Students from the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart are presenting their work and projects online for the first time this year on an interactive platform. Student Chiara Schweizer created a video entitled “Restoration in 90 seconds” The State Academy of Fine Arts: ABK Stuttgart traditionally invites students to a campus tour at the end of the summer. An extended […]

Students from the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design are presenting their work and projects online for the first time this year on an interactive platform. Student Chiara Schweizer created a video entitled “Restoration in 90 seconds”

The State Academy of Fine Arts: ABK Stuttgart traditionally invites visitors to a campus tour at the end of the summer. A long weekend offers visitors an insight behind the scenes. The academy’s studios and exhibition spaces are on display. This year, students of architecture, design, art, art teaching, art studies and restoration will be presenting their current work and projects online on an interactive platform due to coronavirus: rundgang.abk.live

Among them is the contribution by Chiara Schweizer, a student specializing in the conservation and restoration of paintings and painted sculptures. Her video entitled “Restoration in 90 seconds” is currently going viral on the internet. She created a poetry slam and shows how creative conservators can be. In 90 seconds, she explains what is important in restoration. It is important to put your own creativity in the background in the restoration profession. However, free thought is important in order to break new ground and discuss possibilities from all sides. Her message: science never means standing still.

Since 2011, the University of Bern and Bern University of the Arts (HKB) have been running a joint interdisciplinary doctoral program. Art and science are not at odds with each other here, but go hand in hand. The institutions have thus founded the first Swiss doctoral program for artists and designers: Studies in the Arts (SINTA) In the past, there were […]

Since 2011, the University of Bern and Bern University of the Arts (HKB) have been running a joint interdisciplinary doctoral program. Art and science are not at odds with each other here, but go hand in hand. The institutions have thus founded the first Swiss doctoral program for artists and designers: Studies in the Arts (SINTA)

In the past, students interested in art in German-speaking countries only had an either/or choice. On the one hand, there were the universities and art colleges, which researched the fundamentals of art, and on the other, the universities of applied sciences, which studied art as applied research. But in 2011, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Bern founded the Graduate School of the Arts (GSA) together with the HKB. Study content: art as research. For the first time, artists and designers as well as graduates of art, music and theater schools in Switzerland were given the opportunity to pursue a doctorate.

Renamed Studies in the Arts (SINTA) in 2019, the five-year artistic/design/academic program has since become well established. SINTA closely combines theory and practice as well as basic research and practice-oriented research. The Bernese model is characterized by the fact that it is anchored in both the university and the University of the Arts: students are consistently supervised from different perspectives.

Further academic qualification

Students at art colleges, for example, come with precise questions and topics in order to gain further academic qualifications, while university graduates seek practical proximity to the arts. After completing their doctorate, graduates are free to pursue either a university-academic or an artistic-creative career. Currently, 39 doctoral students from the fields of music, theater and dance studies, art history and graphic design, archaeology, social anthropology, German and Romance studies are taking part in the SINTA program.

Dissertation for conservators exists

Every year, around 25 students in five years and four different specializations in conservation-restoration (major programmes in “Architecture and Decor”, “Painting and Sculpture”, “Graphics, Documents and Photography” and “Modern Materials and Media”) are trained up to Master’s level at the HKB in Bern. The doctoral program Studies in the Arts (SINTA) of the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the University of Bern offers the possibility of a subsequent dissertation.

“Research in the Arts”

This program takes a transdisciplinary approach to various theories and methods. Topics include ethnographic urban research and prototyping, an agile development method in which processes or products are flexibly improved based on user feedback. Many of the topics would not be feasible without the combination of practice-oriented research and artistic expertise. The module “Research in the Arts“ in turn deals withhistory, discourses, theories, concepts, methods, terms, paradigms and the positioning of artistic research and sharpens the focus on one’s own in an interdisciplinary exchange.

Website of the program: www.sinta.unibe.ch. In September 2022, five SINTA doctoral students presented their research results throughout the day (7th SINTA Day). https://www.sinta.unibe.ch/unibe/portal/center_gradschools/micro_gsa/content/e70621/e207086/e1157192/Merkblatt_Bewerbung_SINTA_ger.pdf

Tip: In order to study Conservation-Restoration at the HKB in Bern, you must have a Matura, i.e. a high school diploma, as well as 12 months of professional work experience. A vocational baccalaureate in combination with an apprenticeship in a relevant field is also recognized. Read more about this in the interview with course director Prof. Dr. Andreas Buder.