Conservation And Enhancement Of Artistic And Historical Heritage
The notion of heritage is, at present, the general, at least in its essential postulates, the diuso current, which does not seem to need further clarifications. In it, in the meantime, you should generally be understood “things” carry the meaning of objective evidence of civilization (and, especially, of past civilizations); so that more properly speak of ‘historical and artistic heritage’, intended to sense with expand that sense as well as the specificity of the aesthetic qualification of the individual “things”.
Other essential postulate is that this legacy is “common” so relevant to those individuals, or limited social groups, that of individual things or combinations of these are, in fact, a valid title holders, but to the community, in fact, in broader sense and all-encompassing. From this it follows that even the notion of historical and artistic heritage is taken by the community to justify their behavior, actions, providence (technical, legislative etc.) Aimed at housing, exploitation, dissemination and appreciation of the conservation of the heritage : acts, all of them, that even when they do not match the behaviors and interests of the individual owners, but they overlap or even conflict prevail or are entitled by virtue of this assumption, then, notwithstanding other instances of positive law its the same community.
It would seem, then, from the path of these basic characteristics, the concept of historical and artistic heritage is an undisputed and indisputable benchmark of civilized society, the final acquisition of the public consciousness. And, therefore, the finding of flagrant and everyday low ability to Codest public behavior, activities and allowances to translate their statements of principle in ways that actually acts to achieve their specific objectives (ie to better conserve, learn about and appreciate the historical and artistic heritage ) is not only a sign of inadequacy “techniques” of defaults or simple conflicts of interest. That is but a symptom (but more than symptom often already as irrefutable confirmation) radical shortcomings and ambiguities, even at the limit of a relative but significant drop of meaning, of the notion of historical and artistic heritage, as it has been handed down , and its current conceptual positions.
The emergence of these shortcomings and ambiguities has also helped to stimulate a debate that he set in motion just in the last decade and still in progress, the result is aimed at a renewed conceptualisation of the object (the historical and artistic heritage) in a view that is not only the specific disciplines of archeology and art history, but at least it expands the boundaries of the social sciences. This debate is still going on, nor is it possible to anticipate the outcome, it will be here in the first place useful reconsideration – albeit briefly – the reasons for which the already generalized notion of heritage and art began to recede.
One reason is already inherent in the use of the term “assets” to the contradictory semantics of this. In fact, for it is meant to be a part of what has been handed down by patres vocabulary (the bran, Venice 1612), that is what one makes traditional and tangible link to an ethical-social, a connotative sign of the person and the community therefore, with its well-defined boundaries, and not even all that is currently owns.
In other, more common sense the term denotes an accumulation of goods, stocks especially valuable, virtually negotiable, and to which the powers of the “historical” and “artistic” are not enough, nor to provide that ideal and symbolic meaning that is characteristic of ‘other sense, nor to give universal value, as clearly did not pertain to the’ things’ which make up the patrimony, but they are, in fact, “powers” the result of a tripped recognition of an acquired or reacquired awareness, in short, a critical judgment.
One reason is already inherent in the use of the term “assets” to the contradictory semantics of this. In fact, for it is meant to be a part of what has been handed down by patres vocabulary (the bran, Venice 1612), that is what one makes traditio and tangible link to an ethical-social, a connotative sign of the person and the community therefore, with its well-defined boundaries, and not even all that is currently owns, also for new acquisition of the subject. In other, more common sense the term denotes an accumulation of goods, stocks especially valuable, virtually negotiable, and to which the powers of the “historical” and “artistic” are not enough, nor to provide that ideal and symbolic meaning that is characteristic of ‘other sense, nor to give universal value, as clearly did not pertain to the’ things’ which make up the patrimony, but they are, in fact, “powers” the result of a tripped recognition of an acquired or reacquired awareness, in short, a critical judgment.
The contradiction so that, already at first glance, the notion of customary historical and artistic heritage reveals, it’s even better validated by an examination of its genesis and historical development, the first point to note in practice have occurred in connection with moments rather evolved of Western civilization.
In fact, we find the first explicit evidence of an awareness of the community’s right on the “things” of artistic and / or historical only in the late republican Rome, when works of art removed from the provinces subject began to be considered monumenta victoriae and their appreciation denoted not more (depending on the attitude of which he had made before interpreter Q. Fabius Maximus) laxity of morals, but a civic duty: Cicero, for example, points out that the consul P. Servilius, “populo Roman apportavit” works art of conquered cities and “tabulas publicas to aerarium praescribenda curavit” (Verr., II, 1, 57).
