Preservation Futures: Science
This article is the last in a four-part series. Follow the links to read part 1, part 2, and part 3.
Architectural conservation is dedicated to the proposition that the tangible matters. Scholars and professionals in the field advocate for conservation of the material past because that heritage is a record of what can be known and shared. Without that material record, the present and future have no direct access or reference to the past. Entering English in the context of heritage in the 1930s, the term “conservation” signaled an important and conscious turn from earlier craft-based “restoration”’ to a more methodologically framed approach based on the techniques and language of science in preserving works of artistic and historical significance. In recent years, the assumed truths embodied in the material reality of cultural works and revealed by science have been challenged by a more expansive understanding of the many truths associated with cultural heritage and its construction.
To discuss this turn, in March 2024 the Department of Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania convened a panel on the topic of “science” as part of the series Preservation Futures. Included were Jeanne Marie Teutonico, architectural conservator and former Associate Director of the Getty Conservation Institute; Heather Viles, professor of biogeomorphology and heritage conservation at Oxford University; and George Wheeler, senior scientist at Highbridge Materials Consulting. I, as chair of the department at Penn and director of the university’s Center for Architectural Conservation, moderated. What follows is a overview of our conversation interrogating the role of science in shaping built heritage conservation theory and practice, and its recent embrace of a more culturally informed understanding of what science means in the service of heritage values.
The application of science to heritage conservation began in the late nineteenth century, formalized through the publication of the first conservation handbook, by Friedrich Rathgen, in 1898, and the organization of the first scientific laboratories at museums in Europe (Berlin, London, and Paris) and, later, in the United States, at the Fogg Museum at Harvard University. Although chemistry and later physics led the way in the application of the sciences to cultural heritage conservation, today, both the natural and social sciences offer insights and methods of approach to observing, describing, analyzing, and treating the material realities of cultural heritage.
Figure 1. Pages from Friedrich Rathen’s Die Konservirung von Alterthumsfunden (1898), the first conservation handbook, which was later translated into English.
As a form of applied science(s), conservation is neither new, nor does it currently enjoy consensus on a specific path of training or practice. Lack of agreement on even a definition of architectural conservation is shared by many other interdisciplinary fields, and may explain why there is little unanimity around competencies for professional practice and, therefore, academic training. To be clear, though, the panel’s charge was to discuss the role of science in defining and shaping built heritage conservation, not to discuss conservation science as a technical field and practice. As Wheeler observed, there is no ambiguity about the existence of conservation science as a discrete academic pursuit and its specific application to heritage studies. It is a scientific domain where diverse scientific knowledge and methodologies are applied to understand, characterize, and preserve the material aspects of cultural heritage.
Architectural conservation, as one of several specializations within the U.S. practice of historic preservation, relies on the application of conservation science along with other disciplinary methodologies drawn from the social sciences (sometimes not included in the definition of “heritage science”) including anthropology, archaeology, and sociology, as well as history, planning, design, and engineering. It is an interdisciplinary field because heritage itself is a complex and multivalent construction requiring the theories, concepts, tools, methods, models, data, and paradigms of several established disciplines to create what Katri Huutoniemi and others term a new “intellectual landscape of knowledge,” not a discipline per se. It is transdisciplinary because it seeks to unite theory with practice in the service of the public good.
The discussion at Penn began with a basic question: What does science mean to the panelists in the context of built heritage conservation and, more specifically, how does science serve the primary objectives of built heritage conservation? All were unanimous in their belief that science is a powerful way of knowing, but that it is only one way among many others. By observing and describing phenomena either in the field or in the laboratory, heritage science generally seeks to explain the material composition and performance behavior of historic buildings and sites and their physical context. Viles emphasized that science is not fixed but rather constantly developing and seeks to challenge existing norms through the positing of new theories and methods.
“Both the natural and social sciences offer insights and methods of approach to observing, describing, analyzing, and treating the material realities of cultural heritage.”
The panel then turned to how science has changed in its relationship to heritage and, specifically, its reception in contemporary society. Here the panelists ventured into more personal and individual territory. Wheeler raised the specter of postmodern doubt and its damage to, but also refinement of, what science can and cannot say beyond its established purview. He observed how cooking rather than chemistry might afford a better lesson in understanding the nature of heritage materials useful to a conservator. As a geographer, Viles underscored that place matters just as much as time, not only in terms of historical and disciplinary habits, but also in terms of the complexities of new challenges such as climate change. Teutonico addressed the simplistic and popular binary of resolving heritage as having discrete tangible and intangible values whereby disciplinary expertise is often incorrectly cast as concerned with one but not the other.
By way of conclusion, I asked the panel for examples of new directions involving science and built heritage that the field is now engaged in which embrace a more sophisticated recognition of the cross-disciplinary nature of conservation as it advances toward professional maturity, more than half a century after landmark preservation legislation in Europe and the United States. Examples from Britain and the United States suggested change is afoot. Still, the inertia of funding institutions, and the resistance of universities and departments, as well as professional organizations, to recognize the need for new ways of thinking continue to limit fundamental change.
Citation
Frank G. Matero, “Preservation Futures: Science,” PLATFORM, April 29, 2024.
