Conservation around the Millennium (Hungarian National Museum, 2001)

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DIPLOMA WORKS AND THEIR ROLE IN ADVOCACY FOR CONSERVATION/RESTORATION

Agnes Timár-Balázsy

INTRODUCTION

Almost all academic training programs ends with a diploma work. In some schools, such as in the Götheborg or Stuttgart school, these diploma works will be published in volumes, so that they are accesible for everybody. Those, written in English, French, German should not be translated for such publication. In many schools they are not published as a whole work but the written diploma work is put into the library and is accesible. These, and other institutions often make policy to convince the students to publish the content of their diploma work in the form of an article in high quality periodicals or conference materials, such as the Southhampton University TCC.

DIPLOMA WORKS IN THE HUNGARIAN ACADEMIC TRAINING PROGRAM

The five year MA degree academic trainig program (Faculty for Object Conservation) run by the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in conjunction with the Hungarian National Museum was reorganised in 1991 from a four year program to a five year program. One of the main change was to change from a throughout “general” program to a three year general and two year specialization in one branch of object conservation program. This latter means Specialization into 1. Conservation/Restoration of 1. Metal and Goldsmiths, 2. Silicous, 3. Woden and Furniture, 4. Paper and Leather, 6. Textile and Leather Objects. The first “new concept diploma works” were released in 1995.

The “new concept diploma works” does not mean that they had particular points or expectations, different from other academic school's ones, but considerably different from our own 4 years academic training program which was run form 1974 till 1993. At the beginnig of the fourth academic year students select their dipoma works together with the Diploma Committee. After it has been accepted they start research and investigation of the object. There are regular meetings with the superviser of the work, with the members of the Diploma Committee, and various experts who can contribute to their work. Usually, the Plan of Conservation is ready and accepted by all the listed persons in late autumn. Students start working with permanent supervising. They must finish working and hand in the written and bound text at the end of May. This is followed by the Final Exams from History of arts and crafts, History of technology, material science of material investigation of the material fitting into their specialization, Conservation/Restoration according to their specialization in June. An other day is dedicated to Defending the Diploma Works: both the result and process of the practical conservation of the object, as well as the written and illustrated report. The qualifying student gives a 30 minutes report with slide or video pojection. The member of the Diploma Committee may put questions which she or he has to answer. Both the practical work and the written version will be graded and the final grade will be the average of this values.

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