The move to the consideration that res populi Romani was everything, also privately owned, was monumentum was short: we witness episodes narrated by Pliny (Nat. Hist., XXXIV, XXXV 9 and 7), relating to the complaint the public availability of individual objects or art collections; and witness even more significant is the fact that monumentum, public good, to preserve and protect its appearance, was considered above the city, the Urbs in its particular meaning full of symbolic values (Rome communis home), so the promulgarsi special laws which are then extended to the whole empire (and it will still track in the statutes of the medieval communes): from Lex municipalis of C. Julius Caesar, the Malacitana Lex, Lex genetivae to Juliae, until the edict of Leo and Maiorano 458 d. C.
A conservative behavior, then, that the “heritage” materialized saw the historical continuity of the populus (but, rather, the state structure) Roman, that were already tinged with regret for the best past ages, in the providences of maintenance and restoration ancient monuments placed by Theodoric the suggestion of Cassiodorus: “our intentions quidem est construere nova, sed amplius preserve antiquated: quia non minorem the praise of inventis, quam de rebus possumus custoditis shopper” (Variae, II, 35). Thus was born that way, or rather the retrospective sense, and even mythologizing veneration of the relics of the past that resurface from time to time to the stimulus of ideal motives, or reacquired historical consciousness, with clear allusions to the aspirations of restorative ancient political systems, since Charlemagne gubernans imperium Romanorum appointed keeper and Einhard responsible for the good preservation of ancient monuments existing in his kingdom, when the popes in Avignon and then returning from the first humanists (Martin V, Pius II, Sixtus IV) stated the devastation of buildings Roman sacrilegious as the disposal of the artistic treasures of the churches.
At the height will be the famous, heartfelt letter that he addressed to Leo X Raphael, lamenting the continued dispossession of the ancient monuments to get materials for new perpetrated “dalli evil and ignorant, which unfortunately have been here even until facte insults to those souls who with their blood parturirono so much glory to the world and this country, and we […]: a clear sign that despite the ineffectiveness of any rescript or disposal papal bull on defining and protecting the heritage that while they were in their majestic presence, the the remains of the Roman Empire!
Even from such a brief summary of episodes especially indicative, it is evident that the notion of historical and artistic heritage has, for a long time, fenomenizzata only in a very particular cultural and understood, not exclusively, but certainly pre-eminently, the remains of the classical world and its modern manifestations of renovatio humanistic Renaissance, at the expense – even in practice – than any other cultural moment, from the medieval (even when linked to the earliest beginnings of Christian spirituality: the “investigation of the stored values” of wherein said test Borromini in St. John Lateran was an extraordinary fact!) to the Gothic: applies to all the contempt Vasari for the “old way”, or “Greek” or the “German”, under which accounted the entire span of quell”infelice century ‘, which was the age from the time of Constantine to Cimabue.
The finding is of medieval artistic finding of fact necessary to make the comparison that best fit the excellence of the ancient and rebirth, but without implying, too, the recognition of a current value of cultural heritage to those same events . Even the Enlightenment, even in its effort to extensive, encyclopedic new conceptual foundations, you said, on the whole, a renewed knowledge of the historical and artistic heritage; touched but individual subjects who helped to lay the foundations for further systematization of the concept. Thus, the emergence of the phenomenon of re-evaluation of the ‘primitive’ (in a sense very broad sense), so consonant with new ideas on the study of history hardened with renewed interest as sources of ethnic and folkloric, expanded the range of ‘heritage ‘culture well beyond the canonical terms (greek-Roman world and the Renaissance), and that just before or concurrently with the thrills neovocativi of neoclassicism.
Even in certain aspects of the benefits of legislative time is revealed incipient expand the concept: for example, when the edict of Cardinal Albani on 10 September 1733 he argued, amongst the reasons of the protection, the fact that the prestige of the monuments in Rome recalls the strangers, beyond the utilitarian considerations shines a deeper awareness of the public good and you can see a renewed perception of environmental values and connotative of the urban context. In other respects, the program formulated by A. Zanetti in 1773 for an initial survey of existing works of art in churches and monasteries of the Venetian Republic certainly did not want to shrink and fiscal administrative act, but implied the need for a global ‘reconnaissance’ . And yet, when the Treaty of Paris and the Congress of Vienna sanctioned the right of the Member to obtain the restitution of works of art that had been removed from their armies of Napoleon, at the same time reiterated the principle of cultural relevance of the states themselves (but already implicitly nationalities) and inserted this legal standard in international law, then taking it to a universal value.
