The editors and authors of this volume share a fascination with artistic practices and their representations. In the wake of Ann-Sophie Lehmann's 2009 conference Showing Making, and the book publication and exhibition Mythen van het atelier (2010), the editors decided it was time to put one of their long-standing hypotheses to the test, namely that such representations have a tendency to oscillate between the two poles of hiding and showing various facets of production – a phenomenon we observed had a certain consistency throughout the history of art, in particular, it seemed, since 1800. Although often appearing to reveal all in their depicitions, artists are never entirely open about their practice, and habitually hide their manual labor in order to present an image of almost magical creative genius. The international two-day conference Hiding Making – Showing Creation, which we organized in January 2011 in collaboration with Teylers Museum in Haarlem and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, demonstrated that we had not been wrong. We were impressed, not to say overwhelmed, by the quality of the individual papers and, especially, their homogeneity. The subsequent realization of this volume has been a process of rethinking the original concept and carving out a focus on what might be a new field of research within our discipline: studio studies.

Neither the conference nor the book could have been realized without the help and inspiration of our colleagues, first and foremost the authors of the various contributions. A special thanks goes to Marjan Scharloo and Terry van Druten of Teylers Museum and Martijntje Hallmann of the Rijksakademie for their collaboration in the organization of the event that set the ball rolling. We are also grateful to Sameer Farooq, who provided the original design of the conference materials and generously allowed us to reinterpret his work for the cover of the book. Maaike Groot and Chantal Nicolaes of Amsterdam University Press supported the editorial and production process with enthusiasm and expertise.