Laure Cadot

Laure Cadot (France, 1980) is a conservator-restorer specializing in the treatment of organic materials and human remains in particular. A graduate in art history, museology and applied research from the École du Louvre and in conservation-restoration and preventive conservation (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), she has been working as a freelance conservator for French and European public collections for some fifteen years. Her research into the status and conservation of collections of human remains has led her to work on these little-addressed issues within the archaeology and ethnography department of the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France, and to publish regularly on the subject in specialist journals and books.

As an extension of her research and professional practice, Laure Cadot’s residency at Villa Medici aims to gather and lay the methodological foundations of a field with multiple ramifications and complex issues. Alongside bibliographical research, meetings and interviews with various Italian players involved with these particular collections (curators, restorers, anthropologists, archaeologists, etc.) will enable us to compare French and Italian approaches, to define the common features and particularities of this field, which has been evolving rapidly since the early 2000s, particularly through the issues of restitution and respect for the human body in cultural institutions. The aim of this work will be to propose practical guidelines adapted to the sensitivities and singularities of each typology according to their materiality, provenance, dating, preparation technique, heritage history, etc., as well as to their scientific uses for a better handling of this fragile and precious heritage in more ways than one.