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June 04, 2013

Stowe’s Lions Restored

Cheere worked in a variety of materials, but his larger garden statues were lead: cast, tooled, and painted to imitate stone. Amongst the grandest were a pair of lions at Stowe House, the guardians of its magnificent south front.

May 27, 2013

The Impressive, Inspiring Nalatale Ruins of Zimbabwe at Risk

My relationship with Nalatale Ruins started in 2010 while I was on a return trip to the country of my birth. As the old saying goes: you don’t realise what you’ve got until it’s gone, or in this case I didn’t realise the fantastic places I could visit until they were no longer easy to visit! And so I found myself wanting to visit as many of the important historic and cultural sites that I could whenever I returned to Zimbabwe, sites I had neglected to visit when I lived in the country.

May 21, 2013

Preparing for the Future at Quarr Abbey

The Two Abbeys Project at Quarr on the Isle of Wight, U.K., has received a grant of £1.9M from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), for which partnership funding in excess of £200K has to be found. This will enable essential consolidation work to be carried out in the ancient abbey ruins. In the Bellot Abbey, repairs will be carried out to remedy rain penetration, as well as some other high-level repairs.

May 13, 2013

El Zotz: An Archaeological Gem in the Guatemalan Jungle

The archaeological site of El Zotz lies nestled in the San Miguel de la Palotada Biotope of northern Guatemala, less than a day’s walk from the grandiose ancient Maya city of Tikal. In antiquity, El Zotz was known as Pa’ Chan, or “fortified-sky,” and was occupied for over nine centuries between 300–1250 A.D.

May 11, 2013

WMF Participates in International Conference on the History and Archaeology of Jordan

I was in Berlin to participate in the International Conference on the History and Archaeology of Jordan, which is held every three years and gathers archaeologists, historians, epigraphers, architects and conservators from all over the world.

May 08, 2013

Oshki Monastery’s History, Significance, and Current Challenges

Oshki was an important monastic settlement in medieval times. Its architecture, its embellishment, books copied and produced here, all are part of the story of the powerful Georgian King David III Bagrationi.

May 01, 2013

DOCOMOMO US Meets in Sarasota

After a long New York winter, the 86 degree blast of heat that hit me once I’d deplaned in Sarasota was a welcome one. I’d come all the way to Florida to learn more about modern architectural heritage and meet and converse with others about strategies to save it.

April 29, 2013

Heritage Management Course Opens in Erbil, Iraq

On April 7, World Monuments Fund held the opening session of a heritage site management course at the Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage (IICAH) in Erbil. The program will address a variety of heritage topics through seminars and site visits in the Kurdish region.

April 25, 2013

Grupo de Investigación y Documentación, Dirección de Patrimonio. Ministerio de Cultura

In the south of the Bolívar Department in northern Colombia lies a Spanish colonial town built on an island surrounded by the Magdalena River. Santa Cruz de Mompox was founded in the first half of the sixteenth century. The name Mompox or Mompós, as it is also known, stems from a native chief called Mompoj. The urban layout of the town is based on the Spanish urban models of the time, yet it also followed the linear and sinuous form of the river.

April 22, 2013

Palace Museum Delegation Visits the United States

For ten days in March, representatives of the Palace Museum (Forbidden City) in Beijing, including two recent graduates of the World Monuments Fund/Palace Museum conservation training school, CRAFT, came to New York for a series of technical exchange meetings, presentations, and site visits.

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