But we are, with this, already on the ridge between the Enlightenment and the Romantic age, and it will be this, in the name of national spirit and historicism, which marked a turning point in complying with the concept of historical and artistic heritage. Already in the definition of the field research to own national identity, especially in the ‘Germanic Europe, in France and Italy (for induction even in England, where even though you had the same political movements and uprisings), rehabilitated sources particular cultural and indigenous roots ‘Lombard’, medieval and gothic sagas and legends and folk tales: the rehabilitated often with warm imagination, to aestheticism sociologising W. Morris and the Gothic revival, to the detriment of the legacy now classic, not some renegade, but which was beginning to glimpse – and then in other places it undertook to consider – the look of elite culture, with the authoritarian implications of which he had become a member, even lately, the sull’abbrivo grandiloquence ‘civil’ of neoclassicism!
It also expanded the field, at times, less constructed and holographic ‘genealogy’, finally brought to the attention of other entities ethno-social: it is extremely significant in this regard that even the famous edict of Cardinal Pacca, April 7 1820, which was the cause of all the legislation of ‘preservation order’ for over a century, is worried – and their first in the situation of the Papal States, which in the process of restoration began to clash with harsh social realities – to provide for forms of protection for the ‘arts and Crafts’.
But it is not so much in the formalities of legal instruments, but to a much broader journalism, a more resonant ‘exhortation to the stories’, which will begin to penetrate the layers of the public worship of the bourgeois ‘homelands’ memories of witnesses including objective and artistic of these. And if anything in connection with the gradual emergence of consciousness and the transformation of the concept precept (you ‘must’ because it is patriotic to take care of the artistic … or, as still prescribe M. Dvorak in his Katechismus der Denkmalpflege, the “protection belongs to the duties of every cultured man”) that are consolidated legal instruments and institutionalize conservative behaviors that were only sporadic.
The many and varied accommodations museums that were realized in sec. XIX, both in terms of transition or recovery to the community of the great patrician collections (as, often, especially in Italy) and from both the foundation of newly harvested state or municipal, was clearly underlies some, even if not always well defined, instructional design, the promotion of public education. At museums is then flanked technical bodies and administrative wider range of expertise (commissions, joints, deputations, superintendents, archaeological services and so on.) That in many states reflect the articulation of local self-government (from the municipal and departmental, as in France, those of Ländern and the cantons, as in Germany and Switzerland), or are buried in the new centralized structures, as it will be after the unification of the Italian State.
In either case the positive reasons are equilibrated with the opposite; adherence to the specific dimensions of the local was worth it, at least in principle, to keep more pronounced emphasis on the link between the historical continuity of the traditio that is, in its immanent phenomenality, and the institutionalization of the central character was concerned to emphasize the universal value, quell’esser ‘common’ that is exceeded particularizations not only socio-cultural, but also conceptual in general and therefore pragmatic, focusing on the history (and the history of art in this case) as an integral factor and unit.
It is a duality of assumptions that perspective, sometimes somewhat artificially, as we shall see, it lasts to this day, still carrying within it the obvious reflection of distinct practical reasons, strictly management, but also political, no less than of different profiling methods disciplines of archeology and art history.
Beyond these various conditions is still very symptomatic that all the work of definition and conceptual development of the historical and artistic product experience first and then the Enlightenment ideals of romantic and historicist investigation, which led to both – it seems inevitably – into proposals for patterns of behavior of the company in respect of such funds, even when it is not formalized in laws, but instead developed into other forms of declaration of awareness, in journalism, in teaching practice and so on., are generally of a character inhibitory. And this can be explained, if we consider only the fact that the legal formulations issued until nearly the middle of this century and their corresponding translations discursive refer essentially to a single matrix, which is still the already mentioned edict Cardinal Pacca, of than one hundred fifty years ago. The circumstances under which the laws and patterns of behavior proposed, given or taught consist almost exclusively of prohibitions, requirements and sanctions (just scroll through what in many ways and for many years was the best modern European legislation: the current law Italian no. 1089 of June 1, 1939), hardly find any kind of behavior ‘active’ different from the technical and administrative referred to institutional bodies such circumstances, it was said, not only due to the persistent nature of the legal instances authoritarian and centralist.
