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as the artist originally intended, this would not be enough. the coordination of this project was now in the hands of
Participation of the public is an essential aspect of the Soft Christel Kordes, who was set to become the curator of the
Living Room. The landscape must be experienced. This collection as of September 2000. Again he asked for the
will be impossible in such a fragile work. support of the ICN.

Maria van Elk shares her views in an extensive inter- Due to changes in functions and priorities, reorganisations
view in a single edition of the AKI student newspaper, and cuts, by both the Municipal Museum of Schiedam
Long Live the Crocodile, with then editor-in-chief, Caro and the ICN, discussion the case of the Soft Living Room
Benska, in July 2000. grew again quiet. For Maria van Elk, the topic had also
The piece is an interesting look back at the then come to weigh heavily upon her. The prospect alone of
30-year-old Soft Living Room and the way in which the conservation or possibly building a new version of the
artist’s relationship with the work had changed. In addi- environment began to take a physical and emotional toll.
tion, the difficulty of conserving and preserving the new She decided to step away from further collaboration.
and delicate materials used in modern art was discussed.
If the Soft Living Room had been better known, it could In correspondence of July 2008 between the museum and
very well have been a case study for one of the many the collectors de Voigt (owners of many works by Maria
research projects of the SBMK (Foundation of Conser- van Elk) the ‘exceptionally beautiful installation Soft
vation of Modern Art; www.smbk.nl), a cooperation of Living Room’ is discussed briefly, but without further
curators and restorers from museums in The Netherlands consequence. In the mean time, the discoverer of the
with a modern art collection and the current Public Office work, Ludo van Halem, has left for the Rijksmuseum of
of Cultural Heritage (previously ICN and RBK). Since its Amsterdam. The Soft Living Room is again left behind,
establishment in 1995, diverse publications and protocols orphaned.
have been released, the results of research in national and
international settings. Based upon examples taken from Evidently, art-historical research was also discussed with
collections, the problems concerning synthetic materials, the ICN, to be carried out by the museum. At least,
the registration of installations, performances (Perfor- this was mentioned by the collection manager Christel
mance at Tate: Into the space of Art, London, 2016), and Kordes in a letter, dated April 20, 2010, addressed to Evert
the storage of film, video and digital media have been Rodrigo, then collection adviser at the ICN. The museum
addressed. Many artists were questioned about preserva- lacked personnel and funds to support further research.
tion and conservation of their work (The Artist Interview, She summarized once more the possibilities that had
2012). been discussed with respect to the work. In 2007, another
extensive condition report had been made by restorer Lisca
There is now much more knowledge and practical infor- Wurfbain. The condition of the work, the complicated,
mation available, but maintenance still costs time and expensive restoration and possible reconstruction without
effort. The necessary attention and budget for fragile art in the input of Maria van Elk (as was assumed based on her
collections remains absent. This commitment was defi- position in 2000) led to the last remaining possibility: ‘the
nitely present for a short time, but as museums continued artwork will be made available to science. The Soft Living
to grow, the budgets for marketing, communication and Room shall, in its present state and packaging, be turned
hospitality prevail, more and more. over to the ICN in Rijswijk. The institute will look for
means and possibilities of multidisciplinary research that
In any case, it had become obvious that a reconstruction can be carried out upon the SLR.’ And, as such, the SLR
of the SLR was essential for exposition as it was origi- came to be in a storage depot at the ICN.
nally intended. Ludo van Halem asks Maria van Elk, in a
letter dated 10.08.2000, to give this her consideration. At However, Maria van Elk did not know this. We began
the same time, he also reports the situation surrounding our quest for answers. Via a letter from Ludo van Halem
the Soft Living Room to the ICN and announces that (21/02/2012) we learned of the work’s present where-

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