Spring Spotlight 2020: Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis
As Coronavirus spreads around the world, it has shaken the foundations of our societies with dire social and economic consequences. The field of cultural heritage preservation and protection is not exempt. As heritage sites shut their doors around the world, a full ecosystem is at risk–with teams dispersing, years of training and experience on the line, and critical preservation plans–for the places we all cherish–halted.
In the world’s biggest cities, and smallest villages, partners of World Monuments Fund (WMF) find themselves without work, the world’s most breathtaking and meaningful sites without their stewards, and surrounding communities without crucial economic benefits. With a world in crisis, what is the impact on sites of significance?
Join World Monuments Fund–virtually–on Tuesday, May 19 at 12pm EDT for our annual Spring Spotlight event hosted by CEO Bénédicte de Montlaur. Joining Ms. de Montlaur for a conversation on the role heritage sites will play in the months and years to come as the world recovers are Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum The Honourable Dr. Tristram Hunt; Pakistan’s first female architect Yasmeen Lari; and scholar and curator Barry Bergdoll.
Donations to Spring Spotlight will go toward the World Monuments Relief Fund. This newly-created fund addresses WMF’s unanticipated financial needs created by the pandemic, and will have an immediate economic impact on communities that help conserve and protect humanity’s most important treasures. The event will be open to all but please consider making a contribution to Spring Spotlight to help us save exceptional architectural treasures around the world and keep our promise to support and sustain local communities.
TRISTRAM HUNT is the current Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London – the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance. Prior to joining the V&A, Dr. Hunt was Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent Central and Shadow Secretary of State for Education. He has a PhD from the University of Cambridge, on ‘Civic Thought in Britain, 1820-1860’ and is the author of several books, including Ten Cities That Made an Empire.
YASMEEN LARI is Pakistan’s first female architect and the CEO and co-founder of Heritage Foundation of Pakistan. After graduating from the Oxford Brookes School of Architecture in 1963, she returned to her home country and established Lari Associates. Before officially retiring from practice in 2000, she designed many of Pakistan’s landmark modern commercial buildings for the corporate sector, as well as for socially and environmentally sustainable housing for low-income groups. Since 2003, she has conserved several monuments at the Lahore Fort and the Makli World Heritage Sites. In pursuing objectives of social and ecological justice, Lari has devised zero carbon sustainable co-building and participative methodologies for the empowerment of marginalized communities, particularly women.
BARRY BERGDOLL is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Previously he was the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 2007 to 2014. His broad interests center on modern architectural history with a particular emphasis on France and Germany since 1800. Dr. Bergdoll served as President of the Society of Architectural Historians from 2006 to 2008 and is since 2018 President of the Center for Architecture in New York.
Free, donations welcome.
Buy tickets/get more info now