At the root is, if anything, the progressive sderotizzazione of the concept in question, or as well as we said at the beginning, the reduction of this concept in general and axiomatic, however, a process of formulation ‘reductive’ that can be easily identified as typical of ideology bourgeois. Nor is it to underestimate the fact that in this process crept to the above-mentioned radical ambiguity of the term ‘heritage’, just to “break down the culture of a set of goods for humanity become objects of possession” (and even of common possession, to be managed grant-in form to that which still is used to call ‘public enjoyment’) that Walter Benjamin warned already be “inconceivable idea” and that is to put up a “dialectical view of history that can be gained only through waiver of that contemplation which is typical of historicism “(v. Benjamin, 1955; tr. it., p. 83).
Whatever their ideological assumptions and social implications, it is undeniable that modern problems of the protection of cultural heritage is to be translated into activities of great importance, sometimes even powerful impact on their objective purpose. It is enough to take as a reference the situation of the years immediately following the last world war, and compare them to current situations, to measure how those issues have already affected structures, technical and operational behaviors, as well as on the formation of a more acute perception the radius of the political and administrative requirements.
An inventory of effects such practices, although detailed at best, but would still fragmentary and episodic and, in particular, do not make it because of circumstantial reasons (or, if you will, of the options that despite their frequent lack of homogeneity are not less symptomatic) of what has been achieved.
Agree upon rather strive to identify key issues for action, which indeed offer us the best chance of a reasoned balance of the last thirty-five years of operation of the protection and conservation. The first of these issues (and was perhaps the most extensive resonance has had on public opinion, as being worth as an incentive for the same conceptual definition of issues relating to cultural heritage) has focused on the development of legal instruments to better support the protection.
The discovery of the huge damage caused by the events of the war – and the possibility of even greater damage in the future – and then the emergence of a social no less devastating, such as intensified urbanization and, conversely, the rapid depopulation of rural settlements or peripheral; and again, the rampant commodification of cultural heritage, the easing of its functions historically these in the past but they had ensured the preservation (for example as a result of the reform of the Catholic liturgy) were indeed all phenomena against which has stimulated the creation of new protective measures, particularly at the international level. As for the damage due to acts of war (in the broadest sense: the material destruction of the goods to their removal) has found solutions to the problem they had their own tradition: indeed the international arrangements such as those promoted by UNESCO for the Protection of goods and to return to the community pertaining to those that have been removed from one of the parties to the conflict (Hague Convention, 1954), others have not been that an updated edition of the measures promoted under the Congress of Vienna 1815 by enlightened intellectuals and politicians (by A. Canova to Lord Castlereagh) allowed the return to the state of the Church and other ‘nationality’ of most of the works of art which had seized the Napoleonic Empire. Similarly to agreements already adopted in other times have been inspired by those who have recently declared ‘open city’, buffer zones, certain centers of important historical, religious, monumental. However, agreements of this kind, which were projected on the background of exceptional circumstances which are precisely the events of the war, were also at the foundation of others who are proposed as forms of behavior generalized expectation, however, the size, if not the exceptional of those factors – other than war stories – of which we have mentioned before.
The most significant of these arrangements are no doubt the European Convention for the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage (Council of Europe, London, May 1969) for the protection of archaeological excavations and illegal removal and for the scientific study of the finds; the European Charter of the Architectural Heritage (Council of Europe, Amsterdam, October 1975) for the preventive conservation of historic urban centers and integrated; the Convention for the measures to be taken to prohibit the export, import and transfer of ownership of cultural property illegal (UNESCO, Paris, November 1970), which also reaffirmed the obligation to return to the rightful owners of the property just become subject of trafficking; the Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (UNESCO, Paris, November 1972) to broaden the criteria and protective measures also to the natural environment.
You will easily notice the complementarity of these four basic devices, where we see the recognition of the relevance not only ‘asset’ – which is still a matter of historical fact – but also contextual, environmental, in short, of the goods.
