News
ERC Starting Grant
Marolijn Bol has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant for her project Dynamics of the Durable: A History of Making Things Last in the Visual and Decorative Arts (DURARE). It is the first synthetic study of the impact of these ambitions for durability on the long-term development of European art traditions. It provides a break-through in our understanding of why the West regards cultural heritage as something that ought to be frozen in time. It shows how artisanal knowledge about the stability and ageing of materials impacted fundamental knowledge traditions outside the history of art. And it sheds new light on why, in response to the supposed durability of the arts of the past, contemporary art often became ephemeral instead.