FOCUS ON: Brancusi's Endless Column
Ensemble |
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From the WMF
Bookshelf |
Read WMF's newest book, Brancusi's Endless
Column, from Scala Press. Available at your local bookstore or
free if you become a new member of WMF level.
Call 646-424-9594, ext. 247, for more
information. | |
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2008 Watch Panel Convenes in New York
City |
Photo: The Watch panel evaluated
more than 200 nominations in our New York offices last
month.
Much of the work
that the World Monuments
Fund undertakes
happens in far-flung, exotic places all over the world. Every two years, though, the
action comes home to our New
York headquarters as
nominations for the World Monuments Watch List of 100
Most Endangered Sites arrive in bubble-wrapped envelopes and
over-loaded e-mails.
Hundreds of
submissions flooded our offices this past January in response to our
global call for nominations, which we issued more than a year ago.
While it was exciting to see so many nominations arrive from around
the world, the sheer volume was sobering. For months our staff
sorted through, catalogued, and summarized each nomination to aid
our panel of independent cultural heritage experts in evaluating the
sites. The panel convened in May, and over the course of three
days, the panel considered each nomination on the basis of site
significance, urgency of need, and the viability of conservation
plans put forth. The resulting list will be announced on June
6.
Be sure to visit
our website next week for
the full list and descriptions of each site, as well as information
on how you can help save these irreplaceable monuments to our
cultural
heritage. |
Stand Up for the
Burrup |
In an effort to
protect the Dampier Rock Art Site from further industrial
development, concerned citizens around the world are "standing up
for the Burrup" before their own iconic monuments and landscapes.
Their hope is to send a powerful message to the Western Australian
Government, which refuses to protect the thousands of engravings and
petroglyphs-many thought to be more than 10,000 years old -- at the
Burrup
Peninsula site, favoring
continued expansion of natural gas industry there.
Since the
first natural gas plant was built on the Burrup in the 1960s,
hundreds if not thousands of engravings have been removed or
destroyed, while toxic emissions generated by the installations
continue to eat away at renderings not directly damaged by site
construction. Despite the wishes of the area's Aboriginal population
and advocates for preservation, the Western Australian Government
seems content to lose an extraordinary cultural landscape of global
importance (see ICON, Winter 2007). To join the campaign to save the
site, visit: Stand Up for the
Burrup. The Dampier Rock Art Complex, was listed on
both the 2004 and 2006 World Monuments Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. Read more about it in the Winter 2007 issue of
ICON.
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Interactive
Panoramas of the Forbidden City |
Emperor Qianlong's Lodge of Retirement, an
eighteenth-century jewelbox tucked away in the northeast quadrant of
the Forbidden
City,
is the subject of a multi-million-dollar conservation initiative,
undertaken by the World
Monuments Fund
in partnership with the Palace Museum, Beijing.
Now, you can see the restoration of
the Lodge up close through our online panoramas or visit it in person on our
Member Trip to
China. |
Monuments in
Context |
This spring saw the return of World
Monuments: Touchstones of Past and
Present,
WMF's
annual lecture series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The
three-lecture series, now in its second year and presented in
collaboration with the Museum, focuses on the meaning of
architectural monuments in their cultural context and on efforts to
ensure their survival today.
Acclaimed
architect Norman Foster
gave an insightful lecture on designing new spaces and new
uses for important historical environments, discussing the many ways
in which old and new structures can not only coexist in the modern
world, but complement one another. Alain de Botton, author of The Architecture of
Happiness, delivered a witty lecture on how our
surroundings affect our emotional wellbeing, illustrating the impact
that architecture and design make on our daily lives, whether or not
we are conscious of it. Honorary WMF chairman John Julius Norwich closed
out the popular series with a rousing talk on the ongoing efforts to
save Venice,
both its architecture and its unique spirit.
We
thank those of you who helped make this our must successful series
yet, and invite everyone to join us next year as we present another
set of exciting
speakers. |
Membership Travel
Program |
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