It certainly can not say that the mere fact of having been promanati, these devices have resulted in the resolution of the problems that had caused them; and that on the one hand for not reached universality of membership of the Member States of the two international bodies promoters (UNESCO and Council of Europe), but also the contradictions that have occurred with other contemporary devices worldwide. Just remember, for example, that at the very beginning of a more rigorous control over international trade in cultural goods has also inflicted a serious derogation from the application of the customs legislation of the European Common Market that have abolished the economic deterrent that, in countries such as Italy was made up of the so-called ‘export tax’ (v. Argan, … Exodus, 1969).
The pressure on public authorities and public opinion of those devices and other more detailed that accompanied them, as well as initiatives such as the rescue of the temples of Ab? Simbel and monuments and the historic center of Venice, found channels in a sense ‘institutional’ in the two associations on which gravitate to the professional sectors concerned: the ICOM (International Council of Museums Internationai) and ICOMOS (International Council of Monuments and Sites), which, respectively, as far as regards the movable cultural property and listed buildings, urban and environmental services, through an extensive series of papers by experts and conventions have developed methodological and operational criteria of very considerable importance, for this will need to mention at least the drafting of the Charter of the restoration (the one called ‘Venice’, 1972), which has replaced the antiquated and empirical Athens Charter of 1931 in the name of real scientific criteria of prudent use of resources and advanced technology, especially of a more developed historical consciousness.
Moreover, where the above-mentioned Conventions have been ratified by the government authorities, they also set in motion processes of compatibility and adaptation of national laws and, for obvious consequence, to reorganize the institutions responsible for the implementation of the willing laws themselves, and if so, in some cases, as it took us note, has given rise to measures riformativi like that in Italy, led to the creation of the Ministry for Cultural and Environmental Heritage, and in France, concentration of various technical and administrative services in the Ministère des Affaires Culturelles, often in contrast, the creation of new bodies at all, even in countries that never had its own constitutional tradition of centralized coordination bodies in the field: typical is the case of the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, which is part of the US Department of Interior and which has as its operational arm the National Park Service; Similarly, in the UK, the equivalent of our Ministry of Public Works now operates – under the Town and Country Planning Act (1962-1968) – features not only advisory and coordination of local governments, but also for effective and timely travel check.
More than for the establishment of organizations such as these that have just mentioned, the configuration of which is, again, essentially political, administrative, move the address to which the most recent behavior of public institutions in view of the specific nature of the problems of cultural heritage is since the establishment of technical organizations and cultural specialists.
Even in these areas have been set up to complex international bodies: the most active and prestigious is the International Centre for Conservation (sponsored by UNESCO), which is based in Rome and has so much homework training of personnel to be assigned to conservation as tasks of scientific research itself, the exchange of information and technical advice from national agencies.
As for the latter is especially symptomatic of the trend lines of the prominent themes, which they were formed or re-developed in relation to the assumption of specific tasks, which are those of conservation and cataloging of assets. On the first point, the Central Institute for Restoration in Rome and other bodies connected to it (the workshops related to the Superintendents of Florence and Venice), the Koninklijk Instituut voor het Kunstpatrimonium Brussels and, recently established, the Institut National de Restoration of the Paris definitely play a role in the primary field of applied research and education, while preserving at least part of the function of highly specialized laboratories, which rely on ‘cases’ particularly complex. To more precisely how these organisms was responsible for the development of what is the operational concept of wider scope for innovation, the concept that conservation planning and integrated, which aims to establish systems and practices on prevention (which indeed may often be reduced to simple good housekeeping) and restorative therapy (which, as you know, often have unpredictable effects induced, even traumatic, property) is to replace the definition and promotion of optimal conditions of the ‘existence’ of the goods: the that is implied by the study of the physical factors of a general nature and reflection that affect storage. Emerges from this approach, and beyond that which can also appear a mere technicality his view, the connection with other forms of conservation planning, which extend to the archaeological sites and artifacts from the urban to the natural environment and therefore invest also the principal conditions no more than the merely physical order, but also socio-economic.
At the basis of this same approach can not be the most rigorous scientific evaluation of the conservation itself: and this, as well as by the bodies mentioned above, is specially developed by the laboratories of the national protection or major museums around the world .
