Those of you who read my blog know that I have a strong interest in balancing the practice of the conservation of the built environment and cultural landscapes between what we objectively know (e.g., historic facts; things we can photograph, measure) and meanings (e.g., intangible heritage). All of this...
Future of conservation
The Heritage After Trump Award ($1,000 if your idea wins — Jan 10 deadline)
Thomas King, a well-known author and critic of the cultural resource management system in the United States, has created a contest in which the best idea to replace the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) will win $1,000. I (along with other historic...
The Rupture in Cultural Heritage Meanings: Where Are We Going? (Where Do We Want to Go?)
Recently, I was reading a post on LinkedIn where a World Heritage expert was attempting to define cultural heritage for the twenty-first century. Many people have tried to do this, especially in terms of World Heritage and state definitions of cultural heritage for use in the protection and inscription...
Comment to the ACHP on “Notice of Proposed Policy Statement on Historic Preservation and Community Revitalization”
In April of 2016, I sent a reply to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation commenting on their draft Policy Statement on Historic Preservation and Community Revitalization. I thought it useful to post my comments here as they overlap with many of the ideas that I discuss on this...
The rest of the Association for Critical Heritage Studies 2016 conference
In my earlier post, I summarized the first full day of the Association for Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS) 2016 conference. Now that I’ve returned home, I wanted to sum up the remainder of the conference and my overall impressions of the Association for Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS). I will...
First full day at the Association for Critical Heritage Studies 2016 conference
Luckily for me, as I live in New England, the third Association for Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS) conference is a relatively close drive to Montreal, Canada. I’ve had the privilege of attending the first full day of the conference and wanted to summarize my experience for the benefit of...
Do you teach in an historic preservation/heritage conservation program? How do you know you’re doing it well?
If you teach in an historic preservation or built heritage conservation program in a college or university, you may be aware that there are very few publications that directly address the pedagogical, curricular, and assessment needs of the field, especially from an international perspective. In fact, I would argue...
What will historic preservation look like in 50 years?
A few weeks ago, I attended the 7th National Forum on Preservation Practice hosted by Goucher College, which focused on the next 50 years of practice. One thing I’ve always liked about the National Forum is that it has a mix of both practitioners and academics, which helps to...
Special EDRA47 intensive on using social science evidence to change built heritage conservation practice
Environmental Design Research Association Conference, Raleigh, North Carolina, May 18, 2016 As part of my activities with the Environmental Design Research Association’s (EDRA’s) Historic Environment Knowledge Network, I have been working with my co-chair, April Allen, along with Ned Kaufman to design a day-long intensive on conservation and the...
Are we “ensnared in the system of heritage” because we don’t want to escape?
Recently, I was reading through the papers from the 2013 Australia ICOMOS Conference in the journal, Historic Environment (vol. 27, no. 2, 2015). A couple of papers really struck my interest, especially the summary of this conference, published as “Does the Practice of Heritage as We Know It Have...