Műemlék-helyreállítások tegnap, ma, holnap (A 27. Egri Nyári Egyetem előadásai 1997 Eger, 1997)

Előadások - Herb STOVEL: Authenticity, as it he Nara Document and as relates to the restoration of historic monuments

genuinners or truth expressed by these attributes. So in fact in conservation terms we find really, that the document leads you to process. It leads you initally in case of a particular heritage sight to say: „What are the values", secondly what are the significant attributes through which these values are expressed and then, and only then does it ask the authenticity question! I would come back the world criteria. In this discussion when we talked about criteria its these words that we are talking about the choise between, do we mean completeness, do we mean truth, do we mean genuinness, do we mean some combination of these, these are the criteria, that differ according to cultural context, they will not all have equally be valuable in different cultural contexts. But this is, where authenticity comes into the equation. Because here we can begin to ask. „Through these attributes can we perceive the values of the heritage, that lie behind the attributes?" In some warp authenticity is like a filler. If the filter is obscured, you need to do something, to clear that filter so that you can see through the attributes back to the values. This gives the conservation field practical guidance because it means, when we begin to ask, what are we going to do, what actions will we take, what treatment is appropriate, that the actions can be judged, the actions can be defined in relation to the authenticity analysis we have carried out. If the object is incomplete we can begin to talk about restoring its wholeness or completeness. Or perhaps we can begin to talk about to maintain what is real, or thirdly we perhaps we need to reveal the underlying truth of the massages inside the monument. The conservation field has always aked these questions. The only thing that is different is to be able to ask them in this clear and logical sequence of going back to this first question about values. So summarize that framework and to try to be practical what the Nara Document is really sugesting to people when they look at cultural heritage conservation that they say first what are the values, what are the heritage values of this place, do we know them, how are they determined whose values are we talking about. The second question becomes, which attributes carry those values most strongly. Thirdly how authentically can we understand those attributes to express the heritage values we have defined as important. Lastly we can ask what conservation actions can we take that will allow us to strengthen the ability of those attributes to express heritage values. Presented this way everyone may say, this is logical what is unusual, it is a normal process? In reality, if you look at what happens in heritage conservation in most countries of the world, you find, that people start somewhere in the middle of the list, they do not take the time to start at the beginning. For me that is the primary value of the Nara Document. It pushes the conservators back to the beginning of the process every time with every dicision to be clear about those heritage values. I just wanted to conclude with two ideas of where this debate is going at the present moment. If you look at the World Heritage Committee and if you look at other groups. One of ideas which is currently circulating, it may be useful, and it also may be negative, is a grater effort to reconcile cultural and natural heritage inside the World Heritage Convention. In the early 1970- ies when UNESCO was writing convenions for cultural and natural heritage the initial idea was to have 2 convertions: one for cultural heritage, one for natural heritage. A wise decision was made in 1972 to bring these together and to speak of just one heritage of mankind, not to draw lines between cultural and natural. I think it was a nice decision at the policy level but in fact it has not really been implemented in the following 25 years of the conservations history. Cultural and natural heritage are treated separetly, listed separetly, examined separetly, discussed separetly. Now at the 25 year- anniversary point of the convention there is a new effort to bring cultural and natural heritage together. Already in UNESCO there have been papers saying why can not we have just one word why can not we replace authenticity by integrity, can we find a way to say it in simpler language? For me the question being discussed at the moment is not so important because the real question is not whether we use the word integrity or authenticity, but what we mean when we speak about the general concept. And here we come to the choises which are significant in different cultural contexts. The question of completness,