It seems so finally routed to the most relevant activities that address again until recently remained largely subject to empiricism, in far too casual trials that had also caused irreparable damage (you may recall here that the cleaning controversy was debated in England in the sixty, caused by discutibilissimi methods with which they were treated to some Renaissance paintings in the National Gallery in London: v. Ruheman, 1968, was no less lively discussion of other actions of famous paintings from the Pinacoteca Vaticana). Instead, some more recent works – even on a large scale, such as those made mainly on the frescoes in Italy – have had good results at all units. Often, in fact you are even been able to deal with situations that until a few years ago had seemed insoluble: the restoration of the frescoes pregiotteschi in St. Francis of Assisi in the series of the Triumphs of Caesar by Mantegna at Hampton Court, to those of wall paintings in India and the Far East! Nor should we forget the experience of exception, always in the field of preservation techniques of paintings and wooden artefacts, was caused by the flood in Florence on November 4, 1966; that it was an opportunity to investigate not only the problems specifically related to the material effects of the flood itself, but also on issues of longer duration, including organizational (v. a statement of issues, and examination of the evolution of operational criteria Baldini and from Puget, 1972).
Another area in which there have been important technical innovations, however, still susceptible of further developments and that, for the same entity of its own implications, also awaits more detailed checks, was that of the conservation of sculptures that are found in open spaces and are therefore subject to the effects of air pollution: the problem is obviously huge, and of extreme urgency, that most certainly can not be resolved by simply removing and transfer to the indoors of the works concerned and replacing them with copies to not deface the original appearance of the monuments on which were placed the originals.
This practice, which in the past but was very common (and which has full of sculptures removed from the original locations many museums of France, Spain, England, Germany, Italy itself) is now considered more correctly as a last resort: now there is a tendency toward intervention in situ rather, that the liberation of the sculptures from the layers of material deposited and degrading (and I’m not sure that the misguided ‘patina’ of the time!) follows the application of substances that strengthen the structure of the mineral surfaces of the sculptures themselves and serve as a protective layer to the study of other appropriate safeguards. Also apply in this regard a few examples of highly successful projects: the sculptures on the facade of San Petronio in Bologna and the famous reliefs on Wiligelmo the Cathedral of Modena (for the problem in general, v. Riccomini and Torraca 1969 v. The treatment also of stone …, 1973).
Nor, even a quick review of what matters is the present, we can say nothing of all the problems, in part similar to the above, for the preservation of metal, especially bronze sculptures (from the horses of the facade of St. Mark’s in Venice the famous griffin of Perugia) and the finds of the excavation.
As a result, in short, beyond the episodic interventions singularly striking and prestigious line of behavior really aware of the need for more careful use of resources in Science (v. Urban, 1973 with very large display of detailed technical issues) and focused on the design of a conservation project that goes back to the premise of keeping the same objective. Closely linked to the issue of conservation, in particular its assumptions, is the other major issue in recent times, that of the integrated knowledge and full of cultural heritage, namely cataloging. The phrase “know better to keep better” has become almost a cliché, begging the applicant, however, must be notified immediately, it is only partially relevant to this issue.
The cataloging of cultural heritage is not – as we mentioned earlier, and it is always necessary to reiterate – an operation whose appearance is defined in relation to the finalization of conservation technical and administrative management; not defined, at least, mainly in relation to this, since it has its roots deeper, beyond these layers, however, pragmatic, in a more detailed and all-encompassing grasp of knowledge of the complexity of the cultural heritage and their immanence in cultural behaviors.
As such, the classification is, in the very first instance, an operation of historical inquiry, which uses the tools of philological, scientific, anthropological and sociological, but whose primary purpose is the realization of their particular frame of reference. If differs from the disciplines of archeology and art history as well as they are commonly understood, is not to limit its technicist, but because special attention to the knowledge of the sets do not parceled for typological classes, phenomenological, iconographic, historical, balance sheet, but instead sets in context in the whole space-time to the cultural investigated. With this, we define the special vocation interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary, cataloging (which obviously does not make it, as though sometimes you think about a new superdisciplina, let alone a job); it also defines the operating range, which is essentially the organization’s detailed systematic knowledge produced by different fields.
This means, of course, the tasks of subrogation, at least to levels before re-cognition of everything, including cultural heritage, without discrimination or quality of any other kind, is less investigated by the traditional disciplines; but implies in particular camera views from those of these same disciplines, and such as to arouse however, even in the short term, redefinition of the goals and identity of these.
Developed, from its historical beginnings, and then still in its early stage of a general reorganization that, worldwide, there has been in the postwar period, especially in the bodies and equipment protection, in a relationship that was often otherness or even opposed to the activities of academic institutions (hence the frequent complaint of inaction universities and traditional institutions such as operating ranges), cataloging has certainly had to pay for that his relationship with the original instances peculiarly pragmatic: shown just above the slogan – “know best to keep better” – it is a retry. The classification, however, also developed research methods that have drawn special qualification by its own radical historicist foundation.
