservation as a field.

From 2008 to 2012, I chaired the Electronic Media Group of the American Institute for Conservation and initiated the TechFocus conference series. Previously, I served as Chief Conservator at Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, from 2000 to 2005. Originally trained as a painting and sculpture conservator, I graduated from the Conservation of Modern Materials and Media program at the Bern University of the Arts, Switzerland, in 2003. I am also a partner at Bek & Frohnert LLC, a New York-based private conservation practice specializing in contemporary art.

Selected Publications

  • Brinceño Villamil, Daniella; Hernandez, Adrian; Bek, Reinhard; Frohnert, Christine: An Experiment in Art and Technology: Negotiating with Time in Robert Rauschenberg’s Carnal Clocks, In: Journal of the American Institute for Conservation (JAIC) Special Issue: Artist Intention, forthcoming 2027
  • Frohnert, Christine: Conservation of Custom-Engineered Analog Artworks of the late 1960s; In: E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) Open Ended; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, p.109 - 117, 2018
  • Roemich, Hannelore and Frohnert, Christine: Time-based Media Art Conservation Education Program at NYU: Concept and Perspectives; Electronic Media Review, Volume Five: 2017–2018, p. 1–26
  • Bek, Reinhard; Frohnert, Christine: Book Review: Nordegraaf, Julia et al (eds): Preserving and Exhibiting Media Art - Challenges and Perspectives, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2015
  • Bek, Reinhard; Frohnert, Christine: A Destructive Happening and its Relicts: Jean Tinguely’s Homage to New York. In: Making and Transforming Art Technology and Interpretation, Proceedings of the fifth symposium of the ICOM-CC Working Group of Art Technological Research, ed. Dubois, Helen et al, London, 2014
  • Frohnert, Christine: Conservation of Historic Cathode Ray Tube-Based Artworks from the 1960’s; In: The Electronic Media Review, AIC (American Institute for Conservation) EMG Specialty Group publication, Volume 2, 2013
  • Conte, Lisa; Frohnert, Christine; Nelson, Lisa; Sybalsky, Julia: Overcoming Obsolescence: The Examination, Documentation, and Preservation of Nam June Paik’s TVCello, In: The Electronic Media Review, AIC (American Institute for Conservation) EMG Specialty Group publication, Volume 2, 2013
  • Frohnert, Christine: Heart Beats Dust - The Conservation of an Interactive Installation from 1968 and Introduction to E.A.T (Experiments in Art Technology), In: The Electronic Media Review, AIC (American Institute for Conservation) EMG Specialty Group publication, Volume 1, Nr. 1, 2012
  • Frohnert, Christine and Singer, Martha: Education in Electronic Media Art Conservation - Where we are and where we should be; in: AIC News, (American Institute for Conservation) Lead Article, January 2010