Description:

The “objects of conservation” – the cultural heritage we privilege with acts of conservation and preservation – have expanded well beyond traditional artworks and objects of high monetary value. Conservators now also consider how to treat nineteenth-century memorials constructed of human hair, dust-coated boots worn by a first responder at the World Trade Center site, or the impromptu monuments assembled at sites of police killings. How has the field of conservation responded to these objects of memory and monuments to trauma? And in one of the most challenging moral dilemmas of all, can we reconcile our professional code of ethics with the deliberate removal or destruction of monuments? This talk will explore these contemporary issues through a lens of history and evolving ethics of the field.