New Monuments, Old Debates
July 29, 2015
To provide observations and information on the emerging fields of landscape scale conservation, heritage preservation, and sustainable community development.
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The author shares her personal reflections on the recent destruction of the East Wing of the White House as well as those of a colleague in France.
The numbers are staggering. Over the last 6-months, the nation’s public land agencies have lost thousands of employees, ranging from brand new hires to senior executives. Leadership is being judged primarily on keeping the doors to sites open, with little consideration given to the long term impacts of staff departures.
In March 2020, when the worldwide pandemic brought the ICOMOS General Assembly scheduled for the fall of that year in Sydney, Australia, to a halt, planning for the event had already been quite advanced. In the face of global uncertainty, the host Australia ICOMOS and its many partners made the decision to hold the conference in 2023 – and what an event it was! The almost 7 years of planning paid off. With the theme “Heritage Changes: Resilience – Responsibility – Rights – Relationships.
Recent writing and research shows the contribution that rural and traditional working landscapes can make to landscape resilience, sustainability, and ecological diversity, which in turn can play a part in combatting climate change. The scale of these landscapes has also been a driver of the need to integrate the management of nature and culture. What has been less discussed are the contributions of cultural values to the conservation of rural landscapes. For example, the World Heritage criteria that most directly applies to working landscapes states that cultural landscapes are sites where the interaction between people and their environment is considered to be of outstanding universal value. A closer examination of the people part of the equation is warranted.
Across the country African American cemeteries have been abandoned, rediscovered, and identified as in need of preservation. Behind each of these individual stories is a complex hidden landscape created by enslavement, segregation, exclusion, and economic hardship. It is also a geography that reveals patterns of migration, forgotten settlements, demographic shifts as well as the strength and resilience of African American communities.
The author shares her personal reflections on the recent destruction of the East Wing of the White House as well as those of a colleague in France.
The numbers are staggering. Over the last 6-months, the nation’s public land agencies have lost thousands of employees, ranging from brand new hires to senior executives. Leadership is being judged primarily on keeping the doors to sites open, with little consideration given to the long term impacts of staff departures.
In March 2020, when the worldwide pandemic brought the ICOMOS General Assembly scheduled for the fall of that year in Sydney, Australia, to a halt, planning for the event had already been quite advanced. In the face of global uncertainty, the host Australia ICOMOS and its many partners made the decision to hold the conference in 2023 – and what an event it was! The almost 7 years of planning paid off. With the theme “Heritage Changes: Resilience – Responsibility – Rights – Relationships.
Recent writing and research shows the contribution that rural and traditional working landscapes can make to landscape resilience, sustainability, and ecological diversity, which in turn can play a part in combatting climate change. The scale of these landscapes has also been a driver of the need to integrate the management of nature and culture. What has been less discussed are the contributions of cultural values to the conservation of rural landscapes. For example, the World Heritage criteria that most directly applies to working landscapes states that cultural landscapes are sites where the interaction between people and their environment is considered to be of outstanding universal value. A closer examination of the people part of the equation is warranted.
Across the country African American cemeteries have been abandoned, rediscovered, and identified as in need of preservation. Behind each of these individual stories is a complex hidden landscape created by enslavement, segregation, exclusion, and economic hardship. It is also a geography that reveals patterns of migration, forgotten settlements, demographic shifts as well as the strength and resilience of African American communities.