There will therefore emphatic affirmation that even in the philological fields, in those of the more sophisticated definition of interpretation, the contribution of cataloging has been far more consistent and innovative in the fields of research done by the so-called ‘pure’. Even in purely quantitative terms the contribution of cataloging has been overwhelmingly, if you think about what has been produced, as volume of knowledge from bodies such as the Inventaire Général des Richesses Artistiques de la France, the Central Institute for Cataloguing and Documentation Italian, Austrian Bundesdenkmalamt, the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorisches Documentatie in The Hague, and other similar organizations Germanic, Scandinavian nations and Eastern European ones, will appear in its entire correctness that they had caught a glimpse of the great ‘experts’ the turn of the century and the teachers of the School of Vienna from the Riegl Wickhoff to Dvorak: that the way to a re-foundation of the modern discipline of art history and archeology can not pass but through experience and practice of cataloging. One statistic of large approximation, it may be symptomatic here, in Italy, in the seven years from 1971 to 1978 were studied, analyzed, defined historically, cultural heritage of any category for a complex that is already more than three times what had been investigated in the previous eighty years of the administration of Fine Arts: the quantitative evidence is opposed, of course, the elite specification of the ‘masterpieces’, but substantiates the real cultural terrain that they also justified as it possibly these.
This, indeed, is not even a simple theoretical invocation. Having reached a certain size, indeed, the cataloging triggers necessarily also processes systematic link data that, if they are still in the first definition organized in relation to the concomitance of the goods with the respective cultural areas (such as, eg. Also in the publications of 'inventaire French Kunsttopographie the Austrian, German and Swiss National Register US) not less now projecting especially on enhanced information systems, through automated data processing (v. First international conference ..., 1978). Resources these purely technical, it is true, that is not on a par with other less sophisticated (from photogrammetry all'aereofotointerpretazione) produce greater accuracy for defining and organizing the data, but also open up new virtual research, novel medical history, supplanting so - though certainly not on a full replacement - the obsolete logical corpus, the monographs, the parcellizzazioni positivistic. Yet another argument is believed to set out in this brief overview of the current problems related to cultural heritage: the theme of the museum, which in its evolution in recent times closer expressed strongly innovative aspects and significant convergence on the other issues described above. Considered in its traditional connotations, the theme museum was partly held positions of detachment from the motives underlying the conservation and cataloging: it has indeed lasted a long time the idea of the museum as the privileged place of custody of artistic products selected for 'treasures 'considered exemplary and therefore presented - as they used to say - the' public enjoyment '. The museum has charged that the ideology of the 'monument', the 'masterpiece', which was in fact the source if not always at least the birth of the modern development of most of the European and American public collections of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: ideology who simply removed from the places of origin has decontextualized from the civilization belonging to the immense amount of evidence objectively the most peculiar of the same civilization.
Now, while it would be absurd to deny the merits of the cultural functions of those gathered, their being themselves in a specific way a sign of climate and civilization and, finally, the action of real rescue and promotion of science that they involved, it is also undeniable that the trend represented by them was to reach – as in fact received immediately after the war – to a point of saturation, putting in crisis for objective reasons as well as for ideological reasons in turn.
For objective reasons already why, after the exceptional mobility caused, in the years between 1945 and about 1960, by the dispersion of many private estates, the art market has contracted and does not offer hardly any (except in rare cases of flagrant or unlawful: the purchase, for example, the crater of Euphronios, from clandestine excavations in Italy by the Metropolitan Museum in New York City), the possibility of pursuing the policy of concentration of the masterpieces in the institutions of the richest nations.
For ideological reasons because, like we said before, a more lively awareness on the part of all the companies at the base prevents the alienation of cultural relics. They are, in fact, and will serve to further emphasize this, the same reasons ideals that underlies and were themselves raised by the development of the activities of conservation and cataloging, which led to the previously mentioned conventions and international agreements and UNESCO the Council of Europe and even other proposals even less realistically feasible, such as the one on the end of the last decade was advanced at UNESCO by some countries of the so-called Third World, and intended to promote the return to the culture of origin (which is not existing any more nor represented by specific political bodies) of the works that had been removed from the Western nations during the colonial era.
