Researcher Sanneke Stigter interviews Louis Baltussen from the Van Abbemuseum, both for his expertise about the practicalities of Jan Dibbets’ site-specific installation The Shortest Day at the Van Abbemuseum (1970) and for his memory as a visitor to the Van Abbemuseum seeing the work installed in the early 1970s.

Files not yet migrated to Data Station. Files for this dataset can be found at https://easy.dans.knaw.nl/ui/datasets/id/easy-dataset:160445.

Interviews in Conservation Research is a growing collection of oral history records that can inform the preservation, conservation and presentation of works of art and cultural heritage in the Netherlands. Many professionals in museums and heritage institutions conduct interviews with artists, artist assistants and conservators, as well as with other stakeholders, such as curators, directors and collectors to learn more about the works they have in their collections. These interviews are rarely sustainably archived nor easily accessible for other researchers, as their existence as primary sources is relatively unknown. This thematic collection helps to overcome these problems and is one of the main results of the NWO funded KIEM project Interviews in Conservation Research, a partner project of the Netherlands Institute for Conservation+Art+Science (NICAS) as part of the Conservation Oral History Initiative. This is an ongoing initiative and additions to the thematic collection Interviews in Conservation Research are welcome to build a rich collection of unique source material that allows for cross-referencing and provides a unique view on the behind the scenes of the lives of works of art and cultural heritage in the Netherlands.