Do We Care, or Simply Measure? Reflections on Preventive Conservation Through the Idea of Care

This article explores preventive conservation as more than a technical discipline. We approach this inquiry through a lens of reflexivity (sensu Bourdieu), informed by our professional experiences across diverse institutional and cultural contexts in Latin America, Southeast Europe and Norway. From this standpoint, we revisit core disciplinary concepts such as risk management, standardisation and museum storage, exploring how notions of care and ethics of care might reframe them. Through case-based reflections, we illustrate how prevailing practices and standards can reinforce inequalities, limit accessibility, and potentially challenge relationships between people and heritage. We also bring to light dimensions of preventive conservation work that often remain invisible or tacit, and are backgrounded as secondary to technical expertise, yet are essential for care-centred approaches to both people and objects. As a result, we call for a broader understanding of 'environment' in preventive conservation, one that moves beyond metrics to include institutional contexts, social relations, and power dynamics. This shift invites a move from control to collaboration, where care becomes a conceptual and operational principle embedded in institutional frameworks.