Paul B. Coremans
| Paul Coremans | |
|---|---|
| Born |
29 April 1906 Borgerhout, Belgium |
| Died | 11 June 1965 (aged 57) Noorden, Netherlands |
| Nationality |
 Belgian
|
| Fields | Analytical chemistry |
| Institutions | Royal Museums of Art and History |
| Alma mater | Free University of Brussels |
| Known for | Cultural heritage management |
Paul Bernard Joseph Marie Coremans (29 April 1908 – 11 June 1965) was a Belgian scientist who advanced the fields of cultural heritage management and cultural heritage curation. He was the founder and first director of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage.
The Institute organizes an international symposium in honour of Coremans on 15–17 June 2015.
Coremans studied Latin and Greek at Koninklijk Atheneum Antwerp from 1920 to 1926. After completing a doctorate in analytical chemistry at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) in 1932, he stayed on as a library assistant. In 1934, Jean Capart, curator of the Royal Museums of Art and History of Brussels, invited him to assemble a laboratory and to reorganize the RMAH's system for photographic artifacts.
In his new position, Coremans used laboratory techniques to authenticate artifacts and evaluate their condition. Analysis through radiography, thermography, and ultraviolet light enabled Capart to study objects quickly; he published his results in the Bulletin des musées (Journal of the Royal Museums of Art and History). In 1935, Coremans published his initial researches into the air conditioning of museums. All the while, Coremans took pertinent courses: metallography at ULB; spectroscopy at the University of Liège; history of Flemish painting in the fifteenth century at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.
During World War II, Capart asked Coremans to oversee a cultural heritage documentation project. Coremans invited volunteers to photograph monuments and public art around Belgium, to complete the collection of 30 000 negatives belonging to the photographic service of the Royal Museums of Art and History (among which 12 000 realized by the Germans during the First World War). He was supported in this task by Jozef Muls, director of the Administration of Fine Arts, and Constant Leurs, director of the « Commissariat général à la Restauration du Pays ». Coremans recruited young people, preventing them from being sent to Germany for compulsory labour. He obtained photographers' collaboration in all the provinces of the kingdom. 160 000 views were taken. It was the basis of the « Archives centrales iconographiques d’Art national ». Armed Resistance fighter, Coremans hid young resistance fighters and objectors to forced labour in Germany, in the buildings of the Jubilee park (Parc du Cinquantenaire). His team fulfilled emergency missions to save fragments of the Saint Gertrude of Nivelles shrine, and mural paintings in the churches of Saint-Brice and Saint-Quentin in Tournai. He also focused on the preservation of artworks in the Bruges museums, moved them to the castle of Lavaux-Sainte-Anne, as well as those stored in various shelters in Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels. He made every effort to prevent their condition from deteriorating. In 1942, he was assigned to the direction of the laboratories of the Royal Museums of Art and History .
...
Wikipedia