Introduction: Experts in the Interbellum

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses how major conferences from the Munich Exhibition and Congress in 1893 to the first international conference on the scientific analysis of art in Rome in 1930 shaped a research community around the study of materials and techniques and issues of conservation. It shows how scientific expertise developed in the newly established museum laboratories and how new imaging technologies, such as X-rays, were used and contested in court rooms. The book focuses on the conference and exhibition organised by the German Society for the Promotion of Rational Painting Methods in 1893 to scrutinise the fight over expertise in matters of painting materials between artists and scientists which would haunt the conflict between Alexander Eibner and Max Doerner. It focuses on the Rijksmuseum provides people with an interesting contrast.