Restaurer une aile d'avion Spad VII: de la force de la représentation à la fragilité de la matière.

This article, written in pairs (an anthropologist and a collection manager from the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace), deals with the biography of a long-forgotten object, a French First World War Spad S. VII fighter plane wing. Its main theme is the attention paid to this wing by the object curator at the museum and the interdisciplinary community of professionals gathered at the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France (C2RMF) for the conduct of this project, from its rediscovery to its preparation for the exhibition, in its historical, material and symbolic dimensions. An approach which, without ignoring the particularities of the so-called technical collections, includes this aircraft sub-component in the field of questioning and deontology which are imposed on a museum of France. The strength of the representation of what the object may have been during its life of use is thus confronted with its material fragility, the traces of which, the marks of use, present a historical and documentary value that must be preserved. Through the care given to these traces, a particular relationship emerges between the object and its environment, made up of technical gestures and a sensitivity that negotiates with the material to preserve the object. Restoration is thus the result of a creative tension, of an adjustment between material transformation and human gesture.