But while this is an eye-catching look, naively perhaps rhetorical, of a more deep-rooted trend reversal: it is no longer in fact to curb that kind of bleeding or colonization that occurs even within the same national cultural areas, but to define new roles and vocations of museums by placing them in a more intimate relationship with connaturazione the same cultural areas within which are objectively, keeping well within the circuit of social life; not as a place of pilgrimage but aesthetic as organic center of cultural, documentation and social activity.
Even with frequent variations utopian or even frankly demagogic, this trend has come, however, with a wealth of experience developing, especially where it has also implemented a policy of cultural heritage, especially focused on the practice of conservation and cataloging, and more attentive to additional cultural factors whole phenomenology (v. Emiliani, From the Museum …, 1974).
In practical terms, this has translated into two distinct moments. The first, which begins since the thirties of this century, but later manifested itself in spectacular amplitude after the war, was to extensive reconsideration that we can define structural body museum: now that you are focused on new experiences in the museum’s architecture, systems and display techniques, including the organization and expansion of services. It was almost like a settling phase, in relation also to the fact that it was almost felt the imminence of the achievement of the saturation point of the museum dimension of which had been mentioned before, and was also the first phase, perhaps more intuitive than rational, approach to the definition of new functions in which the museum was called by the company.
The rearrangement of the great museums after the forcible closure or damages suffered during the war was so the testing of new concepts of the museum. The speeches, sometimes even garish, within institutions such as the Louvre, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Museum of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, Capodimonte in Naples, Palazzo Bianco in Genoa the Correr Museum in Venice and the Museum of Verona, who committed many of the most prestigious architects of our time. I am not sure were simple upgrades, nor the resolution in a manner more closely to the actual taste of the traditional accrochage! They were but the foreshadowing of features that are substantially new, 0vviamente, even better, you are possible to identify where you are treated instead of creation ex novodi other bodies museum, when in fact the architectural design has been able to keep pace with the institutional one.
This was seen especially in the case of many museums of modern and contemporary art, especially the perception of an eclectic mood, to the perception that organizations that were not only the exhibition of collections of works, but especially the place of a multiplicity of cultural events: the path that had been pioneered in a sense marked by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, just fifty years ago, did the design of institutions such as the Whitney Museum and the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna and one of São Paulo, the Neue Galerie in Berlin, the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Gallene of Modern Art in Turin and Bologna achievements all valuable from the design point of view, even if in practice the performance of its functions differ strongly in terms of quality between them.
Neither the museum dedicated to the ‘contemporary’ was the only breeding ground for the new museum concept; often also the archaeological museums, a kind of redemption of the human dimension and historically encompassing archeology, defined functions similar to those of the other museums mentioned above: think of the museum of Paestum or Mexico City.But the most fruitful field of experience has been that of ethnographic museums, which grew in abundance, especially in the Scandinavian countries, in Eastern Europe, the Americas. It is, as is easily seen, both in the case of the archaeological museums as in the ethnographic museums, its institutions whose salient feature is that they are ‘local museums’, then the size of the human context in which they arise.
The second, and more relevant, the time of thematic museum is just that, the birth and proliferation of institutions, even small size, but widely branched and rooted to the local socio-cultural realities. Whether diantiquaria or diocesan museums, municipal, nature, folklore, these institutions tend no longer to establish itself as shelters masterpieces but as centers of documentation and promotional activities, which also include significant exempla of their cultural areas, remaining so intimate and constant relationship with the surrounding environment. You can even say – and do not seem to be a paradox – that such capillarisation, rather than multiply in a host of nuclei exhibit the ancient concept of the museum, on the ground to displace the nodal points of an extension of the all-encompassing museum functions come to set up (or rather return to) the character of the museum, in a new sense, the entire territory.
It seems that, today, the only possible alternative to the alienation of the cultural contextuality from the historical practice of conservation and cataloging had already recognized. It also appears – and while this does not seem a paradox – the generative nucleus of behavior theory to the wider social involvement in the activities of culture which, at their peak, and even charmingly unrealistic to have the car-museum: the Centre Pompidou in Beaubourg.
In the Foundation are, as in any other sector, specialists in the conservation and restoration of heritage and history, and in a way that ensures any project the right expertise and the right penalty.
Dr. Enrique De La Caridad Angulo Borrero
