World Monuments Fund
October 2009
2010 Watch Sites Announced
On October 6, at a press conference in our New York City office, WMF President Bonnie Burnham announced the sites on the 2010 Watch, bringing international attention to a diverse group of cultural heritage sites at risk around the globe. The Watch has received extensive media attention; hundreds of stories ran worldwide in print, online, on the radio, and on television, reaching more than 200 million people. Check out the sidebar for some highlights of the coverage.
Website Redesigned
In conjunction with the 2010 Watch announcement, we also unveiled our new website. Designed to be more interactive, wmf.org offers a project map, staff blog, slideshows, video, and a community page, where members can share comments and upload photographs. The new site is a great resource for all, from architecture enthusiasts and armchair travelers to our professional colleagues in the field. Each 2010 Watch site has its own page; you can locate them all on our Google-powered map.
2009 Hadrian Award
On October 15, WMF presented the 22nd annual Hadrian Award to David Rockefeller, Jr., in honor of his commitment to protecting both our planet's natural environment and our shared cultural heritage. More than 300 guests attended the gala, held at the Plaza Hotel in New York.
Modernism at Risk Exhibition
WMF recently organized "Modernism at Risk: Modern Solutions for Saving Modern Landmarks", a traveling exhibition of photographs and interpretative panels of five case studies that examine the roles designers play in preserving modern landmarks. Its first stop was the University of Florida's School of Design, Construction and Planning in Gainesville. The exhibition will come to New York City in the winter, where it will be on view at the AIA New York Center for Architecture from February 11 through April 15, 2010.
A Summer of Field Schools and Interns
Interns worked hard for WMF this summer at our headquarters in New York, at our field schools in the U.S., and as part of a documentation program in Peru.

At WMF's headquarters, eight interns were engaged in a variety of writing and archival projects. They helped organize the 2010 Watch meetings as well as discussions with Iraqi officials in June. They also organized slides, photographs, and digital materials, and wrote project profiles for both our archives and our new website, along with abstracts of past WMF publications for Abstracts of International Conservation Literature.

At the Dutch Reformed Church in Newburgh, NY, WMF coordinated a six-week preservation arts field school with instruction by the National Park Service. High school students gained job skills and learned carpentry techniques, historic and modern.

At Mount Lebanon in New Lebanon, NY, WMF funded a 12-week field program for postgraduate students in architecture and landscape architecture, led by the Historic American Landscape Survey. Their task was to document the little known, elaborately engineered underground waterworks of the Shaker community.

In New Orleans, WMF provided support to Preservation Trades Network to enable six students to continue work on the historic Taylor Tomb in Lafayette Cemetery, one of the oldest cemeteries in the region and a 1996 Watch site.

Further afield, three University of Pennsylvania graduate students in historic preservation traveled to the Colca Valley of Peru. While the main focus of the work was on the 17th-century church of Jesus Nazareno, one of the students, Patrick Kidd, specializing in preservation planning, traveled to several churches and wrote about his experience for WMF's blog.


WMF IN THE NEWS

The New York Times:
2010 World Monuments Watch Includes Sites from New Orleans to Bhutan

Associated Press:
Machu Picchu, Barcelona Church on Threatened List

Reuters:
Merritt Parkway in Connecticut Among 93 at Risk Sites

National Public Radio:
New Orleans School Among World Endangered Sites

Los Angeles Times:
Preserving the Merritt Parkway's Bridges to the Past

Financial Times:
Architectural Attention Seekers

Agence France-Presse:
From Kyoto to Machu Picchu: World's Heritage at Risk

BBC:
In Pictures: Monuments Under Threat

Time Magazine:
Endangered Monuments

National Geographic News:
Parkway, Library Among U.S. "Monuments" At Risk

Agencia EFE:
La Sagrada Familia, entre los Monuments que Corren Mayor Peligro

New York Magazine:
The Merits of the Merritt Parkway

The Times:
Ghostly Georgian Enclave of Sheerness Dockyards

The Independent:
Five UK Sites on 'Watch List' of Endangered Monuments

The New York Times:
Evening Hours: Cause and Effect
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WORLD MONUMENTS FUND
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