Recuperate, Restore, Release? On the Aftercare of Shipwrecked Objects

In this paper, I focus on the colonial Iberian world and art historical engagements with shipwrecked objects. Of particular concern are the implications of two modern desires. The first: to create for objects an origin that maps onto the packing of a ship (rather than the moment of production or first use). The second: to measure interpretive success via recuperation and restoration (rather than, say, an ethics of release). While such desires now sustain gestures that have become normative—in museum exhibitions and catalogues, conservation reports, research papers and social media— other possibilities for after care exist. What these are and how they might allow for a recasting of the work of colonial shipwrecks in the present are the broader issues this essay takes up.