From 2010 to 2015, World Monuments Fund supported the restoration of the Church of São José and Santa Cecilia in collaboration with the Museum of Sacred Art of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Work included the comprehensive conservation of the church’s exterior, interior, and artwork, as well as a...Read more
Among the Batammaliba of Togo, the word butabu describes a process of moistening earth with water in preparation for building - the prefix and siffix bu referring to the earth and all that is associated with it. Wet earth construction is a complex art based on a sound knowledge of structure and the...Read more
In the old days of the Venetian Republic, the doge would board his golden barge on Ascension Day to be rowed out beyond the lagoon into the waters of the Adriatic. There, he would throw a consecrated ring into the sea, saying “Desponsamus te, mare,” (We wed thee, O sea). On the night of 3 November...Read more
This past December, two extraordinary mid-eighteenth-century lead sculp - tures from the historic Portuguese pal - ace of Queluz (see ICON, Spring 2004) returned to their native London where they are undergoing a dramatic restora - tion at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Cast by renowned British...Read more
An extraordinary polychromed relief recently found within the Temple of the Moon—a massive ceremonial complex on Peru’s arid North Coast—is providing a window into the ceremonial life of the Moche, whose culture flourished in the early first millennium a.d in the many river valleys that crisscross...Read more
Described by the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as the greatest neoclassical building in the world, St. George’s Hall in Liverpool, England, had been a source of civic pride since its construction in the mid-nineteenth century, housing the city’s law courts, along with a town hall and...Read more
Intervención is an academic journal from the Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía in Mexico, created by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH). It is dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge, research, reflection, and new developments and practices in...Read more
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s graceful art-deco Battersea Power Station—famed for its appearance in film and on a 1977 Pink Floyd album cover—defines the River Thames just west of the Houses of Parliament. Passing it on a commuter train from Victoria Station, Europe’s largest brick structure is as...Read more
It’s hard to imagine a more impressive—or more endangered—cultural landscape in Australia than the Dampier Rock Art Site. The largest, and quite possibly oldest, rock art precinct in the world consists of thousands of jagged red Pilbara rocks which, on closer inspection, reveal in their shadowed...Read more
Earl Barthé is the Jelly Roll Morton of plaster. Like the legendary jazz pianist, the 84-year-old New Orleans craftsman is a master of improvisation in his medium. In fact, he often describes his highly ornate ceiling medallions and crown moldings in musical terms, such as “arias in plaster.”...Read more