ICON, Winter 2006

With more than lOO active projects in its current operating portfolio, WM F could easily rest on its laurels, proud of the extraordinary progress that is being made to save world treasures such as Angkor in Cambodia, the Lodge of Retirement in China's Forbidden City, Catherine the Great's Chinese Palace at Oranienbaum in Russia, and monuments of pharaonic age on the West Bank of the Nile in Egypt. Yet the organization rarely finds itself engaged in acts of self adulation, but rather in an unrelenting dialog with partners around the globe to rescue sites that may soon be lost to war, natural disaster, or redevelopment.

This issue we highlight two such sites— the Dampier Rock Art Site on the northwest coast of Australia (see page 34), a portion of which has already yielded to industrial development, and London's iconic Battersea Power Station (see page 24), which may soon face partial if not complete demolition. We have also taken the opportunity to update you on WMF's continuing efforts to enhance the capacity of Iraq's antiquities staff to care for what is left of their country's cultural patrimony once hostilities cease. While our gains over the past four decades clearly outnumber our losses, WMF will only rest easy when all of the sites in our purview are well out of danger. This issue, we have introduced a new column, the Art of Preservation, penned by ICON contributing editor Eve M. Kahn. Each issue she will be examining some of the innovative new technologies that are entering the preservation toolkit and the pioneering minds behind them. As each new development comes on line, conservators will be better able to assess a site's condition and find appropriate treatment.